HistoryExtra Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast 2026-10-14T22:34:41.000Z https://www.historyextra.com/people/edward-viii/feed/atom Jonny Wilkes <![CDATA[16 of the worst monarchs in history]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/9-of-the-worst-monarchs-in-history/ 2026-10-14T22:34:41.000Z 2026-04-17T11:12:27.000Z The past has no shortage of disastrous kings, queens, and other rulers; such a list could easily have been filled with the worst Roman emperors alone. Some have been homicidal, like Nero or Genghis Khan; simply incompetent, like Edward II; completely untrustworthy, like Charles I; or amiable but inadequate, like Louis XVI of France.
But who are truly the worst, and why? Jonny Wilkes makes the case against 16 rulers from history…
1. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
King of Rome, 534–509 BC
Before Rome had emperors, it had a line of kings going back to the city’s mythical founder, Romulus. The last, however, presided over a reign of terror so bad that the people gave up on the monarchy altogether, heralding the dawn of the Republic.
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (commonly known as ‘Tarquin the Proud’) had seized the throne by planning the assassination of his own father-in-law, then once in power he killed senators on a whim and imprisoned or executed anyone suspected of disloyalty.
His undoing came when his son raped a noblewoman, which caused such outrage that a revolt broke out that saw the tyrannical king overthrown and exiled. In his doomed attempts to regain the throne, he persuaded neighbouring cities to attack Rome, seemingly unfazed by the damage this would do to his erstwhile kingdom.
2. Commodus
Roman emperor, 177–92 AD
There are a number of contenders to the title of ‘most despicable emperor of Rome’, so we could just as easily be discussing the cruel and murderous rules of, say, Nero and Caligula.
The bloodthirsty, vainglorious spendthrift, Commodus, however, went from inheriting an empire enjoying a long period of peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana, to leaving it broke and in turmoil. If not executing anyone he suspected of plotting against him, he was leaving the job of ruling the empire to a series of corrupt, cruel and incompetent favourites. He much preferred to fight as a gladiator, relishing in slaughtering a menagerie of animals in the arena.
No wonder, then, that Commodus was chosen as the villain in Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals masterpiece, Gladiator.
3. John
King of England, 1199–1216
Seriously, how could the arch-villain of Robin Hood not make an appearance? Beyond the tale of the fabled outlaw, John severely damaged the authority of the English monarchy. As a prince, he angered the nobles of Ireland and attempted to steal his brother Richard I’s crown, only ending up as king after Richard died without a legitimate heir. Notably, he also managed to outmanoeuvre a rival claim from his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, whom he is later believed to have had murdered.
Within a few years in power, John had lost Normandy – the foundation of his family’s Angevin empire on the continent – then he emptied the kingdom’s coffers trying to win it back. His oppressively high taxes, his clashes with the church and his cruel and conniving personality all led to a revolt of England’s barons.
Under threat of civil war, John was forced to seal Magna Carta, a historic document that limited royal power. He then proceeded to ignore it. The barons rose up again and John’s reign ended, dying of dysentery, as he fought to keep hold of his kingdom.
4. Wanyan Chenglin
Emperor of the Jin dynasty, 1234
On 9 February 1234, with the warriors of the Mongol empire besieging the city of Caizhou, the emperor of the Jin dynasty in China, Aizong, knew that his 10-year reign would be over shortly. That said, he did not want to be the last in his line, so he abdicated and passed the throne to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, before taking his own life.
The reluctant new emperor began a reign that would be doomed to last just a matter of hours. He was killed leading his soldiers in a last stand when the Mongols broke through the city walls.
5. Charles the Bad
King of Navarre, 1349–87
The name gives away why he belongs on this list, doesn’t it? Charles earned ‘the Bad’ for his duplicitous and treacherous behaviour in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Although King of Navarre in Spain, he owned a lot of land in northern France, which put him in the middle of the conflict, and his response was to keep flipping sides.
Driven solely by ambition, he believed he should be on the French throne, and he plotted and murdered to get it. All the while, Navarre went ignored. What made him truly bad, though, was that his schemes failed utterly. Charles is perhaps best-known today for his grisly end in 1387, when the brandy-soaked sheets he had been wrapped in to cure an illness accidentally caught fire, burning him alive.
6. Henry VI
King of England, 1422–61, 1470–71
Ascending the throne of England as an infant and the son of the hero of Agincourt, the young Henry VI was always going to struggle to live up to his dynastic legacy.
Not helped by his total lack of leadership, it went even worse than feared: he lost control of France (won by his father Henry V), suffered a mental breakdown, and saw his kingdom plunge into the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian cause would be headed not by the king, but his queen, Margaret.
Henry’s role amounted to being kicked off the throne by the Yorkist Edward IV, then placed back on it by the ‘kingmaker’, the Earl of Warwick, and finally losing it again after being captured.
7. Christian II
King of Denmark and Norway, 1513–23
Christian’s reign may seem more insignificant than terrible at first glance, but it signalled the end of the Kalmar Union, which had bound together the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden for well over a century. Having been crowned in the first two of those countries in 1513, he set out to secure the third.
It would not be until 1520 that he captured Stockholm, although, hardly magnanimous in victory, his immediate action was to execute 82 nobles. The so-called Stockholm Bloodbath fuelled a Swedish rebellion against Christian and weakened his authority back in Denmark and Norway.
He was overthrown and exiled, and then when he launched a desperate bid to win back his thrones by force, he was imprisoned for the rest of his life.
8. Ivan the Terrible
Tsar of Russia, 1547–84
As the first tsar, Ivan was in some ways an able ruler since he laid the foundations of the Russian empire. He became known as ‘the Terrible’ for a reason, though. Having hated the nobles from an early age (at 13, he had one fed to a pack of dogs), he wasted no time in purging the upper classes.
The domain he inherited clearly was not enough: he instigated numerous, and disastrous, wars of expansion, and even established his own fiefdom within his land where, essentially, anything went. With Ivan prone to paranoia and fits of rage, no one was safe: he ordered a full-on attack on one of his own cities, Novgorod, and beat his daughter-in-law into having a miscarriage, then murdered his son.
9. Rudolf II
Holy Roman Emperor, 1576–1612
Despite being hailed as a generous patron of the arts and sciences, Habsburg emperor Rudolf II utterly failed in his role as the leader of one of Europe’s major powers. Rather than focusing on politics and administration, he instead shut himself away to focus on personal pursuits like alchemy.
When he did show some determination – starting a war with the Ottoman empire to unify Christendom – it proved a disaster. His subjects in Hungary revolted and his family made him hand over power to his younger brother.
Rudolf’s most damning legacy, however, was that his miserable tenure as emperor has been blamed as one of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in history.
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10. Louis XV
King of France, 1715–74
It could certainly be argued that Louis XV’s status as a poor king of France was overshadowed by his successor, Louis XVI, since he was the one who lost his head in the French Revolution. Yet Louis XV’s reign sowed the seeds of the people’s discontent that would lead to such a violent rejection of the monarchy. In short, he was a deeply ineffectual ruler, let alone the all-powerful absolutist king that France had become accustomed to under Louis XIV.
Reports of corruption and handing over influence to his mistresses hurt the crown’s authority, while his wars and extravagant spending depleted the coffers. France became a less powerful nation under his rule, and smaller too: he gave up New France in the Americas after the disastrous Seven Years’ War.
11. Ferdinand VII
King of Spain, 1808, 1813–33
Shortly after taking the throne in 1808, Ferdinand handed over his kingdom – and himself – to Napoleon Bonaparte. Six years of captivity in France later, he returned with a need to prove his absolutist credentials and so ditched Spain’s liberal constitution that had been written in his absence. This led to multiple uprisings, notably the revolt of 1820, which ushered in three years during which the king was forced to accept a constitutional regime.
While more selfish than monstrous, Ferdinand’s legacy and place on this list were confirmed by two things: he oversaw the loss of nearly all of Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas and, following his death, his petty bid to exclude his brother from the succession resulted in a long civil war.
12. Ranavalona I
Queen of Imerina, 1828–61
To try and hold back the wave of European colonisation in Africa, Queen Ranavalona I, of modern-day Madagascar, would go to any lengths. She wanted to purge all foreign influence, expelling missionaries, persecuting Christians and restricting trade. She even tried to have a giant pair of scissors made so that she could literally chop foreigners in half.
The ones who suffered the most, however, were her people: to preserve her land’s self-sufficiency and way of life, as she saw it, Ranavalona used forced labour for her royal projects and fear to maintain order.
Many executions took the form of the tangena ordeal, a witch-hunt-style trial where the accused was made to ingest poison and if they showed any adverse effects, they were deemed guilty. It is claimed that as much as 50 per cent of the population perished during her rule.
13. Leopold II
King of the Belgians, 1865–1909
Leopold II may not have been a terrible king in Belgium itself, but with the Congo Free State, he revealed just how much of a monster he could be. In 1885, he created his own state in central Africa, having convinced European powers that he intended to improve the lives of the people living there.
In reality, this privately owned kingdom allowed Leopold to exploit the Congolese people so that he could make money from its ivory and natural rubber reserves. Under his system of forced labour, any workers who failed to meet their quotas would be punished with mutilation. Leopold’s preferred method was chopping off hands and feet. Millions died from the brutality and rampant diseases.
This was an age where European empires carved up and exploited the African continent, so the fact that international outrage finally forced Leopold to hand over the Congo Free State illustrates the appalling extent of the atrocities.
14. Khalid ibn Barghash
Sultan of Zanzibar, 1896
Not only did Khalid ibn Barghash rule for just three days, but he was ousted in the shortest war in history. So, in truth, there is no knowing whether he would have been a bad ruler: there wasn’t enough time. In 1896, the sultan of Zanzibar died, which put the British in a tough position. They controlled the islands off the east African coast as it served as a strategic trade post for the Indian Ocean.
Against British wishes, Khalid, who may well have killed his predecessor, assumed the role of sultan and fortified the palace with around 3,000 supporters. The British sent warships, though, and initiated a brief bombardment. The Anglo-Zanzibar War lasted around 38 minutes, and Khalid fled into exile.
15. Nicholas II
Tsar of Russia, 1894–1917
The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for more than 300 years – and it all ended during the reign of Nicholas II. Not suited to wielding autocratic power over a huge empire, he made a catalogue of errors and refused to adapt beyond his rigid belief that he had the divinely ordained right to rule.
In 1905 alone, Russia lost a war with Japan and broke out in revolution, yet Nicholas only made cursory changes and tried to move on. His court became dominated by the strange and ambitious mystic, Rasputin, his nobles and politicians abandoned him, and his decision to take command of the armies in the First World War meant that he was held personally responsible for every defeat and death.
Revolution erupted again in 1917, forcing his abdication. While imprisoned by the revolutionaries, Nicholas and his entire family were murdered. It was a bloody and definitive end to the tsars, as Russia became a communist regime.
16. Edward VIII
King of England, 1936
Edward became king on 20 January 1936, on the death of his father George V. Before the year was out, he had abdicated in disgrace. His brief reign had entirely been focused on his wish to marry an American named Wallis Simpson, but she had been divorced once and was seeking a second, making her wholly unacceptable to the royal family, the political establishment and the church.
Yet his reputation as a bad monarch could have been even worse had he stayed: Edward has long been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, who toured Hitler’s Germany almost two years before the Second World War.
]]> Elinor Evans <![CDATA[The Windsors in exile]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/windsors-in-exile-edward-wallis-podcast-andrew-lownie/ 2023-10-11T09:30:59.000Z 2021-08-21T11:56:36.000Z Andrew Lownie discusses his new book Traitor King, which delves into the lives of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson after the abdication crisis of 1936. The discussion ranges from their sympathies for the agents and aims of Nazi Germany to their opulent and eccentric post-war lifestyle.
Andrew Lownie is the author of Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (Bonnier Books, 2021)
]]> Dan Jones <![CDATA[Edward VIII, Wallis Simpson and the Abdication crisis]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/edward-wallis-simpson-abdication-crisis-relationship-what-happened-podcast/ 2023-10-11T08:08:32.000Z 2020-07-15T15:17:36.000Z Historian and author Alexander Larman is joined by popular historian Dan Jones to discuss his new book, The Crown in Crisis, which explores Edward VIII’s relationship with Wallis Simpson and how it led to the British king’s abdication.
]]> Stephen Bates <![CDATA[Love before duty: the story of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/edward-viii-wallis-simpson-relationship-abdication-abdicate-when-why-reign-short-marriage/ 2023-11-07T12:23:32.000Z 2020-06-03T09:50:40.000Z "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months.” So gruff old King George reputedly remarked to prime minister Stanley Baldwin about his son and successor, the future Edward VIII.
He was scarcely a boy – Edward was 41 when he came to the throne in January 1936 – but his father was otherwise not far out: Edward’s reign lasted just 324 days before he abdicated to marry the woman he loved. It was the biggest constitutional crisis for the crown in the 20th century – no other monarch has voluntarily vacated the throne – and one that has shaped royal attitudes ever since. In the eyes of the family, David – the name by which they knew him – had shirked his duty, and cut and run. Evidence suggests that the majority of his countrymen and women thought so, too.
When he succeeded his father, Edward VIII was a popular figure who had been in the public eye for many years. He was regarded as unstuffy, charming and unpretentious – at least, that was the image that the newspapers of the day chose to portray. No man, said The Times at his accession, ever came to the throne in more propitious circumstances: “In countless ways he has securely established his hold on the affections of his people.”
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But senior politicians and many who served him as officials already had concerns. “I doubt he’ll stay the course,” Baldwin told the Labour leader, Clement Attlee. They thought him lazy and erratic, with a negligent attitude towards his duties – opinions that were only reinforced when he became king. State papers went unread and, it was suspected, were shown to Edward’s friends. He turned up late to events or cried off at the last minute, and he was rude and offhand.
Then there was the king’s womanising. Over the previous two decades he had taken a series of mistresses, notably Freda Dudley Ward and Thelma Furness, both married women with complaisant husbands. But now a new partner had seen off the others: Bessiewallis (a combination of two family names, commonly shortened to Wallis) Simpson, who herself was already on her second marriage – and was an American to boot. None of this was known to the British public.
Affair of the half-century: a timeline January 1931 Edward and Wallis first meet at a weekend house party given by his then mistress, Lady Thelma Furness, at her country home, Burrough Court, near Melton Mowbray. 20 January 1936 King George V (below) dies and his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, is proclaimed King Edward VIII. Government and the court are aware of Edward’s liaison with a twice-married American. August–September 1936 Edward and Wallis take a Mediterranean cruise aboard the Nahlin. Their relationship becomes public knowledge in Europe and the US. 27 October 1936 The Simpson v Simpson divorce petition is heard at Ipswich assizes. The decree nisi is granted on grounds of Ernest Simpson’s (phoney) adultery, based on a fake tryst staged at a hotel. 10 December 1936 Edward VIII abdicates, declaring in a BBC address (part written by Churchill) that he had found it impossible to discharge his duties “without the help and support of the woman I love”. 3 June 1937 Edward and Wallis marry at Château de Candé in France. In October they make a controversial visit to Germany, where they meet Hitler. Edward denies giving the Nazi salute, claiming that he was just waving. June 1940 The couple flee to Portugal as German forces invade France. The duke is made governor of the Bahamas to keep him out of the way of the Nazis. 1946–86 Edward and Wallis live in Paris, where in May 1972 the duke dies of cancer. The duchess dies in 1986. They are buried together in the royal burial ground at Frogmore, near Windsor.
What drew Edward VIII to Wallis Simpson?
In many ways, Wallis was a surprising choice. She was regarded as neither beautiful nor particularly charming, but she was witty, ambitious, single-minded and determined to add the king to her conquests, though friends claimed she was soon bored by him.
Edward, however, was infatuated. As early as 1934 his equerry, John Aird, wrote: “The prince… follows W around like a dog.”
While Wallis was merely his mistress, ministers saw no reason to interfere – even when Edward told friends that he could not live without her and intended to marry her, come what may.
Sometimes Wallis’s dull Anglo-American businessman husband, Ernest Simpson, accompanied the couple but increasingly he did not. In the summer of 1936, Edward set sail with Wallis (but without her husband) in a hired yacht, the Nahlin – which was, it was said, “furnished like a Calais whoreshop” – down the coast of Croatia and on to Greece and Turkey. They made quite a spectacle of themselves, the king often stripped to the waist (not the done thing for monarchs in the 1930s) and always accompanied by Wallis. A Romanian diplomat in Belgrade remarked that when his king travelled abroad he left his mistress at home. The continental and American papers had a field day.
Why Wallis Simpson faked an affair
Thanks to newspaper proprietors Beaverbrook of the Express and Rothermere of the Mail, both friendly with the king, the British public was kept in ignorance. Baldwin, though, returned home from a restful two-month summer holiday to find a sheaf of complaints about the king’s behaviour from expatriates abroad. By October, the prime minister was seriously alarmed: it had become obvious that Edward VIII was still determined to marry Wallis, and she was making plans to divorce her husband. The compliant Ernest went along with the scheme, and gallantly undertook to pose as the adulterer. He took a family friend, Mary Raffray, to the Hotel de Paris at Bray, near Maidenhead, where they were duly spotted in bed together by hotel staff on two successive mornings.
The hotel was used to such ruses, and to supplying staff as witnesses in divorce cases, but the Simpsons had to be careful: if there was any suggestion of artificial collusion, the divorce could be denied – and it nearly happened. When the divorce hearing came up at Ipswich assizes (the first court with a slot for an early hearing), the judge – who had not been warned of the case’s significance – clearly smelled a rat and seemed poised to deny the petition. However, Norman Birkett, Mrs Simpson’s barrister, smoothly steered him to approve “what you might call the ordinary hotel evidence”. The decree nisi was granted but the couple would have to wait six months before it was made absolute and Edward and Wallis could marry. “King Will Wed Wally,” the New York Journal confidently predicted.
Baldwin had first discussed the case with the king a few days earlier. They met at Fort Belvedere, the miniature castle in the grounds of Windsor Great Park where Edward chose to live, rather than more publicly at Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace. It was a stilted meeting: they inspected the herbaceous borders before the prime minister asked for a whisky and soda, then steeled himself to say: “I don’t believe you can go on like this and get away with it.” He asked for the divorce to be delayed and for Wallis to go abroad, but the king declined to answer. At this stage Baldwin had not consulted his full cabinet – some of whom were still ignorant of the affair – but he was starting to sound out prime ministers from the empire, notably Canada’s Mackenzie King. He did not see the king again for a further month.
Various solutions were discussed. The king could not be persuaded to give up Mrs Simpson and find someone more suitable. She in turn made only a half-hearted attempt to let him go. Edward made it clear that he was determined to marry her as soon as possible, and would rather abdicate otherwise. The possibility of a morganatic marriage – whereby Edward could marry Wallis but she would not be queen, and any children would not succeed to the throne – was briefly considered but the idea was quickly abandoned. Only one member of the cabinet, Duff Cooper – a friend of the king – was in favour, and the ‘white dominions’ prime ministers (of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada) were resolutely opposed. “The Australian outlook on life is distinctly middle class and on morals distinctly Victorian,” the US consul in Canberra reported to Washington. Éamon de Valera, head of government of the Irish Free State – still then within the ‘white commonwealth’ – offered to back Edward if he would support the Irish takeover of Ulster. But ultimately even he came down on the side of abdication, though he used the crisis to remove all mention of the British monarch from the Irish constitution.
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Why did Edward VIII have to abdicate?
The storm broke in Britain only on 1 December, when the aptly named Bishop Blunt of Bradford told his diocesan synod that the king ought to live a more Christian life. Poor Blunt, who knew nothing of Mrs Simpson, merely meant that Edward VIII should show an example by attending church more regularly, but his words gave the British press the excuse they needed to break the story.
Pressure on the king was now steadily applied. He was cornered and forced to make a choice. Delay, said the censorious Neville Chamberlain, chancellor of the exchequer, would be bad for the Christmas trade. The uncertainty could not drag on. Baldwin murmured that the king “must wrestle with himself in a way he has never done before and, if he will let me, I will help him”. The prime minister offered to argue with him through the night if necessary, but it was obvious the government’s decision had been made: Edward could not marry Wallis and be king. “The only time I was frightened,” Baldwin said later. “Was when I thought he might change his mind.”
Within 10 days of the story breaking, the king had abdicated. A late attempt to rally a loyalist party failed. Winston Churchill, Edward’s chief political supporter, was howled down in the Commons on 7 December when he demanded a delay to sound out public opinion – the speaker told him to shut up.
It would have been unlikely to have been successful: letters in the National Archives from members of the public to the government show overwhelming hostility to Wallis, variously describing her as an octopus, fake, a legalised prostitute and “a woman climber from a boarding house in Baltimore”. The novelist Virginia Woolf recorded an overheard conversation involving a grocer’s assistant, also on 7 December: “We can’t have a woman Simpson for queen… She’s no more royal than you or me.”
Labour and the Liberals backed the government. Attlee told Baldwin: “Despite the sympathy felt for the king… the party – with the exception of the intelligentsia, who can be trusted to take the wrong view on any subject – were in agreement.” More succinctly, Ernest Bevin said: “Our people won’t ’ave it.” Only the communists and Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts came out in support of the couple, the former in the hope that it would bring down the monarchy altogether, the latter believing that the king would catapult them to power.
Most national and regional newspapers and periodicals also supported the government. Only the Mail and Express – whose proprietors had suppressed news of the affair and thus perhaps prevented a king’s party from forming – and the Daily Mirror rallied to the king.
Why wasn't Wallis Simpson considered a suitable wife for Edward VIII?
Just why was Wallis Simpson regarded as an unsuitable consort? The chief difficulty in a more religiously observant time was the fact that she had already divorced one husband, left another and was now hoping to marry a man who was supreme governor of the Church of England.
There were also doubts about her faithfulness. Papers in the National Archives show that the Metropolitan Police was spying on her: a report detailed clandestine visits to a Ford car salesman called Guy Trundle. There may also have been concerns that she was sympathetic to the Nazis. An FBI report released in 2002 claimed that she had been the lover of Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Nazi German ambassador to London, but no conclusive evidence has been found to support this suggestion.
Anti-American prejudice was a factor, too. The diarist Harold Nicolson wrote: “The upper class mind her being American more than they mind her being divorced. The lower class do not mind her being American but loathe the idea that she has had two husbands already.”
The newly created Duke of Windsor was left to wrangle with his younger brother and successor, George VI, over money and the life tenancies of Balmoral and Sandringham.
It was a bitter fight, which left a legacy of distrust between the brothers. Pleading poverty, Edward hid his £1m assets and secured an annual pension of £11,000. He also threatened to sue George for trespass if the new king ventured to either house until the life tenancies were purchased from Edward for £300,000. Edward was made Duke of Windsor, but the royal family’s refusal to give Wallis the title ‘Royal Highness’ embittered him for the rest of his life.
Stephen Bates is a journalist, writer and former royal correspondent for The Guardian. He is the author of Royalty Inc: Britain’s Best-Known Brand (Aurum, 2015)
This article was first published in the January 2016 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[The vilification of Wallis Simpson: how Edward VIII's mistress was savaged by society]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-vilification-of-wallis-simpson/ 2025-02-14T14:46:10.000Z 2020-01-09T10:40:29.000Z In the summer of 1936 Lady Diana Cooper remarked that “Wallis is wearing very very badly. Her commonness and Becky Sharpishness irritate”. As far as the English upper classes were concerned, Wallis Simpson was a cunning social climber, like Becky Sharp in William Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair. They simply could not understand what King Edward VIII saw in her – a woman considered too lower-class to qualify for any kind of royal attention, as well as being a divorcee and an American.
But Edward adored her. He had met her in 1931, when he was Prince of Wales, and she was married to her second husband, Ernest Simpson. It was not long before they were in love. “My own beloved Wallis”, he wrote in 1935, “I love you more & more & more & more… I haven’t seen you once today & I can’t take it. I love you”.
Edward’s friend Winston Churchill believed that Wallis was good for him. “Although branded with the stigma of a guilty love,” he said, “no companionship could have appeared more natural, more free from impropriety or grossness”. Well-read, with a lively sense of humour, Wallis had a warm and sincere heart. She was devoted to her mother and her aunt and she did not conceal – even in circles where paid work was thought to be vulgar – the fact that her aunt worked for a living. Her servants liked her as well. “All the maids,” said a kitchen maid, “spoke well of Mrs Simpson”.
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Did Wallis Simpson "scheme to become queen"?
By January 1936, when Edward became king, he had decided to marry Wallis. It was said in court circles that Wallis was scheming to be queen. But this was not true: rather, she wondered if it might be better to “be content with the simple way” – where she would be his mistress, rather than his wife. But Edward swept aside her misgivings and persuaded her to start proceedings for divorce. In November 1936, when she had obtained her decree nisi, he announced his marriage plan to the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin. As sovereign, he was free to marry anyone he liked, except a Roman Catholic, under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. But Baldwin said it was impossible: public opinion would not approve of a divorced woman becoming queen. Churchill, Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere came up with a solution – a morganatic marriage, by which Wallis would become Edward’s wife, but not his queen. It became known as the “Cornwall plan”, because Churchill suggested that Wallis could be styled the Duchess of Cornwall.
Until the start of December 1936, only the tiny world of Society, with a capital “S”, knew about Edward’s love for Wallis, because it had been kept out of the news. But on 2 December 1936, the story broke. The nation was stunned: the streets were packed and newspapers sold as fast as they were printed. “Papers full of harpy & the King”, wrote Mrs Baldwin in her diary.
The establishment, led by Baldwin, the Church of England, the Tory press and the royal court, had expected the nation to oppose Edward’s plan for marriage. But to their horror, most people wanted to keep him as their king on any terms. He was immensely popular: like Princess Diana many years later, he had a star quality that was irresistible. But more than anything, he was appreciated for his concern for ordinary people, with whom he had served at the front in the years of war, and for his many visits to the poor. Many people also liked the idea that Wallis, like them, was not rich and privileged. “It is character that Counts here, & in the Great Beyond, not a Tytle” [sic], wrote a woman from South Wales to the king.
The country was divided, just as it was split in 1997 after the death of Diana. On the one side, there was the establishment. On the other, there was the mass of ordinary people, as well as middle-class liberals and intellectuals, like George Bernard Shaw. “The People Want Their King” insisted a Daily Mail headline. Diners rose in restaurants to propose a toast to Edward and in the cinema, the National Anthem was heard with enthusiastic clapping and shouts of “We want the King”. The newsreels acknowledged there was a crisis, but presented it as a love story, not a scandal. In the Commons, MPs cheered when Churchill stood up to demand that no pressure be put on the king. Many people suspected that Baldwin wanted to get rid of Edward – that Wallis was “a godsend”, because she provided the perfect excuse to bounce him off the throne.
But over the weekend of 4–6 December, there was a proliferation of rumours through the nation, planting seeds of doubt. There was widespread speculation that Churchill was going to form a “King’s Party” and bring down the government. It was also rumoured that, in the words of Sir Horace Wilson, Baldwin’s advisor, Wallis was “selfish, self-seeking, hard, calculating, ambitious, scheming, dangerous”. Most damaging for Edward, a story was spread that Wallis was a friend of von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador, and was selling the nation’s secrets. These sorts of things, observed the publisher Francis Meynell, “were bound to be said but other incidents of which I heard made one view her with much suspicion on this point”.
But Wallis had met Ribbentrop only twice; the first occasion was a large luncheon, which was also attended by Churchill. Neither she nor Edward were part of any social circle frequented by Hitler’s ambassador. He was a favourite guest of Lord and Lady Londonderry and of the social hostess, Mrs Ronnie Greville, who admired Hitler and fascism. But Mrs Greville’s royal friends were Albert, the Duke of York, and his wife Elizabeth (the future George VI and Queen Elizabeth) – not Wallis and Edward.
How did Edward VIII give up the throne for Wallis Simpson?
On 3 December, the day after the story broke, Wallis had fled to the south of France to stay with friends. She was a resourceful woman: she had survived an abusive first marriage and had travelled extensively through Europe and Asia. But she had sensed a “mounting menace in the very atmosphere” and felt close to a nervous breakdown. Once away from England, she became aware that Edward, who had by now been told by Baldwin that a morganatic marriage was impossible, had decided to abdicate. She tried to stop him. On 7 December, she issued a statement to the press – that she was willing to renounce the king. Baldwin was unnerved: “Only time I was frightened. I thought [the king] might change his mind”. He quickly sent a telegram to the Dominion prime ministers, stating that he had “every reason for doubting bona fides of Mrs Simpson’s statement”.
- Retiring royals: 9 rulers and royals who stepped down through history
- Love before duty: the story of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson
Edward stood firm in his decision to go. On 10 December, knowing Baldwin was going to make an announcement to the House of Commons, Edward sent him a note, asking him to tell the House of Mrs Simpson’s efforts to prevent him from giving up the throne. Horace Wilson pinned a note of his own to the one Edward had sent: “I asked the PM whether he had any intention of mentioning Mrs Simpson (If he had, [I] was quite willing to draft appropriate passages!). The PM said he would make no reference”.
On 11 December, Edward gave his own speech to the nation, which Churchill had helped him to write. It had become impossible for him, he said, “to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love”. Wallis listened in France, lying on a sofa with her eyes closed. “Darling,” she wrote to him afterwards, “I want to see you touch you I want to run my own house I want to be married and to you”.
They were finally married on 3 June 1937, in France. But the new king, George VI, forbade any of Edward’s brothers or his sister from attending the wedding. Then he sent word that the title of HRH – Her Royal Highness – would not be extended to Wallis. She would be simply Duchess of Windsor. It was a wounding blow to Edward – and it meant that in the end, his marriage to Wallis was morganatic. “I hope you will never regret this sacrifice,” Wallis wrote to Edward, “and that your brother will prove to the world that we still have a position and that you will be given some jobs to do”.
But this was not to be. The couple made repeated requests for useful employment, but were turned down. It was feared in court circles that, as Horace Wilson told Neville Chamberlain in December 1936, Mrs Simpson intended “not only to come back here but… to set up a ‘Court’ of her own and – there can be little doubt – do her best to make things uncomfortable for the new occupant of the Throne. It must not be assumed that she has abandoned hope of becoming Queen of England”.
“I think you know,” wrote George VI in December 1938 to Chamberlain, now prime minister, “that neither the Queen [Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother] nor Queen Mary have any desire to meet the Duchess of Windsor”. Churchill observed sadly of the Duchess of Windsor, “No-one has been more victimised by gossip and scandal”.
The ugly rumours lingered on, even beyond Wallis’s death in 1986. In a sense, they became worse, because the establishment’s perception of Wallis in 1936 prevailed, eclipsing the sympathetic view of ordinary people at the time. It is maintained that a China Dossier exists, listing sexual tricks learnt by Wallis in Shanghai, which she had used to ensnare the king – but nothing has been found in any archive. The allegation that she was a Nazi agent is still current, even though there is no reliable evidence in either the British or the German national archives.
In 2005, Prince Charles married Camilla Parker-Bowles, a divorcee, on the very morganatic basis denied to Edward: Camilla became Duchess of Cornwall and was styled HRH. If this solution could be achieved for Charles and Camilla, then why had it not been possible for Edward and Wallis? “I am profoundly grieved at what has happened,” wrote Churchill to Lloyd George on Christmas Day 1936. “I believe the Abdication to have been altogether premature and probably quite unnecessary.”
Susan Williams is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, and author of The People's King: The True Story of the Abdication (Penguin Books, 2003).
This article was first published in the December 2006 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> Dr Seán Lang <![CDATA[Retiring royals: 9 rulers and royals who stepped down through history]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/retiring-royals-rulers-who-stepped-down-through-history-kaiser-wilhem-ii-anne-cleves-edward-viii/ 2025-02-14T14:46:10.000Z 2020-01-09T10:19:44.000Z Prince Andrew’s decision in December 2019 to step back from his royal duties, in light of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal – and now the news that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan will "step back" from their roles as senior royals – is far from the only time a royal or a ruler has, whether willingly or not, stepped down from power and out of the public eye.
Probably the most famous royal retirement was Shakespeare’s King Lear, though few would think him a particularly encouraging role model. Leading politicians sometimes step down unexpectedly – US president Lyndon B Johnson’s decision in 1968 not to seek re-election took his supporters by surprise, as did Harold Wilson’s unexpected resignation as prime minister, most probably on health grounds, in 1976. More typical are leaders who seem determined to keep hold of power, either hanging on (like Churchill and Thatcher) or else storming back out of retirement, like Gladstone.
- ‘Royal Family’: the fly-on-the-wall documentary the Palace doesn’t want you to see
- A brief guide to the British royal family, by The Crown’s historian Robert Lacey
Of course, many rulers have been forced from power against their will, and by no means did all of the following examples give up their power voluntarily. However, here are nine rulers and royals who acquiesced in giving up their power.
Cincinnatus (5th century BC)
The story of the Roman leader Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus has been much mythologised, but scholars agree that he was a real person and that his main claim to fame, his victory over the Italic Aequi people, did actually happen.
According to tradition as recounted by the Roman historian Livy, the Aequi, a neighbouring Latin people seeking to expand their territory at Rome’s expense, had cornered a Roman army under Minucius at Mount Algidus, in the Alban hills south east of Rome. If they took the height, they would be in a position to strike at the city itself. According to the constitution of republican Rome, in an emergency – which the Aequian invasion unquestionably was – the Senate could appoint an individual as dictator, with full military and political powers to deal with the situation. There was always the risk, of course, that the dictator might choose to keep hold of the powers after the emergency was over, but the Romans put their trust in a shared sense of civic duty to prevent that happening. In the case of Cincinnatus, called out of retirement on his farm to save the Republic, that trust proved well-founded. In a lightning campaign he routed the Aequi and relieved Minucius and his men; he then returned to Rome, resigned the dictatorship and returned to his farm – and all within 16 days.
The story of Cincinnatus was much embellished by later writers as an example of Republican selflessness and virtue – the city of Cincinnati in the United States is named after him. Not all historians approve of Cincinnatus’s unapologetically pro-patrician and anti-plebeian outlook, but he is a rare example of a leader who held supreme power and voluntarily gave it up.
Anne of Cleves (1515–1557)
It might be stretching definitions a bit to say that Anne of Cleves retired from the Queenship. Both Anne and Katharine of Aragon had their marriages to Henry VIII declared null and void – but Anne certainly acquiesced in the arrangement more than Henry’s other spouse did.
The marriage had been arranged by Thomas Cromwell to tie England to the Protestant princes of Germany as a counter-balance to what looked likely to be an anti-English alliance of the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor. Contrary to the often-repeated story, Henry was probably not so dismayed by her features that he compared her to a Flanders mare – the first mention of that story is from the 17th century. However, there were doubts about Anne’s marital status: she had been betrothed to the son of the Duke of Lorraine, and the ambassadors from the Duchy of Cleves were suspiciously dilatory about providing written evidence that a marriage between the pair had ever taken place. Henry’s concern about Anne’s appearance, indeed, was not her face, which seems in fact to have been quite attractive, but her full figure, which he thought more suggestive of a married woman than of an unmarried virgin.
In addition, the political threat from France and the Empire seemed to be receding, which rather negated the whole point of the marriage. Henry had already fallen for the ill-fated Catherine Howard anyway, and it also seems likely that his marriage to Anne had revealed his embarrassing inability to consummate it. In the end, the uncertainty surrounding Anne’s marital status provided the grounds for an annulment; Henry also seized the opportunity to have Cromwell executed, in effect for having suggested it in the first place.
Anne chose to remain in England and was provided for quite generously, though she was also kept under careful watch. She seems to have got on rather better with Henry after the marriage than during it, and there was even speculation that she might re-marry Henry after the fall of Catherine Howard.
However, her retirement from the court proved a difficult and frustrating time; she never learned to speak English well and she missed her homeland. After Henry’s marriage to Catherine Parr she had no real role to fulfil: as queen, Catherine was both wife to Henry and a mother-figure to his children. Under Edward VI, Anne lost much of the property with which Henry had endowed her and long negotiations to improve her position or allow for her return to Germany proved fruitless. Hers was a sad and lonely retirement, though she was aware of her good fortune in escaping the fate of Catherine Howard, the woman who had replaced her only to end up executed.
Emperor Charles V (1500–1558)
In 1557, the emperor Charles V, who held the titles of Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, Duke of Burgundy and lord of territories from north Africa to the New World, announced that he was stepping down and retiring to a monastery to spend the rest of his days in prayer and contemplation. His decision took Europe by surprise – though, looking at his life story, it is not difficult to see why he had had enough. His whole life had been one of constant battle on every front: geographical, political and religious.
Charles had first inherited the Habsburg title to the duchy of Burgundy, which consisted essentially of the Low Countries, before inheriting the throne of Spain through his mother in 1516. Three years later he was elected Holy Roman Emperor by the princes of Germany. He inherited vast territories: in addition to Spain, Burgundy and the leadership of Germany, he ruled the Habsburg dynastic lands in central Europe and Spain’s recent conquests in Italy, North Africa and the New World. However, these territories brought their own conflicts. Both as king of Spain and as king of Hungary and its dependent territories, Charles found himself in the front line of resistance against the relentless and seemingly unstoppable expansion of the Ottoman Empire. His Spanish title also brought with it a similarly unending war with his great rival, Francis I of France, who was seeking to expand France’s frontiers into Italy. His Spanish title embroiled him in Henry VIII’s quarrel with the Pope, since Queen Katharine of Aragon was his aunt and he resented the insult both to his family and to the Church that Henry’s annulment of the marriage would entail.
However, the conflict that took the heaviest toll on Charles was the Protestant challenge to the Church posed by the German monk, Martin Luther. As German Emperor, Charles granted Luther safe conduct to state his case at the 1521 Diet of Worms [an imperial meeting to determine Luther’s fate], but thereafter he sought to eradicate Lutheranism, by force if need be. However, a number of German princes rallied to Luther’s defence: they took the name ‘Protestant’ from their formal protest against Charles’s ban on Luther and his ideas. The war with the Protestant princes dragged on through Charles’s reign: as a devout Catholic, Charles took his duty as a Christian ruler very seriously, and he was deeply disappointed at having to sign a compromise peace with them at Augsburg in 1555. He was even more grieved by the hostility sometimes shown him by the papacy, some of whose rulers regarded him as a rival for their claim to the leadership of the Catholic world. Exhausted and convinced he had failed in his duty to God, Charles divided his realms between his son Philip, who received the Netherlands and Spain, and his brother Ferdinand, who received the Empire and the Habsburg dynastic lands, and retired to the monastery of Yuste in Spain.
In retirement, Charles kept in touch with events, but he turned his thoughts towards death and the passing of time: his room was lined with clocks. He died a sad and disappointed man, broken by a role that was too big for him – or, probably, anyone.
James II (1633–1701)
King James VII of Scotland and II of England would be spitting with fury at being included in this list, because in his own eyes he did not stand down at all: he was forced out by the illegal foreign invasion and palace coup normally known to history as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. However, a key element in the story of 1688 was the contention that James had not been overthrown at all – but had abdicated the throne. It was, therefore, empty when Parliament chose to fill it with James’s daughter, Princess Mary, and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, whose invasion force had forced James to flee his own kingdom. Although this idea of abdication was clearly a convenient fiction, it did form the constitutional basis for the revolution, and therefore qualifies James for inclusion here.
- A king without a crown: James VII and II’s years in exile
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James was the brother and therefore heir of Charles II, who regained the throne in 1660 after the end of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate but who, while perfectly capable of producing children with his many mistresses, proved incapable of producing a legitimate child with his wife. What alarmed the English court, however, was James’s conversion to Catholicism: it was widely feared that a Catholic monarch would not only seek to turn all of England Catholic but would turn the country into a puppet state of the papacy and of King Louis XIV of France. When it was reported that there was a vast Catholic conspiracy to kill the king and bring about a Catholic take-over, leading politicians launched a determined attempt to exclude James from the succession to the throne; the threat was only finally defeated when the plot was finally revealed to be totally without foundation.
As king, James actually allowed French Protestant Huguenot fleeing persecution in France to settle in England, but his insistence on allowing toleration for Catholics seriously alarmed the political establishment. When a son was born to his Catholic Queen, Mary of Modena, the prospect of a Catholic line of succession to the throne prompted Parliament to act. It negotiated with William of Orange for a Dutch invasion force to land in Devon and James rapidly found support for him melting away. The most convenient outcome for William and Princess Mary was for James to vacate the throne and escape the country: they did not want him lingering on in prison. James’s first attempt to flee was frustrated when he was recognised and detained; he had to be ‘allowed’ to escape a second time and this time he got away to France.
He was granted sanctuary in France by Louis XIV, who placed the Chateau of St-Germain-en-Laye at his disposal. His attempt to regain his throne via an invasion of Ireland was defeated at the battle of the Boyne in 1690 and thereafter he lived his days in a sort of courtly limbo, maintaining the fiction that he was still king and attracting the support of ‘Jacobites’ (from Jacobus, Latin for James) who calculated that either he or his son, ‘James III’, might be able to return to power in London. As long as they remained Catholic, that was never going to happen.
Charles X of France (1757–1836)
Charles, Count of Artois, was the younger brother of two French kings, Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, and all three brothers learned what it was to be overthrown. Louis XVI had lost his throne (and his head) during the French Revolution, and his two brothers, the Counts of Provence and of Artois, fled, settling eventually in England. The two brothers’ responses to their long exile were significantly different. The Count of Provence sought to learn lessons for France from Britain’s constitutional monarchy, and when he returned to France in 1814 as King Louis XVIII after Napoleon’s fall, he sought to heal the divisions of the revolution period by instituting a royal Charter guaranteeing many of the rights that the French had established for themselves during the revolution. Louis XVIII was forced to flee when Napoleon briefly returned to power in 1815, but on his return, he instituted his more moderate form of monarchy, hoping to avoid making the same sort of mistakes that had led to the revolution of 1789.
His brother the Count of Artois, however, drew the exact opposite conclusion from his experiences in exile. He thought the revolution and Napoleon’s regime demonstrated that the legitimate form of monarchy should be reinstated quite unapologetically, showing no mercy to those who had overthrown his brother or who sought to introduce constitutional rule in France. In 1820, Artois’s son, the Duke de Berry, was assassinated; Artois took this as a sign that liberals and Bonapartists posed a serious threat to the monarchy and should be dealt with severely. When he came to throne in 1824 as King Charles X, he determined to give his full support to the reactionary ‘Ultras’, who sought to suppress liberty of speech and free political assembly.
In the short-term Charles X had some success. He made use of the elected Assembly that Louis XVIII had granted, to compensate nobles who had lost lands in the revolution and to strengthen the position of the Church, and by 1830, faced with a hostile Assembly, he sought in effect to by-pass it and rule by his own authority. Street protests in July 1830 grew dangerous, especially when they were joined by some of his troops, and Charles X had to withdraw his family to Versailles for their own safety. Faced with a full-scale revolution, and possibly not wanting to cause more bloodshed, he decided to abdicate in favour of his grandson, the Count of Chambord. However, his cousin, the Duke of Orleans, had already declared himself King Louis Philippe , meaning Charles and his family were forced to flee into exile in England.
Charles’s enforced retirement was not a happy time; he settled in Edinburgh before eventually moving to Prague. He had a difficult relationship with his widowed daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Berry, and he found it difficult to get a permanent home in Habsburg territory. He died in 1836, victim of a cholera outbreak.
Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882)
Giuseppe Garibaldi was a professional soldier of great personal charisma, one of the most gifted guerrilla leaders of the 19th century. He learned his military craft fighting alongside nationalist rebels in South America, but the cause closest to his heart was the liberation of Italy.
The idea of overthrowing the Austrian-backed regimes in the Italian states and establishing a single Italian state was pioneered by the political theorist Giuseppe Mazzini. Mazzini conceived of Europe as a federation of nation states, and he wanted the Italians to give a lead in the process. After failed uprisings in 1820 and 1830, the major opportunity for nationalists to achieve Mazzini’s vision came in the great year of European revolution, 1848, when Italy was rocked by constitutional revolts, from Sicily and Naples through to Piedmont in the north. The revolts were centred on cities, especially Milan, Venice and Rome, and each was declared a republic, in a revival of the old Italian city states of the middle ages, as a precursor, they hoped, to the creation of a large united Italian kingdom. However, the Austrians, whose control of Italy the rebels were hoping to break, proved too strong for them, and by the summer of 1848 the risings were beginning to crumble. One of the last to hold out was Rome, under the command of Garibaldi, fresh from fighting against the Austrians in Milan.
Garibaldi’s defence of the Roman Republic became a celebrated tale of heroism against the odds: his enemy this time was not the Austrians but French forces sent by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to put Pope Pius IX firmly back in control of the Eternal City. After heavy fighting Garibaldi was forced to withdraw. He headed northwards, hoping to join the resistance in Venice, which was still holding out, but he was forced to leave Italy. In a moment much loved by romancers, his wife Anita, who had accompanied him on campaign, died in his arms.
There followed a long period of exile, much of it spent in the United States and England. But in 1859 the state of Piedmont, with support from France, launched an attack on the Austrians that gave it control not only of Lombardy, but also of the smaller states of northern Italy. Garibaldi was angry with the Piedmontese for allowing the French to take over his home town of Nizza (Nice), but in 1860 he asked the Piedmontese government for help to take advantage of a separatist revolt that had broken out in Sicily. The Piedmontese prime minister, Count Cavour, cautiously agreed to provide Garibaldi’s army of a thousand ‘redshirts’ with some antiquated guns and equipment, and, to general astonishment, Garibaldi launched a successful invasion, establishing himself as dictator of Sicily, nominally in the name of the King of Piedmont, before crossing the Straits of Medina and ousting the King of Naples too. Alarmed that Garibaldi, a committed republican, might invade the Papal States and re-establish a republic in Rome, Cavour and the King of Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel II, decided to strike first: they launched an invasion of the Pope’s territories and finally met up with Garibaldi at Teano. There Garibaldi handed his conquests over to the king, recognising that a united Italy would be a kingdom, and retired, Cincinnatus-like, to his farm on the island of Caprera, accepting only a packet of seeds as payment for his services.
In fact, Garibaldi did not fade out into retirement: two years later he launched a military attack on the French garrison that still occupied Rome, and he led troops in Piedmont’s successful 1866 war with Austria to get hold of Venice. He took a keen interest in political developments in France, after the fall of his enemy Napoleon III, and he was elected to the Italian Parliament. But his days of power and influence were behind him and he died in 1882 on Caprera, his memory kept alive by popular cheap portrait busts and the biscuit named after him.
Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859–1941)
Kaiser Wilhelm II’s abdication at the end of the First World War was one of the most reluctant in history: it had been demanded as a condition of peace by the American president, Woodrow Wilson, but the kaiser tried to side-step the demand with the ingenious but unacceptable idea that he should abdicate as kaiser but remain king of the German state of Prussia. In the end the German Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden (himself the kaiser’s cousin) simply announced that the kaiser had abdicated, even though he hadn’t, as a way of forcing the issue, almost daring the kaiser to deny it. He didn’t and headed instead into exile in the Netherlands.
Imperial Germany had been based on the authority of the German Emperor and Wilhelm took his role very seriously, frequently driving his ministers to distraction with his maverick and often damaging interventions in German foreign policy. He had caused immense strain in relations with Great Britain with his support for the South African Boers and a disastrous interview with the Daily Telegraph in 1908. He took close interest and immense pride in the expansion of the German navy, which was correctly seen as a challenge to Britain’s naval supremacy, and when war came in 1914 he relished his role as ‘Supreme War Lord’, though his role was essentially ceremonial; his generals largely ignored his attempts to direct strategy. He was an enthusiastic supporter of unrestricted submarine warfare, which his chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, correctly predicted would bring the United States into the war.
President Wilson’s view was that the war was the product of aristocratic-dominated political and social system operating in European states, and that the only way to prevent future wars would be to recalibrate the continent along democratic lines. In the case of Germany, that would mean dismantling the monarchy and establishing a democratic government which, it was hoped, would never embark on the sort of aggressive war that had marked Imperial Germany’s approach to foreign affairs. For that reason, he made the removal of the kaiser a pre-requisite for the armistice the Germans requested in 1918, after the defeat of their forces in the field. By the autumn of 1918 the patience of the German people with the war was at breaking point in any case: revolution had broken out in Berlin and other cities and the German socialists and communists were making a bid for power. There was no enthusiasm in the army high command for a republic, but no one could ignore the way the Romanov imperial family had been murdered by the Russian Bolsheviks earlier the same year: they concluded that the kaiser would have to go, and for his own safety he would be well advised to get out of Germany.
He lived out his years of exile at Doorn in the Netherlands. He never entirely gave up his dream of returning to Germany, though this was ruled out both by the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime. He kept in touch with political events in Germany and developed a deep admiration for Adolf Hitler. It was also during his exile that he gave full expression to his deep antisemitism. Not surprisingly, he welcomed the German forces which invaded the Netherlands in 1940 and was treated by them in turn with respect. He died in 1941, an unrepentant German expansionist.
Edward VIII (1894–1972)
The abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 is probably the most celebrated example in modern times of a ruler deciding voluntarily, albeit under pressure, to step down. As Prince of Wales David (as he was then known) had been a very popular figure, something of an international celebrity, and it was widely hoped that he would bring a breath of fresh air to a monarchy that had begun to look rather tired and remote under George V and Queen Mary. Even George V’s radio broadcasts at Christmas could not compete with the impact of the new king’s visit to unemployed miners in South Wales, whose poverty clearly moved him as he assured them that “something will be done for you”.
- Edward VIII: Nazi sympathiser, playboy prince or peace-loving reformer?
- Edward VIII: How war scarred the playboy prince
What the public did not know, though anyone who moved in court circles was well aware of it, was the new king’s relationship with the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. As Prince of Wales he had tended to enter into relationships with married women, though this was kept from public attention: there was still widespread disapproval of divorce. The relationship mattered because when George V died in 1936 it soon became clear that the new king intended to marry his lover and make her his queen. Constitutionally there was no objection to an American queen but there was to a divorcee: Edward VIII would be Supreme Governor of the Church of England, which denied divorced people full communion and made it clear it would refuse to accept such a marriage. Since Edward refused to accept other suggestions, such as a morganatic marriage by which she would be married to him but not become queen, and the Dominions made it clear they would not accept him as their king if he insisted on marrying Mrs Simpson, the prime minister Stanley Baldwin had no alternative: the king would have to go. Edward put his private wishes before his public duty and became the first British monarch to sign an Instrument of Abdication.
At the time the public, which had not known the full story of his private life, was confused and angry: it was widely felt that the king should be free to marry whomsoever he wished. However, his brother, the Duke of York, who assumed the throne as King George VI, quickly proved a popular figure, especially in the war that followed shortly afterwards.
Edward married Wallis and they paid a much-publicised visit to Nazi Germany, where they were warmly received by Hitler. This has led to speculation that Edward was a Nazi sympathiser and might have played the role of puppet king had the Germans occupied Britain. The pair narrowly escaped from France and in 1940 were packed off to the Bahamas, where Edward was appointed governor, essentially to keep him out of the way.
The former king was made Duke of Windsor, a royal title that had the (intended) effect of preventing him from standing for election to the House of Commons; his wife Wallis, however, was not given the royal title of Her Royal Highness though she was made Duchess of Windsor. Elizabeth, George VI’s consort, never forgave Wallis Simpson for the abdication and for forcing her husband into the role of king. Edward and Wallis spent most of their retirement in Paris, still bitter about what they saw as their unfair treatment at the hands of the British establishment – though many nowadays think the abdication saved Britain from a highly unsuitable monarch.
Pope Benedict XVI (1927–)
In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI surprised the world by announcing he was going to step down and make way for a successor. The last pope to abdicate was Gregory XII in 1415, whose resignation was needed to end the long schism that had seen the Catholic Church split between two, and even on occasion three, rival popes. The right of popes to resign was established by Pope Celestine V in 1294; he promptly took advantage of it and tried to retire to his monastery, though his successor, Boniface VIII, had him imprisoned to prevent any chance of his changing his mind and reclaiming his title.
Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had been a powerful figure in the Roman Curia under the papacy of John Paul II, and was widely tipped as his successor. He was known as a conservative figure and a strong critic of modern secular values, though he also came under criticism for blaming the clerical abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in recent years on the sexual liberation of the 1960s.
There is still much speculation about Benedict XVI’s surprise decision to retire. He had only been elected pope eight years previously and had seemed an energetic figure, especially after the painfully visible frailty of his predecessor. He gave failing health as his reason, though there has inevitably been speculation that other factors were involved. His successor, Pope Francis, was elected a month after Benedict’s announcement and, although Francis is the only actual pope, Benedict still wears the papal white robes and is still referred to as Your Holiness.
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Edward VIII: Nazi sympathiser, playboy prince or peace-loving reformer?]]> https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/real-edward-viii-nazi-sympathiser-reformer-soldier/ 2023-11-09T10:15:49.000Z 2019-02-28T09:31:00.000Z Edward VIII – playboy, Nazi sympathiser, the king who abandoned his throne to marry Wallis Simpson: is that all there is left to say about the man who once reigned over the 400 million inhabitants of the British Empire? The truth, I would argue, is more complicated and far more intriguing.
Named Prince of Wales in 1911 on his 16th birthday, shortly after his father George V’s accession to the throne, Edward was an insecure and vulnerable man, caught up in a constant struggle to come to terms with his royal status. In his youth, two formative experiences had deeply influenced his world view. As a junior officer in the First World War he mixed with ordinary men and women and served on the western front, although he was not allowed to fight. The trauma of those years left him with the profound conviction that Britain should never go to war with Germany again, and it was this belief which underlay his support for the appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s.
Read more:
- Edward VIII: How war scarred the playboy prince (subscription)
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After the conflict, while on his first overseas tour in 1919, the prince visited the USA and was captivated by the modernity, confidence and raw power of the country as it strode onto the world stage. By 1918 most of the European monarchies had been swept away, and it was clear that if the House of Windsor was to survive in the post-war world it would have to become more modern and democratic.
His wartime encounters with American troops and his visits to the USA after the war had a powerful impact on him, and this growing affinity with America helped to shape his innovative approach to his royal role. In the process he developed a more informal, democratic style of monarchy better suited to the modern age.
The happy prince?
Edward’s personality presents a puzzling contradiction. On one hand he was a royal prince with all the sense of entitlement and superiority which that implied. On the other, his memoirs show he was beset from his early youth by the feeling he was not worthy of the role into which he had been born. It was an unstable combination, and accounts for much of the moodiness and depression that were a feature of his life.
At the end of his memoirs Edward wrote that, as Prince of Wales, he was “obsessed with the desire to be found worthy, and to share in the risks and struggles of men”. However, his royal status isolated him from other people, and made it impossible for him to establish normal human relationships. The ‘job’ of Prince of Wales, as he regarded it, deprived him of the freedom to lead the kind of life which he would otherwise have chosen. It was not a role which he identified with and embraced as part of his royal destiny, but one which he assumed with reluctance, and which he felt was alien to his true self. The shy, insecure, private ‘David’ [as he was known to his family and close friends] was trapped in the glare of the spotlight as Edward, Prince of Wales, the smiling prince, the symbol of the nation’s hopes.
The pressures of his role sometimes became too much for him, and he fell prey to depression and thoughts of suicide. Writing to his mistress Freda Dudley Ward while on tour in Australia in 1920, he wrote: “I honestly don’t think I can face another [tour] like this one without going quite mad; I honestly want to die as soon as we are together again.”
Over the years Edward adopted various strategies to cope with his life as Prince of Wales, particularly the habit of ‘inner emigration’. This involved outward compliance with the demands of his royal ‘job’ while retreating as often as he could into his private world, which reflected his own Americanised tastes and interests. One of Edward’s favourite forms of ‘inner emigration’ was American jazz. In spite of its subversive, ‘un-English’ qualities, or perhaps because of them, Edward quickly fell in love with jazz. One of his favourite performers was the American bandleader Paul Whiteman, who toured Britain with his jazz orchestra in 1923, which was when Edward regularly attended his late-night sets at fashionable London clubs. An American reporter who came to interview Whiteman described a typical evening in a club, filled with the cream of London society in formal evening dress. As the reporter chatted with Whiteman between sets, Edward was sitting at a nearby table with Dudley Ward, smoking a huge cigar. The orchestra played until 2am; Edward danced every dance with his mistress, and when the club closed, Whiteman’s musicians accompanied the prince’s entourage to a private club where the party continued until daybreak.
Read more:
- Edward VIII: a king at war with his country (subscription)
- The vilification of Wallis Simpson (subscription)
A supporter of social welfare
If Edward acquired a reputation as a pleasure-loving prince during the ‘Roaring Twenties’, with the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s he found a completely new role. He threw himself energetically into campaigns to alleviate the effects of unemployment and to improve social conditions, particularly regarding housing. In January 1932, with unemployment levels of nearly three million, the prince confronted the crisis in a major speech at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was a stirring call to the young people of Britain to volunteer for service in bringing relief and support to the unemployed.
The response to the prince’s appeal, which was broadcast on the radio, was immediate and overwhelming. Offers of assistance flooded in; by the end of 1933 some 2,300 centres had been opened, catering for a quarter of a million people. Edward followed up his speech with tours of the ‘distressed areas’ in Tyneside, Yorkshire, the Midlands, Wales and Scotland, and made frequent visits to clubs and schemes for the unemployed. At the end of one tour of Wales, the prince was so exhausted that he fell asleep on the shoulder of the official accompanying him and had to be nudged awake from time to time to acknowledge the cheers of children lining the roadside.
Of course, Edward was not the only member of the royal family to concern himself with social issues. But where he diverged from the conventional doctrine of the post-Victorian monarchy was in his vehement condemnation of social deprivation and his demands for action. Rather than confining himself to charitable works and pious platitudes, he sought practical solutions.
Although the prince exercised no political power, his prominent position and popularity enabled him to influence the debate on the great issues of the day. Like US president Franklin Roosevelt with his ‘fireside chats’, Edward was quick to appreciate the potential of radio as a platform from which to promote his agenda. As Prince of Wales he made more than 50 radio broadcasts – far more than any other public figure at the time. Some were straightforward charity appeals, but others, like a speech on slum clearance in May 1933, were direct attempts to influence government policy. In doing so he caused controversy, breaking the royal code of political impartiality by implicitly criticising the government of the day for its failure to act.
Read more:
- Retaining the royals: why has the British monarchy survived – and thrived?
- The real history behind ‘The Crown’ with Robert Lacey
Among the worst affected areas were Glasgow and Clydeside in Scotland, where the Depression had brought shipbuilding to a standstill. Work on the Cunarder 534 – the future Queen Mary – had been halted in 1931, throwing thousands of men out of work. Before making a visit there in 1933, Edward was keen to find out what conditions in the city were actually like. He invited David Kirkwood, the republican socialist who represented the Clydeside constituency of Dumbarton, to a meeting. They had a long talk during which Kirkwood made a passionate plea for a government loan to finance the completion of the Queen Mary. Kirkwood was impressed by the prince’s openness and sincerity: “I have never talked to any man in my life who was more eager to know just what the workers were thinking,” he later recalled. “It was as if we were on a ship in a storm, when class and creed and caste are forgotten.” The meeting converted Kirkwood from being an outspoken republican to an enthusiastic monarchist. The government’s subsequent decision to subsidise the building of the Queen Mary was most likely due to the prince’s intervention. Certainly, he paid close attention to the progress of the project, inspecting the vessel four times in the next three years.
Britain’s relationship with Germany
Edward was equally interventionist in foreign affairs, driven by his conviction that another war should be avoided at all costs. In the mid-1930s he consistently sought to promote good relations with Germany. Controversially, in 1935 he made a speech to the British Legion suggesting a visit of reconciliation to Germany, which may have directly impacted the Anglo-German Naval Agreement that was being negotiated at the same time.
Even after his abdication in 1936, Edward continued to be an outspoken advocate of peace. In spring 1939, as Europe appeared to be sliding ever-closer to war, the US radio network NBC invited Edward, now styled ‘the Dukeof Windsor’, to deliver a worldwide radio appeal for peace. They agreed that Edward should use a forthcoming visit to Verdun, the scene of a great First World War battle, as a platform for the occasion. Speaking in a private capacity, from his experience as a soldier of the Great War, Edward urged the political leaders of the world to set aside purely national interests and work together for peace. Its solemn tone reflected the many speeches which the duke had given at war memorials and Armistice Day parades in his years as Prince of Wales: “As I talk to you from this historic place, I am deeply conscious of the presence of the great company of the dead,” he said.
Overall, it was a polished rhetorical performance, and it was enthusiastically received in the USA. Unfortunately, the duke’s speech coincided with the departure of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth for a tour of Canada and the United States, and the BBC refused to carry the broadcast for fear of upstaging them. The Germans ignored the appeal, and France also declined to broadcast the speech, so that in the end it was only heard in the USA. In the grim international climate of 1939, the duke’s appeal appeared naive and redolent of the failed policy of appeasement.
Was Edward VIII a Nazi sympathiser?
Much has been made of Edward’s Nazi sympathies, and his posthumous reputation has suffered badly as a result. However, while Edward was foolish and naive about Hitler (as he later admitted in an interview with an American newspaper in 1966), he was by no means alone in adopting a sympathetic approach towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
Far more significant and enduring was his lifelong enthusiasm for America, and his conviction that international peace and stability rested on the Anglo-American alliance. As early as 1919, more than a quarter of a century before Churchill spoke of the “special relationship”, Edward wrote: “We just must be closely allied with the USA, closer than we are now, and it must be lasting, and they are very keen about it.” It was fundamental to his world view, and he consistently repeated the belief throughout his life.
In 1935, with the prospect of another European war looming, Edward told an American journalist that the peace of the world depended on the friendly association of the two countries. In 1945, when offering his services as a goodwill ambassador to the USA, he wrote to his brother King George: “I am convinced that there can be no lasting peace for mankind unless [Britain and the USA] preserve a common approach to international politics.”
Read more:
Edward’s reign, which was abruptly ended by his abdication in December 1936, was too short to tell whether he would have been able to remould the monarchy in his own image. Building on his policy interventions as Prince of Wales, he appears to have envisaged a more active, even ‘presidential’ style of kingship, affording him more political and diplomatic involvement than was traditionally owed to the monarch under the British Constitution. He would undoubtedly have supported the policy of appeasement of Germany and pressed for a closer American alliance. In the domestic sphere he would have lobbied governments for more activist economic policies along Keynesian lines.
As it turned out, his romantic obsession with Wallis Simpson outweighed his desire to implement the modernisation of the British monarchy. Because of his determination to marry an American divorcée, he was unable to articulate the case for change in the face of the conservative forces of church and state arrayed against him.
King Edward VIII: An American Life by Ted Powell is available now (Oxford University Press, £25)
This article was first published on HistoryExtra in September 2018.
]]> HistoryExtra <![CDATA[Spying on the king: when MI5 targeted Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson]]> https://www.historyextra.com/membership/spying-on-the-king-when-mi5-targeted-edward-viii-and-wallis-simpson/ 2025-02-14T15:28:26.000Z 2017-04-06T09:01:00.000Z In January 1936, Edward VIII became king following the death of his father George V. However, many in the British establishment were concerned about the playboy lifestyle and political leanings of the new king. By November 1936, Edward had told prime minister Stanley Baldwin of his determination to marry American socialite Wallis Simpson, who was deemed entirely unsuitable as a future queen by many. Not only was she American, she was – more significantly – twice divorced. As Edward refused to budge on the matter, a constitutional crisis seemed increasingly inevitable.
We spoke to intelligence historian Rory Cormac, and the series’ director Paul Elston, to find out more…
Why did the British intelligence services decide to conduct a surveillance operation against the head of state, Edward VIII, in 1936?
Rory Cormac: This was a period of great uncertainty. Internationally, war was on the horizon and debates about appeasement and the rise of fascism were dominating Europe. At the same time, there were serious questions being asked about Edward’s suitability for the role of king. Edward was known as the ‘playboy prince’, while his desire to marry Wallis – an American divorcee – threatened Britain with a constitutional crisis.
Concern about Edward’s relationship with Wallis developed gradually. The issue started off as a family feud, which MI5 would not have got involved in. However, the stakes became higher after Edward’s father George V died and the ‘playboy prince’ became king.
This was when prime minister Stanley Baldwin asked MI5 to begin surveillance on Edward. Spying on the head of state is one of the most controversial things you can ask an intelligence agency to do and Sir Vernon Kell [the founder and first director of MI5] did not take it lightly. He was initially skeptical about the operation and had to be convinced that it was indeed an issue of national security and a potential constitutional crisis, not just a matter of personal politics.
There were several things that convinced Kell that an intelligence operation against Wallis and Edward was justified. Firstly, there were security fears that Edward was being blackmailed, because he spent such vast amounts of money on Wallis. Secondly, there were concerns about the some of the people he was associating with: right-wingers or fascist sympathisers such as Oswald Mosley (leader of the British Union of Fascists). There was a worry that those loyal to Edward could try and subvert Baldwin’s government in order to keep him on the throne. Finally, there were serious fears that, whatever happened, the affair could trigger strikes or riots up and down the country.
1936: demonstrators protest against the potential abdication of King Edward VIII. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Why was this operation so significant?
RC: Spying on heads of state is a hugely controversial issue. One of the reasons why this was such as dramatic story is that it placed two of the most fascinating and secretive institutions in Britain – the royal family and the intelligence services – on a unique collision course.
What’s more, this was an unprecedented operation. There are no prior instances of royals being spied on by intelligence services that we know of. The intelligence services were only created in 1909, so at the time of the abdication crisis, they were still in relative infancy.
What exactly did the surveillance operation against Wallis and Edward involve?
RC: The operation involved both human surveillance and what was known as ‘signals intelligence’, or phone tapping.
It started off with small-scale enquiries into Wallis’ background. Then came human surveillance – there were men on the street keeping track of her movements, and watching her apartment to see who was coming and going. After that it got even more intrusive. Special Branch officers began interviewing people who had come into contact with the couple to try and work out the power dynamics of their relationship.
Paul Elston: Interestingly, Edward and Wallis both had bodyguards from Special Branch, when it was the head of Special Branch who was conducting the surveillance operation against them. You can clearly see in the documents what was going on. These bodyguards, who were meant to have Wallis and Edward’s complete confidence, were reporting back to Scotland Yard on the couple’s private conversations, feelings and emotional states. It seems that they were probably listening through doors and noting down every detail of Wallis and Edward’s conversations, because towards the end of the operation, they filed facsimile reports detailing the couples’ phone calls almost verbatim.
The climax of the operation was the phone tap itself. The reason it’s called a ‘wire tap’ is because you had to physically put a wire intercept onto the line, in order to pick up the phone signal. That signal was then diverted to someone else, who was listening in.
The person who carried out these phone taps was a man named Thomas Argyll Robertson, known by his initials as ‘Tar’. He was a very new recruit to MI5 at the time and was picked because he was very close to Sir Vernon Kell, who trusted him absolutely. For an operation like this, you don’t want someone who will gas about it afterwards. During the Second World War, Robertson went on to become the man behind the famous ‘Double Cross’ operation [MI5’s counter-espionage and deception operation in the Second World War], one of the greatest intelligence operations of all time.
Sir Vernon Kell, founder of MI5. Kell did not take the decision to spy on the head of state lightly, says Dr Rory Cormac. (Hulton/Corbis via Getty Images)
We have oral accounts from when Robertson was alive that reveal how he conducted the tapping. He placed the tap in one of the junction boxes in Green Park, opposite Buckingham Palace, and had a little box of tricks – a suitcase with headphones – that allowed him to listen in on the calls. We also think that that call was simultaneously being transmitted to MI5 headquarters, where a number of people were listening in at the same time.
What were MI5 seeking to achieve? Did they want to suppress the story, break up the relationship or just get a better idea of what was going on?
RC: Mainly the latter. Intelligence is incredibly useful in gaining leverage in negotiations. The officers were trying to gain insight into Edward’s state of mind, in order to help Baldwin deal with any negotiations around the abdication.
PE: They also listened in on the future George VI [Edward’s brother who took the throne after he abdicated], in order to get an in-depth idea of what was going on in the palace, and what was going to unfold. They heard Edward telling his brother that he couldn’t carry on anymore and was going throw in the towel. The intelligence services were cock-a-hoop at this, because it was exactly what they wanted to hear. If Edward had dug his heels and said he wasn’t going to abdicate and was going to marry Wallis, then they would have had a constitutional crisis on their hands.
The front page of the London Star, breaking news of King Edward's abdication and his brother's accession to the throne.(Getty Images)
Was the operation legal or not?
PE: It was absolutely legal. Despite what you might expect, it was all done by the book. What’s so interesting is that the whole operation was properly signed off. Then, as now, you had to have a warrant from the home secretary in order to authorise a phone tap in Great Britain. You can see authorisation from home secretary Sir John Simon on the documents we found - it's right there in print.
RC: What's really fascinating about this operation is that it can all be traced back to the centre of power and to Downing Street. It was not done by an over-enthusiastic officer, or a rogue amateur, but came from the prime minister and his inner circle of advisors.
Why has it taken so long for the documents revealing this to come to light?
RC: Even though it happened more than 80 years ago, we are dealing with some of the most sensitive activity that the state can undertake. As we all know, intelligence files are heavily classified. But what less people realise is that files relating to the royal family are just as restricted. So we’re dealing with two of the most secret institutions in Britain.
My co-author Richard J Aldrich and I knew that Stanley Baldwin spent a lot of time and energy thinking about the abdication – it was a big issue for him. Yet when we initially began searching for the files, we were surprised by how few were available. After hunting around, we started to find some Special Branch files, in which they began monitoring Wallis Simpson. From there we followed the paper trail and began some proper archival archaeology, piecing together this narrative using primary sources. That’s what so exciting about the documentary – it’s all backed up with real archival records, which are so hard to find.
Following Edward’s abdication, he married Wallis in June 1937. (Bettmann/Getty)
Do you think that the threat posed to British security was significant enough to justify the operation?
PE: Given all the things that the intelligence services were finding out about Edward – the fact that he was an admirer of Hitler and was having meetings with Mosley – you can understand their concern. Plus, Edward had right-wing press magnates behind him, who supported his marriage to Wallis, which would have caused a massive constitutional crisis. As Rory mentioned, there were even fears of rioting and social unrest. If you look at the operation from that perspective, you can understand why they did it, whether right or wrong.
RC: It’s definitely up for debate. The royals aren’t above the law, and they should be able to be tapped on if they pose a significant enough security threat. With the benefit of hindsight, my personal perspective is that it was justified.
The second episode of Spying on the Royals airs on Channel 4 at 8pm, Sunday 9 April. The first episode is available now on All 4.
Dr Rory Cormac is associate professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham. Paul Elston is the series director of Spying on the Royals.
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