Wallis Simpson: the indomitable beast for which a king of England, Edward VIII, gave up his throne

Meghan Markle has a long, fading shadow in the recent history of the British royal family. A character she will always be compared to. This is Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee who shook the English monarchy in 1936 when her king, Edward VIII, renounced the throne out of love to marry her.

Diana Mitford, Lady Mosley after her second marriage, was one of the close friends of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor – a title given to Edward and Wallis after their abdication – and she first published Wallis Simpson's memoirs in 1980.

Mitford, a regular attendee at parties in Paris or at the 'moulin' in Orsay, is a privileged witness to the marriage, and shrewdly portrayed Wallis's personality in 'The Duchess of Windsor. Memories of a friend', which have just been published again in Castilian by The sphere of books (21.90 euros).

Wallis Simpson was born Bessie Wallis Warfield on June 19, 1896, in a farmhouse in a Pennsylvania town where her well-regarded family used to vacation. "All four of her grandparents had supported the Confederate cause," Mitford explains, and her grandmother used to say to her, "Don't even think about marrying a Yankee."

Her father died when she was very young and her mother had to be supported financially by her brother-in-law, who paid for Wallis's boarding school, Olfield School, the most expensive girls' school in Maryland. There, Wallis was known among her classmates for always being perfectly dressed.

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In 1916, Wallis wrote to her mother: "I have just met the most fascinating aviator in the world." She was Navy aviator Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, whom she married shortly thereafter. But she soon discovered that "her husband drank too much and that when he drank he became rude, aggressive and violent," explains Mitford. She ended up divorcing in 1926.

Simpson was already 28 years old by then and had forged the personality that would make a king fall in love in the future: "He was independent, but not tough, rather vulnerable. And he had an unusual ability to make friends wherever he went. Intelligent and lively, funny and good company, she was the life of the parties [...] She knew how to bring out the best in others, she made even the most unremarkable shine," says Mitford.

A striking 'tweed' suit

By this time, she had already met Ernest Aldrich Simpson, a businessman whom she married in 1928. It was an outlet for Wallis that, at that point in her life, she was jobless, homeless, and he hardly had any money left. Everything changed radically, because she went to live in London in a very large house with servants.

In 1931, she met the Prince of Wales on a weekend hunting trip. She had a cold and her fever was starting to rise, but when Eduardo showed up "in his flashy checkered tweed suit, she forgot about the cold," recalls Mitford. Wallis liked her blue eyes, her simplicity and her attractiveness.

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The friendship that was forged between them led to love, they became inseparable, and at the beginning of 1934, Wallis was already the mistress of the future king. The family was outraged at Eduardo's behavior, but they were going on vacation together and she had made her appearance in court. "Wallis," the Prince of Wales told him, "you are the only woman who has ever taken an interest in what I do."

In January 1936, King George V died and Edward ascended the throne. The drama hung over the English royal family, who were well aware of the relationship between the two but did not approve of it. However, as the author explains, the king's conviction on certain matters was "very strong" and it was clear that he wanted to marry Wallis as soon as she divorced Simpson. And hence the scandal that the press dubbed the 'abdication crisis'.

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"I intend to marry Mrs. Simpson as soon as she is free to marry," said Edward VIII. And he confronted the government, saying that "if it was opposed, he was willing to leave." The Anglican church and the 'Tories' were not going to give in to the king marrying a twice-divorced woman, a behavior that they censored. Wallis had to go to France to avoid press pressure.

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On December 11, 1936, Edward VIII addressed the nation in a speech in which he announced that he was abdicating the throne because he could not do his job without the support of "the woman he loved." Wallis listened to him in France; she "she would cover my eyes with her hands to hide the tears," says Diana Mitford.

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In May 1937, Wallis was divorced for the second time and a month later they were married at the Château de Candé in France. She wore a blue dress "of satin crepe commissioned from Mainbocher, and Reboux made her a matching hat". Cecil Beaton took the photos of the couple.

The new king, George VI, father of the current queen, Elizabeth II, kept the title of royal highness to Edward but did not grant it to Wallis Simpson. According to Mitford, the British royal family tried to undermine Edward's important charisma and did so by enhancing Simpson's 'perfidious' profile, who actually claimed that she had never sought marriage. In addition, they did everything possible so that the Duke of Windsor never returned to England.

"I never looked for that marriage"

Her relations with the Nazis and with Hitler in the period before World War II were more than problematic in the eyes of London. Eduardo and Hitler "agreed in certain areas: admiration for the British Empire, hatred of communism," explains the author of the book.

Soon after, the couple moved to Antibes, where Wallis only employed blonde staff because she believed they would bring her better luck. She always kept a notebook to write down service failures because her wish was that "the duke should live like a king". Her life was to read, do some sport, give parties, comb her hair (a hairdresser did her hair every day) and enjoy jewelry: Jacques Cartier once said of Eduardo that "Son Altesse Royal knows more about diamonds than I do" .

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When the war came, they offered her house as a hospital and returned to England to serve; he at the British Military Mission at Vincennes and she at the Red Cross. But they could not stay in her country and they offered the duke to be Governor of the Bahamas, a position he would hold until 1945.

Upon her return, they settled in a Parisian house with huge gardens in the Bois de Boulogne; "They paid the French State a symbolic rent," explains Mitford, where they have already stayed all their lives. They lived there from April until after Christmas and the rest of the year they traveled to the United States, where they stayed in New York or Palm Beach.

Living like real kings

Mitford explains that the Paris house "looked more and more regal, with its profusion of ornaments and trinkets." Both published their memoirs at the beginning of the years, which brought them a good amount of money: the duke sold them for half a million pounds of those at the time.

One of the things Wallis spent most of his time on was her dressing room. Mainbocher was her head designer and later Balenciaga; within walking distance, Dior and Déssès. Balenciaga created for her a blue that was not the famous 'Wallis blue, "but a darker one, closer to violet, which highlighted her black hair and her blue eyes," says Diana Mitford.

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Old age came and her job was to take care of each other. The duke's eyesight, lumbago and, above all, his respiratory system began to fail; he was diagnosed with throat cancer and never quit smoking. He died on May 28, 1972, one month before his 78th birthday. Hubert de Givenchy made Wallis's mourning coat in one night. The body of the Duke was watched by 60,000 British in the chapel of St. George, in Windsor.

With no family to support him, Wallis Simpson began to break down from grief. Then, "to escape from that state, she started going out too much, and everything got worse," says the author. She broke her leg, suffered a hemorrhage... and decided to go into seclusion. She died on April 24, 1986 in Paris, reinforcing her role as an icon of British history.

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Many wonder why this obsession with abdicating the king and not letting him marry the person she loved. Mitford speculates that perhaps it was because she didn't like that he was so well liked by the townspeople; because he wanted to negotiate peace with Germany or because Edward VIII himself was so "oppressed by his impotence in the face of everything that was happening in his country that he preferred to withdraw".

In any case, they will always have the pride of being the protagonists of what Winston Churchill himself declared: "The Duke's love for her is among the great loves of history."

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