Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor
Who was the real Wallis: an opportunistic American social climber, a master manipulator or the true love of Edward’s life? Amid the cacophony of condemnation her story has become obfuscated. Untitled is an intimate biography of one of the most misunderstood women in British royal history. His charisma and glamour ensured him the status of a rock star prince. Yet Edward gave up the British throne, the British Empire and his position as Emperor of India, to marry his true love, American divorcee Wallis Simpson.So much gossip and innuendo has been levelled at Wallis Simpson that it has become nearly impossible to discern the real woman. Many have wondered why, when Edward could have had anyone he desired, he was smitten with this unusual American woman. As her friend Herman Rogers said to her in 1936 when news of her affair with Edward broke: ‘Much of what is being said concerns a woman who does not exist and never did exist.’History is mostly perceived from the perspective of his-story. But what about her story? Anna Pasternak’s new book is the first ever to give Wallis a chance and a voice to show that she was a warm, loyal, intelligent woman adored by her friends, who was written off by cunning, influential Establishment men seeking to diminish her and destroy her reputation. As the author argues, far from being the villain of the abdication, she was the victim.Anna Pasternak seeks to understand an unusual, deeply misunderstood woman, and the untenable situation she became embroiled in. Using testimony from their inner circle of friends, she presents a very different Wallis Simpson. With empathy, intimacy and thorough research, this book will make readers view her story as it has never been told before.
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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019
Copyright © Anna Pasternak 2019
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Anna Pasternak asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008297299
Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008297329
Version: 2019-03-05
I who had sought no place in history would now be assured of one – an appalling one, carved out by blind prejudice
The Duchess of Windsor
The fault lay not in my stars but in my genes
HRH The Duke of Windsor
Contents
Prologue: The Heart Has Its Reasons
5. Down with the American Harlot
Prologue
Once upon a time there was a charming, handsome prince. Whenever he visited even the farthest reaches of his kingdom, his people flocked to see him. He was adored the world over. Everyone expected him to marry a pretty, well-bred English virgin who would one day become Queen of England and its vast empire. But, when the prince was thirty-seven years old – having previously shown no sign of wanting to get married – he fell in love with an odd-looking, twice-divorced American. No one thought that the affair would last, so everyone close to him kept quiet about it. When the prince’s father, the king, died five years later, the prince inherited the Crown. Courtiers assumed that the new king would find a suitable young bride. To their horror he said that he could not continue to be king without the American woman he loved by his side and that he intended to marry her. Everyone in the royal palaces, the prime minister, the government, the Church, were shocked. They accused the wicked witch-divorcee of being a sorceress who had cast a spell over their poor, gentle prince in order to become queen. The king’s ministers told him that if he married this terrible woman, he would have to surrender the Crown.
But instead of renouncing his love, the king sacrificed his whole realm – an empire of over five hundred million people – to be with her. He only ruled for 326 days, making his reign one of the shortest in his country’s history. His devoted subjects were heartbroken. They blamed the ugly witch for taking their beloved sovereign away from them. His family banished him from the land, leaving him free to marry the woman he loved. Denied royal status, the couple spent the rest of their lives in exile, roaming the world aimlessly, sad that they could not return to the king’s homeland and to the little castle that he adored. The world, meanwhile, imagined that this was the Greatest Love Story Ever Told and that husband and wife went on to live Happily Ever After.
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The story of the abdication of King Edward VIII and his marriage to Wallis Simpson has been told so many times that it has taken on the character of a fairy tale. Like fairy tales, much of what we are repeatedly told is in fact make-believe. The most scandalous love affair of the twentieth century may have softened into a romantic legend with time, but dark myths still endure. The dashing young prince, whose charisma and glamour ensured him the status of a movie star, gave up ‘the greatest throne in history’, as Churchill called it, to marry his one true love, an American divorcee. Surely, there can be no greater act of sacrifice than to give up such power, privilege and adoration for love? And for a woman whose appeal was such a mystery to most.
Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David Windsor was considered the world’s most eligible bachelor. Society hostess Elsa Maxwell first met the Prince of Wales in the early 1920s ‘at Mrs Cuckoo Belleville’s house in Manchester Square. He was a gay, golden-haired, blue-eyed, debonair Prince Charming, the most famous celebrity in the world, who seemed a Raphael angel grown up. He projected an aura of glamour that was as unmistakeable as it was authentic.’ To the fashion editor Diana Vreeland ‘he
