Forget everything you’ve been told about “girl power” – 60 years before the
Spice Girls, a brash American with some serious seduction skills showed the
world how girl power really works.
It’s a story of love, sex, money and ambition and it involves Wallis Simpson,
the woman a king gave up the throne for.
Now she is the subject of a new film, W.E., directed by Madonna, and played by
rising British star Andrea Riseborough.
But who was Wallis and how did a middle-class girl capture the attention of a
young royal and end up as one of the most famous women of modern times?
Waity Katie eat your heart out…
Baltimore belle
Wallis was born in Baltimore, America, in June 1896. Her father – the son of a
local flour merchant – died soon after, and she and mother Alice had to rely
on handouts from relatives.
She realised marriage was the way forward and wed her first husband, US Navy
pilot Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, in 1916. The couple moved to San Diego, then
Washington and later Hong Kong, where Wallis was said to have learnt just
one Mandarin phrase: “Boy, pass me the champagne.”
They divorced in 1927, with rumours of abuse and alcoholism on his part, and
infidelity on hers, but she was determined her divorcee status wouldn’t
hamper her social climbing.
No sooner was the ink dry on the divorce papers than she was involved with
married man and rich shipping executive Ernest Aldrich Simpson.
He divorced his wife and married Wallis in 1928 when she was 31. Not long
after, they moved to London.
Wallis was weight-obsessed and kept her size-6 figure by breakfasting on
grapefruit juice, Earl Grey and little else.
My friends know I’d rather shop than eat,” she said, followed by the classic:
“You can never be too rich or too thin.”
A princely encounter
Wallis’ life was to change forever when she met Prince Edward, the heir to the
throne, at a party in January 1931.
Ironically, it was Edward’s then mistress and party hostess, Lady Thelma
Furness, who introduced them.
Despite being 36, Edward was unmarried and enjoying the life of a playboy
bachelor. Some say he was a scandal waiting to happen – even before married
Wallis came along.
Wallis and Edward met several times at parties over the next three years. By
1935, Thelma was long forgotten and Edward and Wallis were in love. As she
juggled Edward and her husband Ernest, she shamelessly told an aunt: “It
requires great tact to manage both men. I shall try to keep them both.”
Despite sharing Wallis, Edward was besotted and loved how she refused to be
star-struck by him, and was reportedly seduced by her bedroom prowess, which
it’s been claimed she picked up in Shanghai’s brothels. However, historian
Greg King argues that old-fashioned love drew them together: “Other women
could supply sex, but Wallis was the first to combine intimacy with an
emotional understanding and indulgence of him.”
Queen Wallis?
If you thought Harry’s partying was bad publicity for the royals, Edward and
Wallis’ relationship was a PR nightmare.
By the time he became king in 1936 – after his father George V’s sudden death
– it was common, and scandalising, knowledge that they were a couple. Just
months into his reign, Edward proposed to Wallis, still not even officially
divorced from her second husband.
Aside from her brash personality and upfront sexuality, which horrified royal
courtiers, Wallis was now twice divorced and it was inconceivable she would
become a royal consort.
According to the laws of the Church of England, divorced people could not
remarry if their former spouses were still alive – and as king, Edward, was
head of the Church. There was no way he could marry Wallis. But as far as
the lovestruck Edward was concerned, he was the king and could marry whoever
the hell he wanted.
The monarch and the British establishment faced off over the issue. Neither
would budge.
In the end, it was the public who effectively decided. With the press
denouncing Wallis as a manipulative American floozy who had seduced and
stolen their king, there was an outcry, demanding either she went, or the
king went, or both.
Rumours also surfaced that she and Edward were Nazi sympathisers, who had held
meetings with senior members of Hitler’s inner circle.
Distraught, Wallis fled to the south of France. There, she implored Edward to
put duty before love and even signed a document confirming she would not
marry him.
But Edward could not live without her and on December 11, 1936 – after just
327 days on the throne – he announced his intention to abdicate so he was
free to marry her.
He was putting love before duty – and a life with one woman before life as the
king. In an impassioned speech to the British public, he said he could not
carry out his duties “without the woman I love”.
He was replaced on the throne by his brother Albert, who took the name George
VI (the chapter of history explored in the 2010 film The King’s Speech), and
whose daughter is now Queen Elizabeth II.
Happy ever after?
After his abdication, Edward was given the title HRH The Duke of Windsor by
his brother, and received a tax-free annual income to live on. When Edward
and Wallis married the next year, she became Duchess, but was banned from
using the HRH title.
Living in self-imposed exile in France, they were married for 35 years until
the Duke’s death, but the couple never had any children.
For Wallis, it meant a lifetime of being condemned as the woman who robbed
Britain of its king, and was never accepted by the royal family.
After Edward’s death in 1972, Wallis became a recluse and was rarely seen in
public prior to her death on April 24, 1986 in Paris.
In 2010, an auction of her belongings, including a wardrobe of designer gowns
and her jewellery, made almost £8million when auctioned at Sotheby’s in
London.
Forgive and forget
In a sign that Wallis had finally found some sort of forgiveness in the
British Establishment, she was buried next to Edward in the Royal Burial
Ground near Windsor Castle. Among the mourners that day were Wallis’ two
surviving sisters-in-law – the Queen Mother and Duchess of Gloucester – as
well as the Queen, Prince Philip and Diana Spencer, newly married to Prince
Charles. In a few years, Diana would be courting controversy herself.
Madge on Wallis
As the queen of controversy, it was no surprise that Madonna picked Wallis as
the subject for her directorial debut. She admits she identitfies with
Wallis and once said: “I’ve found that if you bring up King Edward VIII and
Wallis Simpson at a dinner party or a social gathering, it’s like throwing a
Molotov cocktail into the room.”
Let’s hope the film is just as gripping as the real-life story.
- W.E. is in cinemas from January 20.
