King Edward VIII‘s place in British history will always be tied to having one of the shortest reigns as monarch when he abdicated less than a year after taking the throne to marry a divorced American socialite named Wallis Simpson.
While the couple was cast out of the U.K., they still lived public lives and gave the illusion that they had found their happily ever after outside of the royal world. However, there were constant murmurs that Simpson wasn’t faithful to her husband and that Edward wasn’t at peace with his decision to give up the crown. Now, an unearthed letter is backing up the claims that there was some trouble in paradise years after Edward abdicated.
Queen Elizabeth II’s grandfather, King George V, died in 1936 and at that time his eldest son, Edward, became King Edward VIII. However, Edward was in love with Simpson and had every intention to marry her but as the head of the Church of England, he was prohibited from marrying a two-time divorcee. Edward VIII chose love over the crown and decided he would abdicate.
“You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love,” he stated in his public address (per Biography).
Simpson gets much of the blame for Edward’s decision but author Anna Pasternak claims that his lover tried to stop him from abdicating and revealed that Simpson said she would leave him but Edward threatened suicide if she did.
The couple was exiled to France and thereafter became known as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
The Express noted that a previously unearthed document found in the papers of the writer Rebecca West suggests that the duke and duchess were not living happily ever after. A letter was discovered at the University of Tulsa by historian Andrew Lownie while updating his book Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. West had been asked to be a ghostwriter for Simpson’s memoirs but according to her letter, declined because of what she knew.
Her letter was sent to Ewart Robertson, who was close with former Daily Express owner Lord Beaverbrook. She wrote: “I have been thinking very seriously over your letter, and I have come to the conclusion that if what you predict comes to pass and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor part, I would not care to have anything to do with her memoirs.”
West also included what she believed Simpson should do in the event that she and Edward separated writing: “I feel that in those conditions her wisest course would be to keep quiet and hold her head up and publish nothing. If I encouraged her to write her memoirs, I should be unhappily conscious that I was encouraging her to do something against her own interests, for my amusement and profit. I could not do a good piece of work in such circumstances, particularly as the duchess has been very pleasant to me.”
In 1971 Edward became ill and was diagnosed with throat cancer. His nurses claimed that instead of staying at his bedside before his death in 1972, Simpson was running around with another man. The Duchess of Windsor died in 1986 of bronchial pneumonia.