Revealed: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s secret plot to deny the Queen the throne
Secret correspondence between the exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor and their confidant Kenneth de Courcy has revealed a dastardly scheme to change the course of British history by denying Queen Elizabeth II the crown, says royal biographer Christopher Wilson.
The Telegraph.co.uk 22 November 2009
excerpts:
It was the spring of 1946. The Second World War had drawn to a close, King George VI’s health was starting to fail and, from their homes in Paris and the south of France, the exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor were having deeply ambitious thoughts. More than 60 years ago, according to correspondence unearthed in a Californian library, the former King Edward VIII considered the idea of returning to Britain to become Regent, pushing aside his niece – now the Queen.
The natural successor, and heir apparent, was the then Princess Elizabeth. But in the spring of 1949, when the plot was at its height, she was just 23 and at the time there was a heavy bias against her taking the throne so young because she was perceived to be vulnerable to “the Mountbatten influence” – a reference to the combined forces of the dynastically ambitious Earl Mountbatten, and his nephew Prince Philip of Greece, now the Duke of Edinburgh, whom the Queen had married in 1947.
The Duke, who barely a decade before had sat atop the most powerful empire in the world, remained deeply ambitious for a return to public life, and to the adulation he felt was still his by right. What he was increasingly coming to suspect, however, was that the invitation might never come. The news of her brother-in-law’s failing health would not have troubled the Duchess greatly. Humbled and humiliated by George VI’s aloofness during the war, she and her husband were now riding out the early years of peacetime in limbo – waiting, in vain, to be invited home to Britain by the British Royal family.
In the 13 years since his abdication, the Duke had never ceased to complain that his country still needed him. The war had muddied the water, but now at last was the moment to strike back. His actions in buying an agricultural property near London would appear innocent enough – and if a constitutional crisis erupted within the Palace, well, he was there to help if needed.
By the time his brother died, the Duke of Windsor had already embarked on the fruitless journey which was to occupy the rest of his life, wafting from Paris to New York to Palm Beach in the company of rich, bored, vacuous people. But by then, the job of monarch was being done – admirably, capably, deftly, magnificently – by the woman who has done it ever since, Queen Elizabeth II. The nation had enjoyed a lucky escape.
Love your sense of humour.
