Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1894-1972) and (1895-1986)

[scooter]

Originally Posted by Russophile

"A King's Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor"

Is a good place to start.

I just bought this book. I will let you know when I finish it!

[attaininggrace]

Originally Posted by branchg

I disagree. He had no choice but to abdicate and it would have shown greater courage to accept a lesser sacrifice (giving up Wallis) in order to fulfill his duty to be King.

I absolutely agree. He could surely have fallen in love with someone more suitable? He and Prince Charles are extremely selfish.

Attaining Grace
bookaddiction

[MARG]

Originally Posted by Elspeth

The only person who was insisting that he would have to abdicate if he wanted to marry Wallis was his private secretary, who he didn't trust.

I think it is very important not to underestimate the importance of his mother and his family in the scheme of things.

They made it clear that they did not consider David's lifestyle suitable for a King but that could have changed, indeed would have changed, had he become King. Wallis however was not negotiable. They saw her as immoral, licentious and totally unfit to become Queen, more importantly, there existed a deeply held loathing on the part of the royals, and total comtempt on the part of Wallis.

The King and Queen and the York family were all practicing christians who believed in honour and duty. David's entire lifestyle was anathema to them. Wallis was the last straw. An immoral soon to be twice divorced woman whose infidelities were well known to the King and Queen, as were David's and her political views.

Think about it. The Prince of Wales set was exciting, dashing, romantic and risque. The Yorks were playing happy families and enjoying it. The chasm between the two lifestyles was really too wide to be bridged.

Imho David believed he could have it all. But when push came to shove he knew he could never be King with Wallis and without the help and support of his family. That being the case he threatened to abdicate. I don't think he thought for a moment that they would agree. After all abdication was just not to be thought of and he believed they would relent and let him have it all. Sort of like holding your breath until you turn blue.

IMHO the POW was an overindulged libertine whose past caught up with him big time. Instead of showing backbone he bottled out.

Britain and the Commonweath are the better for it.

[randomlyKeira]

I had never heard before that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were "exiled", was that official, self-inflicted, or unofficial in political sense?

I would imagine that in a way a self-inflicted exile would seem appropriet, they probably weren't the most loved people in the country after the abdication, but really couldn't imagine an official exile in modern times. The only place modernly that I've heard of an exile is in Monaco to Prince Rainier's nephew (I believe). But in England, where the monarchy seems to be walking on eggshells as to not be de-throned and are trying to seem as modern as possible, I just couldn't imagine it...

[Russophile]

From what I remember it was self-imposed, but Queen Mary didn't help matters any and neither did Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

[branchg]

Originally Posted by Russophile

From what I remember it was self-imposed, but Queen Mary didn't help matters any and neither did Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.

The initial absence was for a period of two years to give the new King sufficient time to establish himself as the monarch and stabilize the institution, which was negotiated by Walter Monckton.

Things went rapidly downhill after the extent of The Duke's private fortune was revealed during the negotiations over disposing of Balmoral and Sandringham. George VI had inherited the throne with little money since he was not the eldest son and the revenues from the Duchy of Lancaster were depleted from The Duke's lavish spending on jewels. The Duke, on the other hand, was worth over $30 million in today's dollars from years of income from the Duchy of Cornwall. On top of that, he demanded a tax-free income of 25,000 pounds from the King.

Then came the rift over the letters patent denying Wallis royal rank, Queen Mary's refusal to accept his marriage, the war, etc.

The breach just was too wide to cross.

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by MARG

I think it is very important not to underestimate the importance of his mother and his family in the scheme of things.

They made it clear that they did not consider David's lifestyle suitable for a King but that could have changed, indeed would have changed, had he become King. Wallis however was not negotiable. They saw her as immoral, licentious and totally unfit to become Queen, more importantly, there existed a deeply held loathing on the part of the royals, and total comtempt on the part of Wallis.

There was something very personal about it. The Duchess of York and Wallis didn't get along. Queen Mary's dislike was more along the lines of duty and sacrifice; the Duchess's dislike had a strong personal element. I think it's terrible that she was allowed to indulge this vindictiveness till practically the end of Wallis's life and then pretend to be friendly with her when it was too late to make any difference, but that's another matter.

The King and Queen and the York family were all practicing christians who believed in honour and duty. David's entire lifestyle was anathema to them. Wallis was the last straw. An immoral soon to be twice divorced woman whose infidelities were well known to the King and Queen, as were David's and her political views.

I'm sorry, but I don't buy the "practising Christian" stuff. The Duchess of York didn't have any problems with Thelma Furness - a divorced and remarried woman - being David's mistress; in fact they apparently got along quite well. A genuine practising Christian wouldn't have been any happier about that than about his relationship with Wallis. It was partly personal dislike and partly the notion that while someone like Wallis was mistress material she wasn't wife material. David was actually trying to do the honest thing, and he was being told that he should find a suitable wife and keep Wallis as a mistress. Not really practising-Christian standards, unless I'm missing something.

Think about it. The Prince of Wales set was exciting, dashing, romantic and risque. The Yorks were playing happy families and enjoying it. The chasm between the two lifestyles was really too wide to be bridged.

I have thought about it.

Imho David believed he could have it all. But when push came to shove he knew he could never be King with Wallis and without the help and support of his family. That being the case he threatened to abdicate. I don't think he thought for a moment that they would agree. After all abdication was just not to be thought of and he believed they would relent and let him have it all. Sort of like holding your breath until you turn blue.

Oh, I don't know. If it's true that he really didn't want to be King, he might not have been that bothered about abdication. All through his marriage he was mostly concerned about Wallis's status, not his own.

IMHO the POW was an overindulged libertine whose past caught up with him big time. Instead of showing backbone he bottled out.

Britain and the Commonweath are the better for it.

That's probably true, although I don't think he's the only one at fault.

[Elspeth]

Originally Posted by randomlyKeira

I had never heard before that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were "exiled", was that official, self-inflicted, or unofficial in political sense?

It was unofficial and it apparently wasn't made clear to David that his exile would be permanent although the King and his private secretaries were writing to each other very early on along the lines that David must never be allowed to come back.

Legally they couldn't have stopped him coming back, but he refused to return while his wife was cold-shouldered by the royal family, and the royal family made it clear they were never going to accept her. There was also the matter of an annual payment being made to him by the King (and also I believe continued at some level by the Queen after she took the throne); I think it was made plain to him that if he tried to move back to England, the payments would stop. I'd have to look that up, though.

So it was really a case of making it impossible for him to do anything but stay away and then claim that it was voluntary on his part.

[randomlyKeira]

Wow. Thank you for that information. I never could have imagined something like that. And people say that Royalty isn't sophisticated anymore...

[branchg]

Originally Posted by Elspeth

There was also the matter of an annual payment being made to him by the King (and also I believe continued at some level by the Queen after she took the throne); I think it was made plain to him that if he tried to move back to England, the payments would stop. I'd have to look that up, though.

The financial aspects of the Abdication were not settled until 1937, which caused considerable friction and estrangement between the brothers.

As the eldest son and future King, Edward had inherited Balmoral and Sandringham, which are the private property of The Sovereign, upon the death of George V. Legally, these remained his personal property despite the Abdication, therefore, George VI had to buy them from The Duke to keep them with the Crown.

After bickering over the valuation of the properties, The Duke and George VI finally agreed to hire an independent appraiser, who indicated they were worth about 250,000 pounds. This lump sum amount was not paid directly to The Duke, but instead was invested in War Loan bonds, the income of which was payable tax-free to foreign residents. The Duke received about 11,000 pounds annually from these bonds.

Before the Abdication, The Duke completely misled his brother about the extent of his private fortune, which he had amassed after many years as The Duke of Cornwall. He claimed his income after he abdicated would amount to about 5,000 pounds. As a result, his brother agreed to pay him a lifetime income of 25,000 pounds (the equivalent of $500,000 in today's money).

This amount was later reduced to 21,000 pounds to account for pensions paid to household staff that George VI assumed on behalf of his brother for Queen Mary and other members of the royal family. 11,000 came from the War Bonds tax-free, while the other 10,000 came from George VI in the form of a personal allowance.

When George VI died in 1952, The Queen informed her uncle the 10,000 allowance would no longer be paid as it was a personal agreement with her father. The Duke immediately engaged his London lawyer to protest and eventually The Queen agreed to continue paying it. However, it was also made clear the allowance was contingent on the Duke's continued absence from Britain.

Before The Duke died, he wrote to The Queen asking that she continue to pay the allowance to The Duchess if he died first. She agreed to pay 5,000 pounds, but after The Duchess became seriously ill and bedridden, she contacted Maitre Blum in 1979 and told her she would pay all of the medical and household expenses.

[Elspeth]

That's pretty much what I remembered, although I don't have the details to hand without searching through piles of books to find one of the Duke's biographies.

So basically they misled each other: David didn't tell Bertie about the savings he'd stashed away from his Duchy of Cornwall income, and Bertie didn't tell David that his exile was going to be permanent. No wonder there was long-term bad feeling between the two families.

[Roslyn]

Originally Posted by branchg

As the eldest son and future King, Edward had inherited Balmoral and Sandringham, which are the private property of The Sovereign, upon the death of George V. Legally, these remained his personal property despite the Abdication, therefore, George VI had to buy them from The Duke to keep them with the Crown.

This interests me greatly. David made a personal profit by selling something he was only supposed to own as King. I would have thought there would be a strong argument along the lines that the inheritance of these properties was contingent upon the devisee remaining Sovereign and not abdicating. I'd love to know what advice was given to George VI in this regard.

[Elspeth]

Since the notion of abdication would probably not have occurred to anyone at the time the properties were purchased, it might not have been set down in writing. These two homes were personal property, and so they might have been inherited by Edward the person rather than by Edward the King.

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by Elspeth

Since the notion of abdication would probably not have occurred to anyone at the time the properties were purchased, it might not have been set down in writing. These two homes were personal property, and so they might have been inherited by Edward the person rather than by Edward the King.

They could have been warned by the example of Austrian emperor Ferdinand I. and his nephew Franz Joseph I. When Ferdinand abdicated he accepted that there could not be two emperors in Vienna and moved to Prague but he kept the complete private possessions of the Head of the House of Habsburg, as he had inherited it personally from his father on emperor Franz's death.
So for the first years of his reign Franz Joseph was rather poor and had really difficulties fulfilling his wife Sisi's wishes for horses, estates and jewellery. When his uncle died (but he lived long!), the dire straits ended because Ferdinand left the wealth to Franz Joseph.

On his death in 1916, Franz Joseph left part of this wealth to his two daughters and to his granddaughter by crown prince Rudolf. Archduchess Elisabeth had left the Imperial House on her marriage to a mere prince, her aunt Archduchess Gisela had married a Bavarian prince and her other aunt Archduchess Valerie signed the resignation from the Imperial House in 1920, so all three could keep their estates in Austria (including the Kaiservilla in Ischl). While the new reigning branch of Karl and Otto started rather poor and lost the rest of it after WWI....

So I wonder if the queen could leave Sandringham to Edward or Anne if she wanted to?

[branchg]

Originally Posted by Jo of Palatine

So I wonder if the queen could leave Sandringham to Edward or Anne if she wanted to?

I doubt it. After the precedent of the Abdication, it's likely the properties were put into a special trust that states only The Sovereign can own them.

So, in other words, the King is dead, long live the King. If you abdicate or are removed from the throne by Parliament, the properties immediately pass to the new Sovereign.

[iowabelle]

Originally Posted by attaininggrace

I absolutely agree. He could surely have fallen in love with someone more suitable? He and Prince Charles are extremely selfish.

Attaining Grace
bookaddiction

I don't know that you can make yourself fall in love with a certain kind of person, but PoW/Windsor certainly had plenty of opportunities to meet appropriate royals/aristocrats -- and he always attached himself to married women of the kind that Queen Mary could not have approved. I think he was a disaster waiting to happen ... and he had only 2 other choices, live alone or live quietly with a mistress. IMO he wasn't capable of self-sacrifice.

[randomlyKeira]

Wow. In my personal opinion, Royals have been sacrificing true love since the institution was founded, so it would have been easy to forgo love and mary another royal to please the country, but I think that doing what he did was probably very hard, true, selfish, but imagine what it must have been like to know that you were deserting your entire family, and that the possibility that your actions could throw your country into revolution. I may be more sensitive than david was, but I personally would not have been able to deal with that guilt, nor with the fact that I had given up my entire life to serve people I didn't even know. For someone without a strong mind, the pressure of sacrificing your entire life could lead to many things, mental breakdown is one, and I think that he saw Wallis as his way out of his one-track life. Anyone told from the time that they're born that they must act a certain way, and that they could ever only have this precise job could feel very trapped, and IMHO I think that even if he did love Wallis, she was his freedom from that life...

[Russophile]

IMO, it's been changing.

[LadyCat]

Originally Posted by randomlyKeira

Wow. In my personal opinion, Royals have been sacrificing true love since the institution was founded....

Well not quite that long. Albert and Queen Victoria wanted their children to find royal spouses, and in most cases this happened with the exception of Princess Louise (IIRC), but they also wanted their children to have love matches.

Cat