Fergie on Oprah tomorrow! Set your DVR!

Tomorrow, Fergie will be on Oprah. If anything interesting happens, I will post to comment on it.

I already shared some of my opinions on this.

I set my DVR and will be watching closely. I hope she'll try to blame the whole thing on The Firm and stir up some epic drama, but I doubt it. The Windsors just seem to be getting less interesting with every passing year. I mean, getting paid for royal connections... This constitutes a scandal?

Clearly they aren't trying hard enough. I love a good scandal, and I think the British government is really paying them to be entertaining. If they don't screw up, they stop being interesting and people stop caring about them and the point of having them around goes away.

No one's going to travel to the U.K. to see boring people and where they live. Sure, their ancestors were interesting, but that's still true even if the current bunch are kicked off the throne. There's a tightrope they've got to walk. Being flat-out callous and mean (like they were with Diana) will make British subjects dislike them, but being good and moral and not getting into trouble makes them boring. They have to be controversial enough to be interesting, but not to be hated.

I think they're much more likely to be quietly voted out for being a waste of taxpayer money than publicly shamed out of the palace for their multitude of sins. So if they want to keep the monarchy alive (which most of them probably don't, but that's another topic for another day) they need to be a little bad. Here are my suggestions:

1. Prince Harry: Dump Chelsy. She's boring and unlikable. Take up with Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, or Britney Spears. And smoke some pot every now and then.

2. Prince William: Either marry Kate or dump her. A royal wedding will be interesting but a public break up will be even more interesting. If you marry her, you can keep up interest by having kids (but after three people stop caring; why do you think Prince Edward is so boring?). If you break up you can keep up interest by dating someone moderately unsuitable. Maybe a Catholic or someone who's been married before or has kids. Someone you would have trouble marrying, but isn't a famewhore who will make people dislike you. Avoid Michelle McGee and Rielle Hunter types.

3. Prince Charles: Renounce your right to the throne. It will create drama. Say you don't believe in monarchy or something. No one wants you on the throne anyway; you're a rarity with royalty in that you're both controversial and boring.

4. Queen Elizabeth: Divorce Philip. He's racist and offensive and he's probably cheated on you loads of times. Everyone will be on your side, but it will create drama and controversy around the monarchy.

5. Prince Andrew: Admit you were in on Fergie's bribe-taking. And get back with her. Claim you've loved her all along and can't live without her. Also make veiled public statements that the divorce was all your mother's idea.

6. Princess Anne: Find yourself a hot twenty-three-year-old underwear model. You know, like Madonna did. Also get some really bad plastic surgery and then vigorously deny you've had work done.

And all of you need to start dressing better. Call Lady Gaga for some tips.

Margaret Beaufort's Birthday

So, one of my favorite royal ladies of all time has a birthday tomorrow.

Margaret Beaufort was born in 1443. Her father was a grandson of John of Gaunt, a son of Edward III. The Beauforts were descendants of John and his mistress turned wife Katherine Swynford. Though born before the marriage, their children were legitimized with the stipulation that they not be in line for the throne.

This was the era of the War of the Roses, so any royal blood was valuable. Margaret's father died when she was a baby; she was his only child. But her mother had seven children from a previous marriage, and two children from a subsequent marriage and Margaret was close to her siblings and supported them in their ambitions. In this way she was similar to her rival Elizabeth Woodville, who also worked to raise her family's status.

It was important that Margaret be married to someone of high status at a young age. Her first marriage took place when she was seven. King Henry VI had taken an interest in setting her up and sold her wardship to the Duke of Suffolk, who married her to his son, John de la Pole. The marriage was annulled after three years, presumably (let's hope) unconsummated.

After her first marriage ended, Margaret (then ten) was given as a ward to the King's half-brothers, Jasper and Edmund Tudor. At age twelve, Margaret was married to twenty-four-year-old Edmund, who was the oldest child of the King's mother Queen Catherine and her second husband Owen Tudor. The marriage was intended to bring her English royal blood into his family line. Edmund and his siblings had French royal blood and were close to the King, but no English royal ancestry. Their father had been Welsh.

Her second marriage was consummated, and Margaret was soon pregnant. In January 1457, Margaret gave birth to her only child, Henry Tudor. She was not yet fourteen. The birth left her young body damaged to the point that she could never have another child. She nearly died in child birth. Edmund Tudor had died when she was seven months pregnant.

Margaret was forced to give up Henry to be raised by his father's family because their royal lineage made it necessary for him to stay with the Tudors and her to remarry. She remarried in 1462 to Henry Stafford, a member of the prominent Buckingham family. They were married for nearly ten years until his death. During that time the Yorks defeated the Lancasters in the War of the Roses (for the time being, at least). Margaret was descended from a Lancaster and had married into the Lancasters, but she was able to maintain some level of power anyway.

After her third husband died, she married Thomas Stanley, a high-ranking official in the courts of Edward IV and Richard III, the York Kings. Margaret became known as a woman of great learning and power. Henry Tudor, who she wrote to constantly but rarely saw, was in exile in France after the Lancaster's defeat. After Richard took the throne in place of his nephews, rumors began to surface that Richard had murdered his nephews. His popularity plummeted.

Margaret had had high ambitions for years, and saw Richard's failings as an opportunity. She made secret contact with Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV and mother of the missing Princes. They agreed that her daughter Elizabeth would marry Henry Tudor, who would then take the throne.

Henry returned from France and defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, thanks to the support his mother had gotten for him. Margaret's husband Thomas Stanley placed the crown on his head.

After Henry became King, as Henry VII, Margaret tried to upstage her daughter-in-law the current Queen, and Elizabeth Woodville, the former one. She styled herself My Lady, The King's Mother and took control of the court and her son. She also kept some level of control over her grandchildren (including Henry VIII) .

Though still married, she made a vow of celibacy in 1499 and made a front of being devotedly Christian. But she still held the power.

When Henry VII died in 1509, Margaret was named regent for the then underaged Henry VIII. She died two months later, the day after Henry VIII's eighteenth birthday. Hey, that's kind of convenient for Henry VIII...

Wallis, Part 1

I am posting my Wallis posts in reverse order, that way if you haven't read them you can just scroll down and get them in the correct order.

Here we have the fabulous Wallis Warfield Windsor with a hipster scarf, but not looking like a hipster at all.

She is a rather controversial royal woman... well, actually the royals (or at least Queen Mary and the Queen Mother) would say she wasn't ever a royal, and the internet would say she wasn't actually a woman either. So please, for a minute, indulge me and pretend you don't have the internet. Well, that's rather hard as you're on it right not, but let's just say I'm posting this on a bulletin board or something.

Best known as Wallis Simpson, Wallis is a woman who's name, when typed into autofill, brings up terms like "hermaphrodite" and "Nazi". I really don't believe she was either, and there's not much evidence either way. If she was the former, well, that's hardly her fault and it says nothing whatsoever about her morality or character. If anything, it means she was a very strong person to be able to survive being intersexed in that time period. If she was the latter, well, that's horrible, but despite popular belief, that is not a fact. It's really more of a rumor, and not even a particularly substantial one. She met Hitler, once, and had a lot of enemies. Yes, I know what it says on wikipedia. But I also know what it says in most of the many biographies written about her. And I know what many of her surviving friends say.

[www.people.com]

The persistent rumors branding the Windsors themselves as Nazi sympathizers are "preposterous," the countess says. "I know those stories backwards and forwards, and they're absolutely untrue. The duchess was extremely American, and one of the most patriotic women I've ever known. I would only involve someone in a mission if I felt they were totally conscientious and trustworthy."

Now, that was Aline, Countess of Romanones, who spent World War II working for the OSS hunting down and exposing high level Nazis. Maybe Madonna should make a movie about her next. But even if Wallis was a Nazi (and I wouldn't know; I wasn't there) she was never convicted of anything, so let's just give her the benefit of the doubt for a moment.

Wallis was born in 1896 (or possibly earlier, records are scarce and she wasn't the most honest woman in the world) in Pennsylvania. Her parents were traveling there, either to help her father's illness or to cover-up her mother's out-of-wedlock pregnancy, depending on who you ask. They were from Baltimore and Wallis grew up there. Her father died not long after her birth, and her mother was forced to work. Wallis was in a difficult situation, her father's family had some money, and her mother's family liked to pretend they had once had money. But Wallis and her mother didn't have any money. So Wallis had a childhood that ranged from being flat broke to moderately well off. She had a rich uncle who would sometimes give them money, and other times wouldn't. Given that this was the turn of the century, the only job Wallis's mother, Alice, could get was as a seamstress. And she didn't make all that much. She remarried when Wallis was 10 or 11, but her second husband died a few years later.

I have two books with me at the moment, The Woman He Loved by Ralph G. Martin, and The Secret File on the Duke of Windsor by Michael Bloch. The first I would recommend because it's a great biography. The second is okay, but I would recommend it because there are letters. They only make up about a fourth of the book, but I am a huge junkie for royal letters. They give an insider's point-of-view.

Anyway, as a girl Wallis was sent to boarding school, paid for by her rich uncle. There she got into all kinds of weird fashions (she wore feathers in her hair, men's shirts, bow-ties, and a monocle according to accounts I've read though I've only ever found one photo of her dressed like that and it won't scan) and liked to sneak out and meet boys (this involved slipping out a second-story window). She made friends, but in many ways she always felt like she was on the outside looking in, because her family wasn't rich and she didn't have the same lifestyle as the other girls. She was known to be "fast", which among teenage girls of that time period meant "wild and kind of slutty". From her teen years on, she kind of fell into the role of the "scarlet woman", which was one of about three possible roles women could have in those days, and for the rest of her life she never shed that label.

One story had her and a friend being assigned to memorize two pages for her German class. They were told they would each have to recite a page when they were done, without being told which one. Wallis told her friend it was ridiculous and agreed to do one page. Her friend wasn't sure how they'd handle it, and sure enough the teacher called on Wallis to recite the page the other girl had memorized. Wallis distracted the teacher by complimenting her scarf and going into a long conversation about where she'd gotten it. When there was a pause, Wallis said "Shall I begin?" and began reciting the page she has actually memorized. Her friend was then asked to read another one. They got away with it. Her best friend at school was Mary Kirk, who would later play an important role in her life. Together they made a scrapbook on the then Prince of Wales, with pictures they cut out of newspapers. He would later play an even more important role in her life.

At sixteen, Wallis was offered the chance to be the heir to her rich uncle, provided she move in with him and not see her mother anymore. The rest of the family thought her mother was "corrupting her", being a woman who had actually worked for a living. Wallis refused and after she finished highschool she went to stay with her cousin, Lelia, in Florida. Wallis knew there wasn't much money left, and she needed to get married as soon as possible. It's not like she could go to college or get a job or anything, the best solution was to get married.

While in Florida, Wallis met Navy Pilot (this was back when flying was new and exciting) Earl Winfield Spencer (not to be confused with Princes Diana's father, who was an actual Earl). They got married in 1916, and then lived happily ever after.... Wait, actually not. He turned out to be an insane drunken rapist who liked to fly his plane around drunk. But we'll get to that next time, with another chapter of Wallis's life story. I never meant for this to be some bit multi-part thing, but I got carried away.

Wallis, Part 2

Wallis's marriage to Earl Winfield Spencer (known as Win) started off with him yelling at her because there was no alcohol in West Virginia. Seriously. You see, that was where they went for their honeymoon (why, I don't know...), and it was a "dry state" which meant Win couldn't buy any booze. So he had to make do with the booze he had packed in his suitcase. Which was actually a lot.

Wallis, being underaged at the time, didn't have a lot of experience with alcohol. By the time she and Win moved to Florida, she knew a lot more. Win, who was a pilot, liked to take a flask up with him while he flew. So did most of his buddies. While living on the Navy base with Win, Wallis witnessed two plane crashes, and developed a lifelong fear of flying. If you were married to a drunk pilot, you'd probably feel the same way.

As a Navy wife, Wallis travelled quite a bit. First to Florida, then Boston, then California, and then Washington D.C., which was close to home. During this time, she also discovered Win was an abuser. When he was drunk he liked to push Wallis against the wall, shake her, and lock her in the bathroom. He also liked to rape her sometimes, though this was when forced sex between spouses was not considered rape. In his official biography of Edward VIII, Philip Ziegler helpfully suggested that if Wallis had been "more sympathetic" to Win, he wouldn't have abused her and everything would have worked out fine and dandy. But, it didn't, and Philip Ziegler is kind of a douchebag. When Wallis tried to tell her family what was going on, they basically told her to stop falling on doorknobs. She didn't have much of a choice. If she left Win, she would be cut off from her family and forever branded a "used goods". Wallis committed herself to maintaining the illusion of a happy marriage. She made friends, and went to parties, and borderline stalked Charlie Chaplin for a while in California.

Things came to a head when, one night in Washington, Win beat her to the point that, as she later told one of her friends, she thought he was going to kill her and throw her body in the river so no one would ever know what happened to her. So she slipped out of the house the next morning and went to stay with her mother. Win left Washington shortly after that alone. Wallis spent the next year or so living with her mother in a small apartment outside Washington. She took up with diplomatic and political circles and found herself very popular with men. She fell in love with Felipe Espil, a diplomat from Argentina. He was several years older than her. They would go dancing and to parties. Wallis and Felipe shared a love of antiques and romance novels. He was Catholic, and had a bright future ahead of him, though he needed a wife with money and connections. Wallis was still married and had neither. Eventually, Felipe told her that there was nowhere their relationship could go, and Wallis understood.

She went back to Win. She didn't have much of a choice. She couldn't get divorced without pissing off her family and she couldn't just stay separated forever living with her mother and unable to marry again. Win was stationed in China at this point, and like most abusers he promised he had completely changed and wasn't going to hurt her ever again. That lasted for about a day and a half. In China, Win was more violent than ever before, kicking her once in the kidneys so hard she has to be hospitalized. Supposedly years later she still had a scar on her lower abdomen from a time he cut her with a broken bottle. It was widely believed she got pregnant at some point in China, but either because of Win's abuse or a back alley abortion, she never had any children. There was also the widespread story that she hung out in brothels where she learned weird sexual stuff, which is almost definitely untrue. Terrifyingly enough, her biographer Greg King (in his very good and non-trashy book) suggested she may have gone to brothels in China because Win would force her to come and watch him have sex with prostitutes, or even that he tried to pimp her out to pay off his gambling debts.

Wallis left him again, this time in the middle of the night. She stayed in China, traveling to Peking and Shanghai, and for a while she stayed with her friends Katherine and Herman Rogers. According to the internet, they had some kind of threesome situation going on. There's not much in the way of proof for that, but it seems possible. Apparently, years later, when Katherine Rogers had died, Herman remarried. Wallis attention-whored herself at the wedding, tried to ruin the bride's dress, and crashed their honeymoon with her drunk gay boyfriend. Though there's no solid proof for that one either, just the word of the bride in question, years after the fact.

After spending a lot of time in China (and having lots of boyfriends, which was used as more proof of her evil whoring ways), Wallis got sick and had to leave. She realized she needed to leave Win for good once she got home, and sought a divorce attorney. Divorce was hard in the 1920's, and Wallis had to move to Virginia for a year to qualify for one in Virginia, where they were easier to come by. Apparently she couldn't afford to go to Reno. So she stayed in a hotel in some small town in Northern Virginia for a year, leaving sometimes to visit New York and stay with her childhood best friend Mary Kirk. She tried to get a job, first selling tubular steel, which didn't work because she couldn't do math. Then she wanted to be a secretary, but she needed to go to school for that and didn't have the money. She was a woman, with no education or work experience and this was the late 1920's, so she had no luck.

While in New York, she met Ernest Simpson, who was married (but told women it was only a technicality though actually his wife was in the hospital). He said he was getting divorced, and she was getting divorced. He proposed, and she turned him down. Then she took a trip to Europe and while there, Ernest moved to London. Wallis was an anglophile, so the prospect of living in London was very appealing to her. So she decided to marry Ernest. He was well off enough she wouldn't have to worry about money, though not rich. And at thirty-two, she was considered over-the-hill, so she felt like if she didn't marry Ernest she would probably die alone. So, in 1928 she married Ernest Simpson at a London courthouse, and became Wallis Simpson. While she was in London, some pretty interesting stuff happened, that will be covered in part three, tomorrow night.

Wallis Part 3

In 1928, London was a great place to be. Ever seen the movie Bright Young Things? Or the last season of Upstairs, Downstairs? That was the kind of life Wallis wanted in London. So she set about getting it. Servants were a status symbol, so Wallis convinced Ernest to spring for a maid. She also wrote her Aunt Bessie with various sob stories in the hopes of getting some money. But her aunt wasn't exactly rolling in dough, either. But, money or no money, Wallis wanted to get involved with the upper-class. She had a great connection in Benny Thaw. Benny had been in the Navy with Win, and he and Wallis had been friends in California. Now he was living in London too, and he married Consuelo Morgan.

Consuelo had two younger sisters, identical twins, who were both famous in London society, Thelma and Gloria. Thelma was Lady Furness, married to a British lord, and Gloria was the widowed mother of Gloria Vanderbilt, who at the time was partying her way through Europe. Both had royal connections, Thelma was involved with the Prince of Wales, and Gloria was involved in a rather scandalous relationship(officially, they were just really good friends)with Nada Milford-Haven, an exiled Romanov married to one of Queen Victoria's great-grandsons. They also both hung out with a lot of those minor European princes. You know, the kind Barbara Hutton liked to marry.

Wallis immediately honed in on their social circle, and using all of her talents at charm and flattery, managed to get an invitation to Thelma's house for a party the Prince of Wales would be present at. The Prince of Wales was the oldest son of George V, known as Edward in public, and David in private. He had a lot of middle names (like six or seven) and even more titles. Thelma was, at the time, his favorite girlfriend. Because he totally had more than one. Like many royal men, he loved married women. I don't know what it is with royals, but whenever they fall deeply in love with someone one of the parties is either married or the wrong religion, or there's some other type of conflict. Victoria and Albert being the obvious exception. It's some subconscious thing, you know, always wanting what you can't have.

So, anyway, Wallis and David met at a party in 1931 at his girlfriend's house. Wallis was sick, but being a royal fan, went anyway. Accounts differ as to how much they actually said to each other during this meeting,(he said later that she had been obviously sick and kind of rude, too) but either way he remembered her. They did not see each other again for two more years, during which time Wallis tried to get further "in" with the Morgan sisters and their inner circle. Eventually, in 1933, she was invited to meet David again, and managed to get an invite to a weekend at his country house, Fort Belvedere. For the unaware, rich people in England in the 1920's and 30's always had country houses and loved inviting all their friends to stay over for weekends to show off how big and nice their place was and how much money they had. Usually, there was also lots of drinking involved.

Her first weekend at Fort Belvedere, Wallis walked into the wrong room and discovered David had a dark secret that few people knew about. He liked to do needlepoint. Instead of finding this feminine and weird, Wallis was intrigued by his love of needlepoint, and eventually tried to get him to make her stuff. The two of them actually had a lot in common. They both loved kitsch (when they were married they had a collection of tacky ceramic chickens), were nosy and gossipy, and hated commas. I mean really hated commas. I have a book of their letters and there's like one comma in the whole thing. Wallis was interesting in what it was like to be royal, and David was interesting in what it was like to not be royal.

Throughout the rest of 1933, Wallis and David became much closer, and Ernest was thrilled because apparently having your wife get involved with a royal is something to be proud of. I would think maybe he was just weird, but I have read about so many men who were married to royal mistresses and didn't seem to mind all that much. Though they later denied that there was any hanky-panky until after their marriage in 1937, we now know that was a lie. You see, there was a commemorative bracelet for the third anniversary of their first time. So we know they first had sex on December 3, 1933. And it was in a bathtub. The bracelet was very specific. So people can stop accusing her of playing the Anne Boleyn card, I guess.

Thelma was still in the picture, but she obviously didn't know what was going on. In January 1934, Thelma's sister Gloria had to go home to fight for custody of her child. Apparently her late husband's family did not approve of her and Nada's friendship. The whole case was quite the scandal at the time. Thelma decided to go to New York to support her sister. During the time she was gone, Thelma was paranoid about David hooking up with his other girlfriend, Freda Dudley Ward. So she invited Wallis out to lunch, and asked her to spend as much time with him as she could and make sure he wasn't off with Freda. Wallis was happy to do it.

Thelma didn't know what was going on until she got back several weeks later. She was invited to the Fort, and left early after noticing Wallis and David acting really close and whispering in each other's ears the whole time. Wallis even slapped his hand away when he tried to eat some lettuce with his hand. Not long after that, both Thelma and Freda were unceremoniously dropped. By summer 1934, Wallis and David were falling in love. They created their own words, and nicknames for each other and other people. They went on a trip together touring Europe and he started giving her lots of jewelry. Really nice stuff, we're talking about. And she tried to make Ernest pay to insure it.

People always wonder exactly what it was he saw in her. Basically, from what I've read, it had to do with her not treating him special. In fact, she was sometimes downright mean to him. But he was used to being fawned upon and treated different from other people, and under those circumstances it's hard for someone to believe anyone actually loves them. Wallis didn't do that and she called him on it when he did something stupid. They also had a lot of chemistry. Friends recalled how even decades into their marriage, they could stay up half the night just talking about different things. Now, on Wallis's part, I think she was genuinely charmed by him and loved him beyond the royal thing and beyond being a golddigger.

But she definitely loved the lifestyle, too. Her letters also seem to indicate she did not think their relationship would last or go anywhere. After all, he had had plenty of girlfriends before, and she was still married. She also hadn't had the best experiences with men in the past. She also thought David was kind of selfish and immature (like a lot of royals), not that she wasn't selfish too. She wrote to him "the lovely things you say to me aren't of much value unless they are backed up by equal actions" after he got drunk at her house or picked a fight with her husband or something. From the same letter "I am not writing a lecture only your behaviour last night made me realise how very alone I shall be some day."

As their relationship continued, Wallis's marriage to Ernest started to fall apart. He was out-of-town a lot anywhere, but even when he was in town, Wallis didn't want to spend much time with him. She wrote to her aunt about how difficult it was trying to make time for two men. As 1935 began, Wallis started receiving media attention in the United States. Britain at the time had an agreement with the press not to print personal stuff about the royal family. I can only imagine how much the current royals would love to bring that back.

Wallis starting getting calls and letters from pretty much everyone she ever knew back in the U.S. and they all wanted to know if the rumors were true. Of course, up until their engagement became public knowledge Wallis always denied to people who weren't close friends that there was anything going on. But with all the jewelry he bought her, and all the times they were seen publicly together, no one believed that.

Throughout 1935, Wallis was alternately thrilled and stressed, torn between loving her new lifestyle and despairing the fact that she was expecting everything to come crashing down any minute. There was also an entertaining story about her being involved with a third guy who sold used cars or something. It was in the files from the guy the royal family paid to follow her around. But all he seemed to have was that supposedly she knew this guy and he claimed (to someone, it's not specified who) that he and Wallis had a thing. Either way, no one seemed to have known or said anything about this at the time which make me think not much happened. Plus he supposedly said that Wallis bought him expensive gifts, which wasn't her style at all. She didn't even have that much money to throw around.

Things came to a head in January 1936 when King George died. He had been ill off and on for years, but his death wasn't entirely expected. He was kind of helped along, but that's a long story I already covered with my rant on Queen Mary. So George was dead and David was king, reigning as Edward VIII. Wallis wondered what was going to happen next and if she would still have a place in his life. Meanwhile, her marriage was all but over and her picture was in every magazine in the United States.

Wallis, Part 4

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..."

Wallis, Part 5

Yes, that is a lobster on her dress.

At the beginning of 1937, Wallis Warfield Simpson was probably the most controversial woman in the world. Time Magazine had named her their "Man of the Year" for 1936, and everyone had an opinion. While the words "slut" and "whore" were only whispered in private, other terms like "adventuress" and "scarlet woman" (Molly Weasley's term of choice) were perfectly acceptable judgments. Not that everyone was against her: she had a fan club in the Midwest as well as a group of women who wanted to kill her in Scotland. But even the people who liked her (or were indifferent to her) speculated about her past, her personal life, her sexuality, her politics, and even her gender.

Meanwhile, in England, George VI and Queen Elizabeth were preparing to move into Buckingham Palace. George VI had spent most of his life as Prince Albert (Bertie to friends and family), he chose to reign as George because apparently the royal family didn't think five (two of whom were ridiculously unpopular) were enough. Edward VIII had become the Duke of Windsor, and Bertie was King now. And he wasn't all that happy about it. Now, his wife, Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) despite her protests probably did want to be Queen very badly and seemed to enjoy the title when she got it. But Bertie was not interested in the throne, and he was pissed at his older brother for giving it to him. Though they had been close as children, there was always some level of inequality between them and David didn't always treat Bertie right. Let me put it this way, if David was Bart, Bertie was Milhouse and as adults they weren't that close. He had health problems both as a child and adult, and was born left handed. For turn-of-the-century royals, the solution for left-handedness involved beating it out of you. Fun fact for all my fellow lefties out there: Queen Victoria was left-handed and it's a common trait among royalty. The current Queen and her grandson Prince William are lefties.

Bertie was also pissed at his brother for misrepresenting how much money he had in order to get a royal allowance. He thought David intentionally lied to him. I'd say it was more likely David didn't know exactly how much money he had. I don't think I've ever heard of a royal who kept good track of how much they were worth. In general, they only find out how much money they've got when they run out. Despite usually knowing very little about their own finances or finance in general, members of the British royal family always think they're poor. Anyway, David's family were pissed at him. His mother, Bertie, and Elizabeth were the most angry. His brother George (not to be confused with Bertie) and sister Mary were actually on his side, or at least sympathetic to him, but were too afraid of pissing off their mom to defend him. Mary visited him for Christmas 1936, with news (not good) from the family. George met with him in winter 1937 for some skiing.

David was staying Austria with Wallis's friend Kitty, Baroness Rothschild (of those Rothschilds). Wallis had written to Kitty on December 18th 1936 to "be kind to him. He is honest and good and really worthy of affection." But apparent after reading a harmless fact in this article: [www.time.com]

"The Duke of Windsor, as midnight tolled in the Year 1937, clapped Baron Rothschild warmly around the shoulder, kissed the Baroness ("Kitty") Rothschild heartily and ran off to ring up Mrs. Simpson in Cannes."

Wallis became convinced that Kitty Rothschild was beingtoo kind and giving David too much affection and convinced herself they were engaged in some kind of torrid affair. It is again worth noting that David had only a few weeks earlier renounced a throne to be with Wallis. Kitty, for her part, quickly became fed up with David and considered him aloof and selfish and wished she hadn't agreed to let him stay with her. But Wallis persisted in mentioning Kitty in her letters: "I can only pray to God that in your loneliness you haven't flirted with her. I suspect that."

Supposedly, during their telephone calls and in conversations with friends, Wallis indicated that she suspected he was doing a lot more than flirting with her and apparently that idea distressed her greatly. Even more than her fiancé's family and the international press. To be clear, during his first few months in Austria David had actually...

1. Decided that people were being way too mean to the Jews (they were; it was the '30's) and setting out to write a book defending them. He got about ten pages in before he saw something shiny and was distracted.
2. Found Jesus. He started going to the local Anglican church in Vienna and praying for himself and Wallis constantly. This lasted until a Church official helpfully explained to him that he was an "everlastingly damned sinner" and as such Jesus was not interested in him. Said Church official then suggested Satan as a viable alternative.
3. Gone skiing. Wallis told him to be careful and informed him that if he died in a skiing accident she would be really mad at him.
4. Rudely ignored his hostess because he was afraid that if he spent any time alone with her Wallis would consider that cheating and dump him.
5. Called his brother to give him helpful "advice" on how to be King. This ended when Bertie had mutual friends inform him that he was not helping and Bertie was not going to be answering his calls from then on.
6. Discovered there were these horrible things called taxes that non-royals have to pay and set about finding a way to get out of having to pay them.
7. Cried on the phone to Wallis about how mean his family was and listened to her cry about what a cheating bastard he was.
8. Done some needlepoint.

Wallis, meanwhile, spent most of her days inside crying and trying to avoid the press. By March, Kitty Rothschild had left Austria and Wallis's complaints turned more to the royal family. David and Wallis had nicknames for Bertie and Elizabeth. Elizabeth was Cookie, or Mrs. Temple, and Bertie was Mr. Temple or "your feebleminded brother". The Mr. and Mrs. Temple came from Wallis's feeling that Elizabeth in particular used her children for attention whoring, like a stage mother. The then Princess Elizabeth was Shirley Temple. Elizabeth, for her part, hated Wallis even more than Wallis hated her. There were a variety of issues at work (a whole book was written about why Wallis and Elizabeth didn't get along) but the main conflict started when, before David was King, Elizabeth had walked in on Wallis doing an impersonation of her at a party at Fort Belvedere.

As the separation went on despite their mutual stress and all of the sex David was(n't) having with Kitty Rothschild, there letters were mostly affectionate:

Wallis to David, January 1: "I couldn't bear hearing you cry-you who have been through so much and are so brave. My baby it is because I long to be with you so intensely everything becomes so magnified. Darling I love you. Come to me soon."
David to Wallis, January 27: "God bless WE my sweetheart and hold tight. I love you so dearly and want you desperately."
Wallis to David, February 6th: "Darling-I want to leave here I want to see you touch you I want to run my own house I want to be married and to you." (she didn't like commas or other forms of punctuation very much)
David to Wallis, February 18th: : "I'll write again quickly and till then know that I love you love you Wallis always more and more. I know that I can make you happy for all time my sweetheart and that is a terribly big thing to say. Still I say it."

Most of the letters are kind of sappy (particularly his) and rather immature, but I have read so many historical letters that were down right creepy that there's no point commenting much on it. They had nicknames for everyone (rather like the Bushes) and tons of their own words. Wallis called David "lightening brain" because he was kind of disty and forgetful.

In early April, Wallis and David's beloved dog, Slipper, was bitten by a snake and died. Wallis totally lost her marbles, and insisted a priest be brought in and a funeral held. She considered it the crowning cherry on the shit sundae that 1937 had been so far. David, though distraught over losing his dog and missing Wallis was a lot less miserable. He seemed to alter from stress and pain, to joy and happiness. He wrote that he had been happy for the first time in his life and felt in many ways as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. But he missed his family and home country. He had been told he would be able to come back and move into Fort Belvedere in a few years (not going to happen) and was trying to figure out what to do until then. Wallis's divorce was granted on May 3, and she immediately called up David, and he got on the first train to France. Queen Mary was very upset he had done that; by running to stay with his newly single girlfriend he was allowing the public to speculate that they were having pre-marital sex, which anyone who's studied British royal history knows isn't something royals have ever done ever.

Wallis and David put off their wedding until after the coronation on May 12, and decided to wait until June 3 since Wallis thought May weddings were bad luck. June 3 was on a Thursday, which is unusual for a wedding. It was also George V's birthday and exactly three and a half years from December 3, 1933 (see part three) so the date had significance. Current royal watchers know that June 3, 2010 is the date when Will and Kate are rumored to be announcing their engagement. I don't know, but whenever I see June 3 I remember it because it was the day my grandmother died and certain dates (positive and negative) that are relevant in your own life tend to stand out when you see them in regards to someone else's life.

The only member of either family to attend the wedding was Wallis's Aunt Bessie. Prince George and Princess Mary had wanted to come (George was going to be Best Man) but didn't come after their mother told them not to. David's former best friend and cousin Louis Mountbatten had switched sides during the abdication crisis and was now claiming to be Bertie's best friend. He originally wanted to come to the wedding but backed out last minute out of fear for alienating the royals back at home. He spent the rest of his life claiming he hadn't been invited.

The wedding took place at Chateau de Cande, the fancy French home of Herman Rogers's friend Charles Bedaux (who was not a nice person) which Wallis and David had been able to get on short notice. The wedding feast consisted of cake, lobster, and fried chicken served on a picnic table.

A few days before the wedding, David and Wallis received a "rotten wedding present" from Bertie. He informed them that Wallis would not get the title of H.R.H. and would not be royal. Traditionally, if a woman marries a man who is an H.R.H., she becomes an H.R.H. too. But not Wallis, because she was not suitable to marry into the British royal family. What's interesting is that her not receiving the same title as her husband makes their marriage kind of a morganatic marriage, where a royal man marries a commoner woman and she doesn't get the same title as him. When David was on the throne, he was told that he couldn't have a morganatic marriage (where he married Wallis and she wouldn't be Queen) because no such thing existed for British royalty. What's also interesting is their reasoning for not giving Wallis an H.R.H. (beyond not liking her) was that as a divorced woman she might do it again and they didn't want her divorcing David and running around Europe still calling herself H.R.H. because it's not like they could just take it away once she got it. Except where they could; when Princess Diana divorced Prince Charles she lost her H.R.H. and the same thing happened when Andrew and Fergie got divorced.

An interesting fact is that before their wedding Wallis and David signed a pre-nuptial agreement (royals don't normally do that) so she wouldn't get his money if they got divorced. It was her idea (he was naive enough that if she had been a golddigger she could have taken him for all he was worth) because she was sick of people calling her a golddigger. People still did, though. Right after the wedding, Wallis and David took off on a train to Italy and Austria for their honeymoon.

I suppose I have covered a fairly short time period for such a long post, but there was a lot going on. Next time we will get to the war and then their later years.