In January 1936, Great Britain had a new king. King Edward VIII, known as David to his friends and family, was forty-one, unmarried, and incredibly popular with the people. On ascending the throne, after his mother curtsied to him and he yelled at the servants to set the clocks back thirty minutes because of he was sick and tired of Sandringham Palace having a different timezone than the rest of the world, he called Wallis Warfield Simpson at her London apartment to share the news.
With her boyfriend on the throne, Wallis was incredibly uncertain about her future. Her marriage to Ernest Simpson was over in many ways, and she was now expecting that David would not be able to continue his relationship with her. She also anticipated that he might marry someone else and she would no longer have a place in his life. The royal bride of choice for Queen Mary and many others in the House of Windsor was Princess Fredericka of Hanover. Fredericka was a granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm, a member of Hitler Youth (not really her fault though she did grow up to have some borderline fascist political ideas; she was German and it was the '30's, the Pope was in Hitler Youth, too), and was in her late teens. She actually looked about thirteen. David was not interested in her, or any of the other inbred jailbait girls his mother found by scouring the foreign branches of their tangled family tree.
If he had been, considering his remaining feelings for Wallis, the whole situation might have turned into Charles/Diana/Camilla: The Prequel. But, it didn't, which is a good thing because that wouldn't have ended well for anyone involved. As it was, Wallis was convinced things weren't going to end well for anyone no matter what happened. For a time he was consumed with royal business and Wallis was unsure if she just wasn't going to be seeing him temporarily or for good.
She wrote to David in February with an undertone of concern and stress about something:
"I am sad because I miss you and being near and yet so far seems most unfair. Some day of course I must learn to be always alone for I will be in my heart... One can be awfully alone in crowds-but also perhaps both of us will cease to want what is hardest to have and be content in the simple way. And now I hear your machine which generally was a joyous sound because soon you would be holding me and I would be looking up into your eyes. God bless you and above all make you strong where you have been weak."
The possibility of marriage had been discussed between them in some way or another by this point, but more as a dream than as a realistic goal. But now that he was King, David began to regard the idea of marrying Wallis much more seriously. Wallis herself was seriously considering filing for divorce with Ernest, partly because of her own affair, and partly because he'd taken up with her childhood best friend Mary Kirk. Wallis didn't regard the possibility of marriage to the King (and becoming Queen) all that seriously. I don't even think she wanted to be Queen that badly; she preferred the lifestyle of a royal mistress. But at the same time, she wanted to continue her relationship with David and this was the 1930's and they couldn't just live together Brad and Angelina style without there being public outcry. For the time being, Wallis just wanted things to stay as close as possible to how they had been.
In March, Wallis left London for a shopping trip to Paris with a friend. While she was gone, Ernest took it upon himself to go down to the royal residence and ask the King what exactly his intentions were with Ernest's (soon-to-be-ex) wife. His response was rather surprising. "Do you really think that I would be crowned without Wallis by my side?" Whether he actually believed that being King meant he could marry whoever he wanted, or he was bluffing, we'll never know. If it was the former, he could have benefitted from reading up on the tragic lives of Alexander and Draga. Though the royals never know anything about royal history except for why their parents don't get along with certain people.
Wallis was actually pissed about the whole thing; she felt by meeting up and making decisions about her future behind her back both David and Ernest were treating her like a object. Which is actually how most men treated women in the 1930's, but clearly Wallis expected better. She was also pissed off about David transferring several hundred thousand pounds into her personal bank account to insure that she would be taken care of after her divorce in case he wasn't around to do it. She felt like she was being bought and was terribly offended about the whole thing. Not enough to give the money back, mind you, but she was still both upset and offended. But she went ahead with the divorce anyway, as she was more angry with Ernest than anyone else.
That summer, Wallis got herself a lawyer and began working for a divorce. In Britain at the time, getting divorced required that one party be "at fault" and be caught cheating. If both parties were cheating, no divorce would be granted. Of course, Wallis and Ernest were both cheaters, but Ernest decided to take the fall (as was the custom of the time; a woman being at fault would damage her reputation while it didn't really matter for men) and checked into a hotel with Mary and ordered breakfast in bed, presumably while loudly bragging about how much he enjoyed extra-marital sex.
It was all a set up and people did it all the time back then. But if Wallis and Ernest were caught, which would involve anyone finding evidence of her adultery or evidence she and Ernest had been in collusion over him being seen with Mary, the divorce would not be granted and they would be stuck legally married until one of them died or they moved to someplace with better divorce laws.
While her lawyer was hammering out the details, Wallis and David rented a yacht and sailed through the Mediterranean. They stopped at various towns in France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, where there were official visits that Wallis went along for. They even shared the same bedroom (and bed) during a long train ride in Turkey. Yet they still expected the British press to keep their mouths shut about the whole thing. Your average British citizen had never even heard of Wallis Simpson. Meanwhile, in America, photos were published of the couple running around in swimsuits, holding hands, hugging, and staring into each other's eyes longingly. One reported called it "the greatest story since the Resurrection" and it gave bored housewives something to gossip about.
They weren't actually acting that shockingly for royals during the time period. A similar scandal had recently broken (with a similar ending) in Romania, and while they were traveling in Greece, Wallis and David hung out with the Greek King and his married mistress. In Turkey, they made an official visit and Wallis was treated like a consort. But still most of Britain didn't know who she was.
After talking with the Greek royal mistress and seeing the press outside of Britain, Wallis became deeply concerned. She realized that she and David would probably not ever be able to get married, and that if there relationship became better known in Britain the scandal might ruin his reputation and popularity with the people. She also had not gotten over her paranoia that he would wake up one morning and decide he wanted someone else instead of her, like he had done before with... Well, I'm not going to list all of his various ex-girlfriends, but there were quite a few.
After their vacation, in September, Wallis stayed in Paris while David went ahead to England as he had royal stuff to do. While in Paris, she wrote him a letter saying she was going to stop her divorce from Ernest and wanted to go back to him, and therefor break-up with David. The way the whole letter was worded was kind of odd and I think the whole effort may have been a bit half-hearted. Particularly since there's not much evidence Ernest would have been inclined to take her back and Wallis's worst fear seems to have been dying alone. Either way, David wrote back (and talked to her at length on the telephone) and convinced her that he was madly in love with her and that wouldn't be changing soon and that he was certain he would work things out and make her happy. There's also an off-repeated story that he threatened to kill himself if she ever left him. As melodramatic as that would have been (and I love melodramatic royals) there are three problems that. The source was someone who was apparently told by Wallis's gossipy fair-weather friend Emerald Cunard (who had an awesome daughter named Nancy) that Wallis had told Emerald that David had told her that if she ever left him he'd kill himself. If David had said something like that (which I doubt he would have), I don't think Wallis would have told Emerald, who everyone knew was gossipy. Also, Emerald said a lot of things. For a while she pretended not to know Wallis, and after the scandal had died down a bit changed her story to her and Wallis having been best friends and proceeded to give anyone who would listen to her her own lie-filled "inside story".
So anyway, Wallis dropped her plans to stop the divorce and carried on. She continued to be extremely stressed out by newspaper clipping her American friends sent her and the inevitable prospect of being mobbed by the British press. She told her Aunt Bessie she felt like she could never set foot in America again because of the publicity. She moved to Ipswich where the wait for divorce court was shorter to get a divorce hearing. This spawned the greatest royal headline ever: "King's Moll Reno'd in Wolsey's Hometown"
Wallis "lived" there for about two weeks total, long enough to get a divorce there. At her hearing, everything went according to plan. The only problem was that under British laws of the time, they would have to wait six months for her divorce to be finalized, during which time they'd check out her story to make sure that her situation with Ernest was as she claimed. Meanwhile members of the foreign press had travelled to the U.K. just to follow her around. This was before the paparazzi of today and usually famous people were allowed some level of privacy, but Wallis was a special case. As she left the divorce court, she covered her face with a jacket to avoid being photographed.
Things came to a head in November. The British press broke their silence (certain members of The Firm who had turned against David allowed the story to break) and Wallis was mobbed. The thing that actually set it off was a misunderstanding. Some Bishop or something made a statement in his sermon condemning King Edward VIII for his immorality. The press assumed he was talking about Wallis and covered the story a such. He was actually talking about David's lack of church going. Despite being head of the Church of England, he had supposedly told friends that he didn't believe most of the bible was accurate and thought the Church of England was populated by stuffy old men who didn't understand God. But the press (and everyone else who knew about her) though he was talking about Wallis.
With the story broken, the public were divided on the issue. David was still fairly popular and had a lot of sympathy in some circles; Wallis was much more controversial. Some people wrote letter to the Palace sympathetic of her, others threw bricks at her window. Even Camilla was only pelted with bread rolls. Now, I don't feel like I can, without making an entirely separate (and incredibly long) post accurately convey the political situation at the time or what various sectors (the people, the government, the British dominions) thought about the situation or explain in detail what happened to result in the end of the reign of Edward VIII. It was not as simple as him being told it was Wallis or the throne and choosing Wallis. It was also not as simple as David not ever wanting to be King and using the situation with Wallis as a convenient excuse to get out of it.
It also did not involve him getting kicked out (or asked nicely to leave) for being a Nazi. The vast archives of documents about the abdication released in 2003 include all kinds of papers, some full of innuendo, but no references to either David or Wallis being openly pro-Nazi. It's also worth noting that the one person high up in the government who supported David's cause the entire time was Winston Churchill, and in 1936 he was the one guy who actually knew what to expect from Hitler. Almost everyone else in the government, who wasn't as anti-Nazi as Churchill (and didn't know either of them as well as Churchill did), was against David and Wallis. Though it did not help that both the British fascist groups, and communist groups were on their side. Also, while the popular story now is that Wallis was a Nazi spy (no records or evidence for that one) at the time they weren't sure what type of spy she was, only that she was supposedly up to something.
But, what I will say was that at some point in October/November 1936, David brought up the possibility of him marrying Wallis to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and asked him to look into it. When the issue came to a head in early December, Baldwin lied about all of the people (and Dominion governments) being against the marriage even though opinion was much more mixed. David was also unpopular with the government because of his taking up the cause of the poor and refusing to keep his mouth shut on the issue and his belief the government wasn't doing enough. Now, David's concern for the poor was kind of shallow (like Prince Charles's concern for the environment) but the press and people were a bit less cynical in those days and seemed to think he wanted to help. He also had a habit of not doing the paper work the monarch was expected to do, which pissed off even more people.
A great look at the whole political issue that's very well sourced (if a bit biased) and a bit of a page-turner is Susan Williams's book The People's King, which works from contemporary documents to explain exactly why Edward VIII abdicated, why he thought he had to abdicate, and the motives of everyone involved in the crisis. Susan Williams's is also a bit of a feminist and as such doesn't call Wallis any dirty names, which is refreshing. She even goes into the class and gender roles at work in the whole situation a bit. If you remember when I listed my top five favorite royal books yesterday this was on the list.
Anyway, back to Wallis. In late November, sick of being harassed by the press and terrified what was going to happen, Wallis left for France. She told David not do anything rash without consulting her, advice that went right out the window a few minutes after she left. From France, Wallis tried to call him and keep in touch, but the phone lines were no good. She had travelled, mostly by night, while fleeing the press. She ended up staying with her friends Herman and Katherine Rogers in their villa, which had a gate that was locked to keep out the press. Wallis was stressed out and miserable, and even started to feel sick. She lost a lot of weight, and wrote to David in 1937 that she "looked 100 and weighed 110" because of the stress. Nowadays that weight loss would get her on the cover Life&Style with the headline "Royal Diet Secrets: How Wallis Lost Weight and Got a New Bikini Body" accompanied with a photo of her photoshopped beyond recognition.
Upon hearing the now widespread story that the King was giving up the throne, Wallis was pressured by her lawyer to run away to China. Not really getting the point, Wallis then called David up and asked him how he would feel about that. He reacted by telling her if she went to China he was going with her. Her lawyer told her she should just leave and tell him she didn't want to see him again. She called him up to discuss this idea and he disagreed with her lawyer and told her to stay put. Her lawyer wanted her to release a press statement indicating she didn't want to marry David anymore. Wallis was unwilling to go that far and instead released a statement that she was "willing to withdraw from the situation" which basically meant she wasn't going to hold him to his promise to marry her anymore. Or something like that, the whole thing was very vague. When Wallis finally decided she was leaving, and called David to explain the situation further, he told her it was too late and that she could leave if she wanted to and it wouldn't make any difference.
Anyway, on December 10, after being told there was no way he'd be able to marry Wallis and stay on the throne (which wasn't exactly the case but he wasn't willing to fight for his rights the way his supporters wanted him to because he thought the situation would cause too much drama), David agreed to abdicate in favor of his younger brother. On December 11, the reign of Edward VIII came to an end and he made a speech to the people explaining, basically, that he could not handle the pressure of being King without Wallis by his side. The whole speech is on youtube, if you want to hear it.
He left Britain shortly afterwards for Austria, where he would stay until Wallis's divorce was finalized. Apparently their lawyers had told them that now that everyone knew they were involved they couldn't be in the same country without the judge convincing himself they were having pre-marital sex and canceling Wallis's divorce. Wallis was torn between being mad at him (and a lot of other people) and being sad and miserable about the whole situation. Either way her friends later indicated she was not a pleasant person to be around during this time period.
But she was nice enough in her letters to David, rightly feeling he was under enough stress and did not need her anger and missing him terribly. From her first post-abdication letter:
"My heart is so full of love for you and the agony of not being able to see you after all that you have been through is pathetic. At the moment we have the whole world against us and our love..."
With her boyfriend on the throne, Wallis was incredibly uncertain about her future. Her marriage to Ernest Simpson was over in many ways, and she was now expecting that David would not be able to continue his relationship with her. She also anticipated that he might marry someone else and she would no longer have a place in his life. The royal bride of choice for Queen Mary and many others in the House of Windsor was Princess Fredericka of Hanover. Fredericka was a granddaughter of Kaiser Wilhelm, a member of Hitler Youth (not really her fault though she did grow up to have some borderline fascist political ideas; she was German and it was the '30's, the Pope was in Hitler Youth, too), and was in her late teens. She actually looked about thirteen. David was not interested in her, or any of the other inbred jailbait girls his mother found by scouring the foreign branches of their tangled family tree.
If he had been, considering his remaining feelings for Wallis, the whole situation might have turned into Charles/Diana/Camilla: The Prequel. But, it didn't, which is a good thing because that wouldn't have ended well for anyone involved. As it was, Wallis was convinced things weren't going to end well for anyone no matter what happened. For a time he was consumed with royal business and Wallis was unsure if she just wasn't going to be seeing him temporarily or for good.
She wrote to David in February with an undertone of concern and stress about something:
"I am sad because I miss you and being near and yet so far seems most unfair. Some day of course I must learn to be always alone for I will be in my heart... One can be awfully alone in crowds-but also perhaps both of us will cease to want what is hardest to have and be content in the simple way. And now I hear your machine which generally was a joyous sound because soon you would be holding me and I would be looking up into your eyes. God bless you and above all make you strong where you have been weak."
The possibility of marriage had been discussed between them in some way or another by this point, but more as a dream than as a realistic goal. But now that he was King, David began to regard the idea of marrying Wallis much more seriously. Wallis herself was seriously considering filing for divorce with Ernest, partly because of her own affair, and partly because he'd taken up with her childhood best friend Mary Kirk. Wallis didn't regard the possibility of marriage to the King (and becoming Queen) all that seriously. I don't even think she wanted to be Queen that badly; she preferred the lifestyle of a royal mistress. But at the same time, she wanted to continue her relationship with David and this was the 1930's and they couldn't just live together Brad and Angelina style without there being public outcry. For the time being, Wallis just wanted things to stay as close as possible to how they had been.
In March, Wallis left London for a shopping trip to Paris with a friend. While she was gone, Ernest took it upon himself to go down to the royal residence and ask the King what exactly his intentions were with Ernest's (soon-to-be-ex) wife. His response was rather surprising. "Do you really think that I would be crowned without Wallis by my side?" Whether he actually believed that being King meant he could marry whoever he wanted, or he was bluffing, we'll never know. If it was the former, he could have benefitted from reading up on the tragic lives of Alexander and Draga. Though the royals never know anything about royal history except for why their parents don't get along with certain people.
Wallis was actually pissed about the whole thing; she felt by meeting up and making decisions about her future behind her back both David and Ernest were treating her like a object. Which is actually how most men treated women in the 1930's, but clearly Wallis expected better. She was also pissed off about David transferring several hundred thousand pounds into her personal bank account to insure that she would be taken care of after her divorce in case he wasn't around to do it. She felt like she was being bought and was terribly offended about the whole thing. Not enough to give the money back, mind you, but she was still both upset and offended. But she went ahead with the divorce anyway, as she was more angry with Ernest than anyone else.
That summer, Wallis got herself a lawyer and began working for a divorce. In Britain at the time, getting divorced required that one party be "at fault" and be caught cheating. If both parties were cheating, no divorce would be granted. Of course, Wallis and Ernest were both cheaters, but Ernest decided to take the fall (as was the custom of the time; a woman being at fault would damage her reputation while it didn't really matter for men) and checked into a hotel with Mary and ordered breakfast in bed, presumably while loudly bragging about how much he enjoyed extra-marital sex.
It was all a set up and people did it all the time back then. But if Wallis and Ernest were caught, which would involve anyone finding evidence of her adultery or evidence she and Ernest had been in collusion over him being seen with Mary, the divorce would not be granted and they would be stuck legally married until one of them died or they moved to someplace with better divorce laws.
While her lawyer was hammering out the details, Wallis and David rented a yacht and sailed through the Mediterranean. They stopped at various towns in France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, where there were official visits that Wallis went along for. They even shared the same bedroom (and bed) during a long train ride in Turkey. Yet they still expected the British press to keep their mouths shut about the whole thing. Your average British citizen had never even heard of Wallis Simpson. Meanwhile, in America, photos were published of the couple running around in swimsuits, holding hands, hugging, and staring into each other's eyes longingly. One reported called it "the greatest story since the Resurrection" and it gave bored housewives something to gossip about.
They weren't actually acting that shockingly for royals during the time period. A similar scandal had recently broken (with a similar ending) in Romania, and while they were traveling in Greece, Wallis and David hung out with the Greek King and his married mistress. In Turkey, they made an official visit and Wallis was treated like a consort. But still most of Britain didn't know who she was.
After talking with the Greek royal mistress and seeing the press outside of Britain, Wallis became deeply concerned. She realized that she and David would probably not ever be able to get married, and that if there relationship became better known in Britain the scandal might ruin his reputation and popularity with the people. She also had not gotten over her paranoia that he would wake up one morning and decide he wanted someone else instead of her, like he had done before with... Well, I'm not going to list all of his various ex-girlfriends, but there were quite a few.
After their vacation, in September, Wallis stayed in Paris while David went ahead to England as he had royal stuff to do. While in Paris, she wrote him a letter saying she was going to stop her divorce from Ernest and wanted to go back to him, and therefor break-up with David. The way the whole letter was worded was kind of odd and I think the whole effort may have been a bit half-hearted. Particularly since there's not much evidence Ernest would have been inclined to take her back and Wallis's worst fear seems to have been dying alone. Either way, David wrote back (and talked to her at length on the telephone) and convinced her that he was madly in love with her and that wouldn't be changing soon and that he was certain he would work things out and make her happy. There's also an off-repeated story that he threatened to kill himself if she ever left him. As melodramatic as that would have been (and I love melodramatic royals) there are three problems that. The source was someone who was apparently told by Wallis's gossipy fair-weather friend Emerald Cunard (who had an awesome daughter named Nancy) that Wallis had told Emerald that David had told her that if she ever left him he'd kill himself. If David had said something like that (which I doubt he would have), I don't think Wallis would have told Emerald, who everyone knew was gossipy. Also, Emerald said a lot of things. For a while she pretended not to know Wallis, and after the scandal had died down a bit changed her story to her and Wallis having been best friends and proceeded to give anyone who would listen to her her own lie-filled "inside story".
So anyway, Wallis dropped her plans to stop the divorce and carried on. She continued to be extremely stressed out by newspaper clipping her American friends sent her and the inevitable prospect of being mobbed by the British press. She told her Aunt Bessie she felt like she could never set foot in America again because of the publicity. She moved to Ipswich where the wait for divorce court was shorter to get a divorce hearing. This spawned the greatest royal headline ever: "King's Moll Reno'd in Wolsey's Hometown"
Wallis "lived" there for about two weeks total, long enough to get a divorce there. At her hearing, everything went according to plan. The only problem was that under British laws of the time, they would have to wait six months for her divorce to be finalized, during which time they'd check out her story to make sure that her situation with Ernest was as she claimed. Meanwhile members of the foreign press had travelled to the U.K. just to follow her around. This was before the paparazzi of today and usually famous people were allowed some level of privacy, but Wallis was a special case. As she left the divorce court, she covered her face with a jacket to avoid being photographed.
Things came to a head in November. The British press broke their silence (certain members of The Firm who had turned against David allowed the story to break) and Wallis was mobbed. The thing that actually set it off was a misunderstanding. Some Bishop or something made a statement in his sermon condemning King Edward VIII for his immorality. The press assumed he was talking about Wallis and covered the story a such. He was actually talking about David's lack of church going. Despite being head of the Church of England, he had supposedly told friends that he didn't believe most of the bible was accurate and thought the Church of England was populated by stuffy old men who didn't understand God. But the press (and everyone else who knew about her) though he was talking about Wallis.
With the story broken, the public were divided on the issue. David was still fairly popular and had a lot of sympathy in some circles; Wallis was much more controversial. Some people wrote letter to the Palace sympathetic of her, others threw bricks at her window. Even Camilla was only pelted with bread rolls. Now, I don't feel like I can, without making an entirely separate (and incredibly long) post accurately convey the political situation at the time or what various sectors (the people, the government, the British dominions) thought about the situation or explain in detail what happened to result in the end of the reign of Edward VIII. It was not as simple as him being told it was Wallis or the throne and choosing Wallis. It was also not as simple as David not ever wanting to be King and using the situation with Wallis as a convenient excuse to get out of it.
It also did not involve him getting kicked out (or asked nicely to leave) for being a Nazi. The vast archives of documents about the abdication released in 2003 include all kinds of papers, some full of innuendo, but no references to either David or Wallis being openly pro-Nazi. It's also worth noting that the one person high up in the government who supported David's cause the entire time was Winston Churchill, and in 1936 he was the one guy who actually knew what to expect from Hitler. Almost everyone else in the government, who wasn't as anti-Nazi as Churchill (and didn't know either of them as well as Churchill did), was against David and Wallis. Though it did not help that both the British fascist groups, and communist groups were on their side. Also, while the popular story now is that Wallis was a Nazi spy (no records or evidence for that one) at the time they weren't sure what type of spy she was, only that she was supposedly up to something.
But, what I will say was that at some point in October/November 1936, David brought up the possibility of him marrying Wallis to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and asked him to look into it. When the issue came to a head in early December, Baldwin lied about all of the people (and Dominion governments) being against the marriage even though opinion was much more mixed. David was also unpopular with the government because of his taking up the cause of the poor and refusing to keep his mouth shut on the issue and his belief the government wasn't doing enough. Now, David's concern for the poor was kind of shallow (like Prince Charles's concern for the environment) but the press and people were a bit less cynical in those days and seemed to think he wanted to help. He also had a habit of not doing the paper work the monarch was expected to do, which pissed off even more people.
A great look at the whole political issue that's very well sourced (if a bit biased) and a bit of a page-turner is Susan Williams's book The People's King, which works from contemporary documents to explain exactly why Edward VIII abdicated, why he thought he had to abdicate, and the motives of everyone involved in the crisis. Susan Williams's is also a bit of a feminist and as such doesn't call Wallis any dirty names, which is refreshing. She even goes into the class and gender roles at work in the whole situation a bit. If you remember when I listed my top five favorite royal books yesterday this was on the list.
Anyway, back to Wallis. In late November, sick of being harassed by the press and terrified what was going to happen, Wallis left for France. She told David not do anything rash without consulting her, advice that went right out the window a few minutes after she left. From France, Wallis tried to call him and keep in touch, but the phone lines were no good. She had travelled, mostly by night, while fleeing the press. She ended up staying with her friends Herman and Katherine Rogers in their villa, which had a gate that was locked to keep out the press. Wallis was stressed out and miserable, and even started to feel sick. She lost a lot of weight, and wrote to David in 1937 that she "looked 100 and weighed 110" because of the stress. Nowadays that weight loss would get her on the cover Life&Style with the headline "Royal Diet Secrets: How Wallis Lost Weight and Got a New Bikini Body" accompanied with a photo of her photoshopped beyond recognition.
Upon hearing the now widespread story that the King was giving up the throne, Wallis was pressured by her lawyer to run away to China. Not really getting the point, Wallis then called David up and asked him how he would feel about that. He reacted by telling her if she went to China he was going with her. Her lawyer told her she should just leave and tell him she didn't want to see him again. She called him up to discuss this idea and he disagreed with her lawyer and told her to stay put. Her lawyer wanted her to release a press statement indicating she didn't want to marry David anymore. Wallis was unwilling to go that far and instead released a statement that she was "willing to withdraw from the situation" which basically meant she wasn't going to hold him to his promise to marry her anymore. Or something like that, the whole thing was very vague. When Wallis finally decided she was leaving, and called David to explain the situation further, he told her it was too late and that she could leave if she wanted to and it wouldn't make any difference.
Anyway, on December 10, after being told there was no way he'd be able to marry Wallis and stay on the throne (which wasn't exactly the case but he wasn't willing to fight for his rights the way his supporters wanted him to because he thought the situation would cause too much drama), David agreed to abdicate in favor of his younger brother. On December 11, the reign of Edward VIII came to an end and he made a speech to the people explaining, basically, that he could not handle the pressure of being King without Wallis by his side. The whole speech is on youtube, if you want to hear it.
He left Britain shortly afterwards for Austria, where he would stay until Wallis's divorce was finalized. Apparently their lawyers had told them that now that everyone knew they were involved they couldn't be in the same country without the judge convincing himself they were having pre-marital sex and canceling Wallis's divorce. Wallis was torn between being mad at him (and a lot of other people) and being sad and miserable about the whole situation. Either way her friends later indicated she was not a pleasant person to be around during this time period.
But she was nice enough in her letters to David, rightly feeling he was under enough stress and did not need her anger and missing him terribly. From her first post-abdication letter:
"My heart is so full of love for you and the agony of not being able to see you after all that you have been through is pathetic. At the moment we have the whole world against us and our love..."
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