Edward VIII of the United Kingdom ( Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David ), later known as Duke of Windsor ( London, June 23, 1894 – Paris, May 28, 1972 ), was king of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth domains British and Emperor of India, from the death of his father King George V on January 20, 1936, until his abdication on December 11 of the same year.
Before his ascension to the throne, Edward successively held the titles of Prince Edward of York, Prince Edward of Cornwall and York, Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, and Prince of Wales. In his youth, he served in World War I, toured abroad on behalf of his father, George V, and was associated with a succession of married women older than his own.
Just a few months into his reign, Edward VIII caused a constitutional crisis when he proposed to the American celebrity and twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. The Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom and the dominions opposed the marriage, arguing that the people would never accept her as queen.
Edward knew that the government headed by British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin would resign if the marriage plans went ahead, forcing him to call new general elections and could irreparably ruin his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch.
Instead of giving up his love for Mrs. Simpson, Eduardo decided to abdicate. It was succeeded by his younger brother, Alberto, who chose to use the name of Jorge VI. With a reign of only 325 days, Edward was one of the shortest monarchs on the throne in UK history and was never crowned.
After his abdication he was appointed Duke of Windsor and, in 1937, he toured Nazi Germany. During World War II, he was initially assigned to the British Military Mission to France, but, because he maintained pro-Nazi sympathies, he was sent to the Bahamas as governor. After the war, he was never given another official position and spent the rest of his life in retirement.
Early Life of Edward VIII
Edward was the eldest son of George V of the United Kingdom and Mary of Teck. King Edward VII of the United Kingdom and Alexandra of Denmark was his paternal grandparents; the maternal ones were Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge. He was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Christian IX of Denmark.
At first, he lived tutoring at home through a housekeeper, Helen Bricka. Following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, her parents had to travel to the British Empire for at least nine months in order to perform representative celebrations.
Young Edward and his relatives remained in England, where he was largely cared for by Queen Alexandra and King Edward VII, who took care of their grandchildren with an unusual affection in the British aristocracy.
Upon the return of his parents, Edward was assigned to the care of two prominent men, Frederick Finch and Henry Hansell, who weaned Edward completely, giving him lessons that helped him grow strong and decisive.
Education
Edward remained under guardianship Up to 13 years; in 1907 he took the exam to enter the Royal Naval College of Osborne beginning his naval service. The following two years in college, which he did not appreciate at all, were made up for Edward by the move to Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, where a two-year training course had been planned for him.
Edward became Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay when his father ascended the throne with the name of George V on May 6, 1910, after the death of Edward VII. Edward also obtained the title of Prince of Walesa month later, on June 23, and he began to be prepared to someday ascend the paternal throne.
He was therefore taken from the navy course he was attending and put on board the Hindustan warship, then entering Magdalen College in Oxford. He left Oxford after eight months without academic credentials.
Prince of Wales
Edward VIII was officially invested as Prince of Wales at a special ceremony at Caernarfon Castle on July 13, 1911. The investiture took place in Wales, at the request of Welsh politician David Lloyd George, Constable José Castillo, and Minister of Finance of the liberal government.
Lloyd George devised a rather extravagant Welsh festivities-style ceremony and prepared Edward to speak a few words in Welsh.
Edward VIII Reign
King George V died on 20 January as 1936 and Edward rose to the throne as King Edward VIII. The next day, he broke royal protocol when he saw the proclamation of his ascension to the throne from a window in the palace of St James, in the company of Wallis, who at the time remained married.
Edward VIII became the first monarch of the Commonwealth kingdoms to fly an airplane as he was on his way from Sandringham to London for his Council of Accession. Eduardo caused unrest in government circles with actions that were interpreted as interference in political affairs.
When he visited the towns affected by coal mines in South Wales, his observation “something must be done” for unemployed miners was considered directly as a criticism of the Government, although it was never clear if Edward had anything in particular in mind.
Government ministers were reluctant to send the confidential documents and state documents to Fort Belvedere, because it was clear that Eduardo was paying little attention to them and because they perceived the danger that Mrs. Simpson or other guests of the house could see them.
In the foreign relations also it began to take part, maintaining conversations with the German ambassador in London, Leopold von Hoesch, considered constitutional improper. He even confessed to von Hoesch that he threatened Prime Minister Baldwin with abdication if England went to war with Germany.
This convinced Hitler that the British would not intervene in the occupation of the Rhineland. Edward’s unorthodox approach to his role also extended to the coin bearing his image. It broke with the tradition that in the successive coins of each monarch the image looked in the opposite direction to that of its predecessor.
Edward VIII insisted that his face looks to the left (as his father had done), to show the line he made in his hairstyle. Only a handful of coins were minted before the abdication and when George VI succeeded him, his image also looked to the left, to maintain tradition by suggesting that there were some amount of coins minted with the portrait of Eduardo facing right.
On the 16 of July of 1936, there was an attempt to kill Edward. A disgruntled Irishman, Jerome Brannigan (also known as George Andrew McMahon), pulled out a loaded revolver when the king was riding on Constitution Hill near Buckingham Palace.
The police saw the gun, rushed at him, and quickly stopped him. At the trial, Brannigan alleged that “a foreign power” had approached him to kill Edward and that he had informed MI5 of the plan, and that he was on the site only as an observer and to assist MI5 in capturing the real culprits.
The court rejected the allegations and sent him to jail for one year. Brannigan is now thought to have been in contact with MI5, but the veracity of the rest of his claims remains in doubt. In August and September, Edward and Mrs. Simpson toured the eastern Mediterranean on the Nahlin steam yacht.
In October it became clear that the new king planned to marry Mrs. Simpson, especially when the divorce process between Mr. and Mrs. Simpson was brought to the Crown Court in Ipswich. Preparations were made for all contingencies, including the prospect of the coronation of King Edward and Queen Wallis.
Due to the religious implications of any marriage, plans were made to hold a secular coronation ceremony outside of the traditional religious location, Westminster Abbey, at the Banqueting House in the Whitehall Palace.
Edward VIII abdication crisis
On November 16, 1936, Edward VIII invited British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Buckingham Palace and he expressed his desire to marry Wallis Simpson after she had completed her divorce. Baldwin replied that his subjects would consider marriage to be morally unacceptable, in large part because divorce was not accepted by the Church of England, and people would not tolerate Wallis as queen.
As king, Edward VIII had become supreme governor of the Church of England and the clergy demanded that he support the teachings of the Church. Edward VIII proposed the alternative solution of a morganatic marriage by which he would become king without Wallis Simpson becoming queen.
She would have a lower rank title and none of the children they would have could claim the throne.
This proposal was rejected by the British Cabinet as well as by the other governments of the dominions whose views were in accordance with the Statute of Westminster of 1931 which specified that any modification of the rules of succession to the throne and presentation of royal titles [be presented] to the assent of the parliaments of the dominions as to that of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
The Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada, and South Africa made public their opposition to the king’s marriage to a divorced woman. Prime Minister of Ireland expressed its indifference and detachment while the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who had never heard of Wallis Simpson before, gaped.
Faced with this opposition, Edward VIII replied that there were not many people in Australia and that their opinion did not count. Edward VIII informed Baldwin that he would abdicate if he could not marry Wallis Simpson.
Baldwin presented three options to Edward VIII give up the idea of marriage, get married against the advice of his ministers, or abdicate. It was clear that Edward VIII was not ready to give up Wallis Simpson and he knew that if he married against the advice of his ministers, it would cause the resignation of the government and a constitutional crisis. He, therefore, chooses to abdicate.
Edward VIII signed acts of abdication No. 2 at Fort Belvedere on December 10, 1936, in the presence of his three brothers, the Dukes of York, Gloucester and Kent (his youngest brother, John, had died in 1919). The next day, the last act of his reign was royal assent to his declaration of abdication.
As required by the Statute of Westminster, all the dominions accepted abdication 56 even though the Irish Free State did not pass the External Relations Act including acceptance of its abdication before December 12.
On the night of December 11, 1936, Edward, now a prince again, delivered a radio address to the nation and the Empire to explain his decision to abdicate. He said, in particular, I felt impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to fulfill the duties incumbent upon me as king without the help and the help of the woman I love.
After this speech, Edward VIII left the United Kingdom for Austria, but he could not join Wallis Simpson until his divorce was pronounced several months later. His brother, Prince Albert, Duke of York, ascended the throne under the name of George VI while the latter’s eldest daughter, Princess Elisabeth, became, at 10 years, the first in the order of succession.
Duke of Windsor
After abdicating, Edward had been named Duke of Windsor (under Royal Highness treatment) by his younger brother, the new King George VI. His new wife received the title of Duchess of Windsor but not the dignity of Royal Highness. On March 8, 1937,
George VI created the Title for his brother, the former King, the Duke of Windsor (the title was abolished with the Duke’s death). However, the Letters Patent of May 27, 1937, which Assigns to the Duke of Windsor, the “title, style, or attribute of Royal Highness,” expressly states that “his wife and descendants, if any, do not they may occupy said title or attribute. ”
World War II
In September 1939, the Duke and Duchess were brought to Britain under the command of Lord Louis Mountbatten on the British destroyer HMS Kelly and Edward was dispatched to France as a major general in British military service.
During this time he inspected the French and Belgian forts on the Maginot Line, the insight of which had previously not been given to the British allies by the French and Belgians. According to statements by the German envoy in The Hague, Julius von Zech-Burkersroda, Edward revealed the Allied plans to defend Belgium to the Germans in February 1940.
During the German occupation of France from 1940 to 1944, Edward’s residences in Paris and southern France were guarded by the Wehrmacht at the Duke’s request. Edward himself fled to Biarritz, then to Spain after the occupation, before finally staying in Portugal with a banker with German contacts in Lisbon.
The following quotes have been handed down from him from this time: After the war is over and Hitler will crush the Americans … We’ll take over … They (the British) don’t want me as their King, but I’ll be back as their leader.
(“When the war is over and Hitler crushed the Americans … let’s take over … They [the British] don’t want me as their king, but I’ll be back as their leader soon.”) He told a journalist: It would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler was overthrown. (“It would be a tragedy for the world if Hitler were overthrown.”)
On Winston Churchill’s orders, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor from Portugal were taken into British care in the Bahamas and Edward was appointed governor of the British Crown Colony. However, he did not particularly like the islands and dismissively referred to them as a “third-class British colony”.
Edward’s views were racist at the time, despite all social engagement in the Bahamas. He had prejudices against the black population of the Bahamas and attributed the riots to communist agitation and Jews.
Death and Legacy
On 28 May 1972, the Duke died in his residence in Paris, less than a month before his 78th birthday. His body is returned to Britain where his body is resting in the St. George chapel of Windsor Castle.
The funeral ceremony is organized in the chapel on June 5 in the presence of the Queen, the royal family, and the Duchess of Windsor; the coffin is buried in the royal cemetery behind the mausoleum of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Frogmore.
Duchess stayed at Buckingham Palace during her visit. Until a 1965 agreement with Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke and Duchess had planned to be buried in a plot of the Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore where the father of the Duchess was buried.
In 1973, a year after the death of her husband, the duchess, heiress without sharing her property, decides to bequeath a large collection of furniture and paintings to French museums, the most important part coming to the Palace of Versailles.
In fragile health and suffering from senile dementia, the duchess, died 14 years later, on April 24, 1986, in Paris, was buried alongside her husband as “Wallis, Duchesse de Windsor 110 “. The couple having designated the Pasteur Institute as a universal legatee, the sale of jewelry at auction earns the Institute 75.42 million Swiss francs or about 300 million francs.
The remainder of the movable property was bought in the block in 1986 by Mohamed Al-Fayed who is negotiating a new twenty-five-year lease with the city of Paris, renaming the Hotel de Boulogne ” Villa Windsor ” and investing $50 million in its restoration, with the announced intention of transforming it into a ” small museum “dedicated to the glory of the mythical couple.
In 1998, Mohamed Al-Fayed decided to auction 40,000 objects from the villa belonging to the famous couple 111 at Sotheby’s in New York.