Russophile
Heir Apparent
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2007
- Messages
- 4,069
- City
- Portland
- Country
- United States
"A King's Story: The Memoirs of the Duke of Windsor"
Is a good place to start.
Is a good place to start.
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.
I had never heard before that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were "exiled", was that official, self-inflicted, or unofficial in political sense?
So I wonder if the queen could leave Sandringham to Edward or Anne if she wanted to?
I absolutely agree. He could surely have fallen in love with someone more suitable? He and Prince Charles are extremely selfish.
Attaining Grace
bookaddiction
Wow. In my personal opinion, Royals have been sacrificing true love since the institution was founded....
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?
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.
The late Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, has not been deemed worthy of a commemorative blue plaque on her former London home.English Heritage, the government agency that runs the blue plaque scheme, has rejected the plan because of controversial and unproved allegations that she had a secret affair with Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's ambassador to London, and gave him details of British troop movements.
I have just finished a biography of Diana Mosley and I had no idea that she had done a biography of the DoW but I am not surprised. Diana and her odious husband Sir Oswald Mosley were great admirers of Adolf Hitler as were the Duke and Duchess. So they did have THAT in common.
Also that magnificent mansion they kept in France-was it the Bois de Boulogne?" and the servants and the lavish lifestyle...their parties and style of entertaining are the stuff of legend.
It seems that the Duke of Winsor was a hollow man. He calculatedly courted the simpathy of his subjects, e.g. sympathising with the plight of the miners. The fact that he neither would nor could do anything for them was irrelevant. They were merely pawns, his perceived loyal subject to whom he could fall back on if necessary. Frankly his overall style was dishonourable. His sole focus was himself and Wallis and he had no scruples about lying to his family about his accumulated fortune and ripping off both his Brother and his Country over the sale of properties that were implicitly the property of the King of England and securing an obscenely large allowance to compensate for his "poverty".The Duke of Windsor wanted to improve the plight of the miners, when he was promising them that he would do this he was already planning to abdicate and must have known he could never do anything. At the same time he was buying immense jewellery for Wallis and cutting down on his staff´s wages. He spent his whole life "crying the poor mouth" and spending a fortune on his and his wife´s frivolous life.
So you're not a fan then Marg?How absolutely ghastly for the BRF when they found the depth of his deceit and dishonesty... David had displayed a degree of moral bankruptcy...
Ya think?So you're not a fan then Marg?
Well stated comment.