We’ve all seen that movie ‘The King’s Speech’. We all know what it’s about. We all know about the struggles, trials, tribulations and torments that surrounded King George VI, the man who never wanted to be king, but who guided his country through one of the darkest periods in British history.
But all that would never have happened, and the film would never have taken place, if not for the very remarkable event that preceded it. The famous Abdication Crisis of 1936.
What Was the Abdication Crisis?
The Abdication Crisis of 1936 was the royal scandal of King Edward VIII abdicating the British throne to marry the woman he loved. Romantic? Perhaps. Scandalous? Certainly. Next to the rise of Nazism in Germany, it was the biggest talking-point all around Europe during the 1930s. In drawing-rooms, living-rooms, cafes, restaurants, boardrooms and down at the pub, people talked of little else except for the king and…’Mrs Simpson’.
Who Was King Edward VIII?
King Edward the Eighth is a figure shrouded in mystery. He was king for barely a year, he was known as a playboy, a dandy, a moderniser and a scoundrel. But who was he, really?
Edward VIII, full name…*deep breath*…Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David…was born on the 23rd of June, 1894, when his great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, was on the throne.
Edward was the first of six children to the future King George V, and Queen Mary (formerly Mary of Teck). The other five kids were the future King George VI, Princess Mary, Prince Henry, Prince George, the Duke of Kent, and last but not least, the forgotten prince…John, who died at the age of 13 from the effects of epilepsy…a closely guarded royal shame and secret.
Life for the royal children was hardly the idyllic dream that we imagine it to be. And as we all know from horror movies, TV shows and the local tabloid news, those people who grow up to torture people in their secret underground lairs…like Joseph Fritzl…are almost invariably those who had horrible childhoods.
George V, rigid, formal and stiff to the last, instilled his children with naval discipline (it was, and still is a royal tradition for a prince to take up a posting in one of the armed forces), something that George himself had done with his older brother, Prince Albert-Victor (nicknamed ‘Eddie’), who died in the 1890s, with suspicions of him being Jack the Ripper and being as gay as Liberace still hanging around him.
George V once famously declared that: “My father was terrified of his father. I was terrified of my father. And my children are damn well going to be terrified of me!”
The two oldest brothers, Edward and Albert, the future George VI, were very close as children. They played, they spent time with each other, they hung out, they participated in sports (Albert or ‘Bertie’ was fond of hunting and fishing)…and they chased women.
The difference was that Albert chased after a society beauty. Her name was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon…the future Queen Mum.
King Edward, or as he was called at the time…’David’…chased after quite another kind of girl. In the end, he latched onto…Mrs. Simpson. Full name…
Wallis Warfield Simpson
She was born Bessie Wallis Warfield on the 19th of June, 1896. And almost from the start, scandal followed her everywhere.
Her first marriage was to Earl Winfield Spencer, a pilot in the U.S. Navy (the air-force at the time, not being a separate entity from the Navy and Army in the United States, as it was in England). It was during her marriage to Earl Spencer (1916-1927), that she travelled to Republican China. Wild rumors circulated that she attended whorehouses, brothels, bordellos, casinos, drinking-dens, and other disreputable establishments in the decadent and lively world of the Shanghai International Settlement in China, as well as other places in the Republic, such as the capital city of Peking (‘Beijing’ today).
Before she divorced Spencer, she suddenly got interested in another guy. Ernest Aldrich Simpson…from which the famous “Mrs. Simpson” comes from. She divorced Spencer in 1927, and married Simpson in 1928.
The Prince and Mrs. Simpson
In 1934, Mrs. Simpson effectively became the-then Prince Edward’s mistress. She wooed him, and he spent lavish amounts of money on her. The prince’s reputation as a playboy and a society mover-and-shaker made her sink her claws into him all the more.
By now, Wallis Simpson had already developed a bit of a reputation in the drawing-rooms of the British aristocracy and nobility. And everyone in-the-know began to whisper. The whisperings hit the ears of His Majesty, King George V, a notoriously straitlaced, uptight, old-fashioned, oldschool sort of monarch. He was furious and flat-out asked Prince Edward what the hell was going on!…Edward denied everything, even though royal courtiers brought the king secret reports that they had seen the prince and Mrs. Simpson sharing a bed together!
The Abdication Crisis of 1936
In January of 1936, King George V died. He was seventy years old. He was also full of conviction about two things.
ONE – That his second son, Prince Albert, was a hell of a boy with a lot of guts (not something he admitted to the prince’s face, of course).
TWO – That his older brother, the new King Edward VIII, would bring ruination to the monarchy with his involvement with the Simpson woman.
Prince Edward rose to the throne as King Edward VIII. All is well and good.
Except that he kept hanging onto the Simpson woman. And she was becoming more and more unpopular by the minute. The Duke and Duchess of York (the future George VI and the Queen Mum) were appalled by this. The Duchess and the Queen Mother (that’s Queen Mary, George V’s wife), were horrified by the new king’s carryings-on with Mrs. Simpson.
Not only was Mrs. Simpson unpopular, but Edward wasn’t much of a king.
He swept aside centuries-old traditions and customs. He shied away from his duties. He fired courtiers who had worked in the palace for decades. He didn’t even bother to read, sign or approve any of the bills, papers and documents that were sent to him to read…something that the current Queen Elizabeth does on a regular basis. He was barely a king at all!
Courtiers, government officials, and prominent aristocrats, were displeased with his overly casual attitude, his dislike of formality, and increasingly, his pro-Nazism stance. But it all came to a head when he summoned the prime minister, at the time, Stanley Baldwin, to tell him that he would marry Wallis Simpson, and that if he couldn’t, and if she wouldn’t become queen, then he would abdicate the throne.
This caused a HUGE sensation.
Several people in government and court and within the royal family itself, were mightily opposed this. But surely a king can marry who he wants…can’t he?
The reasons why everyone thought he couldn’t, were several. For one…
Social Implications.
Someone of such high standing as a king could not POSSIBLY marry a woman who was twice divorced, and who’s previous husbands were not even dead yet. On top of that, Mrs. Simpson was an AMERICAN!…which in itself was probably enough! And those two elements combined would ensure that she would almost never been accepted by the British people!
Religious Implications.
Edward VIII, as king, was the head of the Church of England. All British monarchs since Henry VIII back in the 1500s, were heads of the Church of England…since it was Henry VIII who created it! So what’s the issue here?
The Church of England does allow divorces. And it does allow remarriages.
But it does NOT allow the both things to happen at once! For the King to marry a woman who was divorced, but who had two living ex-husbands, was to go against everything that the church allowed! And the King, as head of the church, could not possibly do that and escape unscathed from the immense public outcry that would follow!
Political Implications
On top of that, even if the king married Mrs. Simpson. Even if she became queen, there was still the issue of what would happen?
Mrs. Simpson had divorced twice in the past! What happened if she divorced again? From the king? As the queen? Such a thing would never have happened before in British history, and it would’ve been a disaster!
Don’t start quoting Henry VIII here. His marriages were “annulled”, not “divorced”. He had them struck off the records, not just terminated.
Legal Implications
At the time, divorce proceedings between Mr. and Mrs. Simpson were not yet complete. And she had divorced her first husband, Mr. Earl Spencer, on grounds of “emotional incompatibility”. Under the Church of England, divorce was legal, but in England at the time, the only grounds for divorce lay in the act of adultery. Since adultery had not been committed, Mrs. Simpson’s divorce from her first husband wouldn’t hold water in an English courthouse. So even if she divorced her second husband, she would, in the eyes of the English legal system, still be married to her first. And if she was, then marrying the King would be a bigamous act, something that was obviously…illegal in England.
Nationalistic Inplications
The KING. The head of the United KINGdom…marry a lowly, disgusting, vile, peasantish, twice-divorced American slut!?
Such a thing would NEVER have worked out.
Although generally friendly, the United Kingdom and the United States were not yet the close chums and allies that we imagined them to be during the War years. The idea that the King should marry an American, whom most people in England saw as distasteful and just plain…WRONG, was repellent to the British aristocracy…and to just about every other class in the British system from that tier down!
On top of that, the Americans all seemed to be jumping on the idea that one of their lot, a Yankee girl, would become a British queen! The press was all over it!…and the Brits were getting all over her. No way was this ever going to work!
With all the uproar over this potential marriage, there were three possible avenues open to the King and his lover.
1. He marries her, she marries him. He remains king, she becomes queen.
No. Nobody wanted that (except maybe the King). It just wasn’t possible.
2. He marries her, she marries him. He remains king, she takes on some lesser aristocratic title.
Called a morganatic marriage, this was the style of marriage used to join a husband of higher rank or social status, to a woman of lower rank or social status. She wouldn’t get his titles or anything, but she would still be his wife. Such a thing had never happened in England (although it had happened in various royal houses in Europe), and it still…wasn’t going to happen. The king refused to accept this as an option.
3. He marries her. She marries him. He gives up the throne.
Ding!
This was the one!
On the 10th of December, the King formally abdicated the British throne. The first…last…and only…British monarch to willing do so in history. He signed this document, the Instrument of Abdication, in the presence of his brothers, who signed as witnesses to this historic event.
On the top right, you can see “Edward R.I.” (short for “Edward Rex Imperator” or ‘Edward, King-Emperor’, in Latin).
Below, you can see three more names: “Albert”, “Henry”, and “George”. In order, they are the future King George VI, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent.
And so it was done. To this day, Edward VIII has had the shortest reign of any British monarch, in the history of the British monarchy. Unless you count the ‘reign’ of Lady Jane Grey, otherwise known as the “Nine Day Queen“, who was supposed to be the protestant successor to Edward VI, son of King Henry VIII.
The Effects of the Abdication
The Abdication, the first in the history of the British monarchy, destroyed the family. Once close as children, the new King George VI would now not even look at his brother, much less speak to him…and let’s not even mention Wallis Simpson! When the abdication was complete, and Prince Albert now realised that he would become the new king, and now fully understood that it was his own brother’s recklessness that had ended him up in this shitpile that he NEVER wanted to be in, he cried on the shoulders of his elderly mother, Queen Mary, for a full hour at her home at Marlborough House.
Prince Albert NEVER wanted to be king. He hated the whole idea of the job. It was his grandfather, Edward VII, the rakish son of Queen Victoria, who was the first royal to realise that for a monarchy to survive in the 20th century, things had to change. They had to do things differently.
Things like…attend openings. Give presentations. Cut ribbons. Pose for photographs. Greet famous celebrities. And worst of all…make speeches!
From childhood, Albert had suffered from a horrible and crippling stutter which, even with decades of therapy from his faithful friend and speech-therapist, Lionel Logue, he was never fully cured of. If you listen to any of George VI’s speeches, or watch any of his newsreel footage from the 1940s, you can still hear how bad his stutter was.
Ironically, this was not the first time that this had happened.
Just as Prince Albert was shoved into the limelight and jammed in the throne thanks to the actions of his older brother, so was his father, the late King George V, also shoved into the limelight. When his older brother, the Prince Albert Victor (the ‘Jack the Ripper’ suspect) died, the-then Prince George was shoved onto the stage, and even had to marry his dead brother’s prospective bride, the Princess Mary…which wasn’t that bad, because they actually loved each other quite devotedly…but it’s funny how history repeats itself. The scandalous older brother screws things up, and the younger, more intelligent one has to set right the incredible cock-up that was made as a result.
On the 11th of December, 1936, less than a year after his reign began, Edward VIII approached a microphone in a radio broadcasting-booth to announce to the world his abdication from the British throne, the first and only abdication in the history of the monarchy and the first real interruption to the line of succession since the Civil War of the 1640s. The announcer introduced the speaker as “His Royal Highness, Prince Edward”, since he was no longer officially king of England. The full speech made by the king may be heard here:
Once a popular, handsome, athletic celebrity, within a year, Prince Edward’s public…and private…image, had changed from one of the ideal royal prince, the heartthrob and glittering celebrity, to that of a second-rate king, who chose the love of a conniving, manipulative, gold-digging Yank over his much more important duties as king of a great nation in the years leading up to the Second World War.
Immediately after the abdication, the Duke of Windsor, as he was then styled, and his eventual wife, Wallis Simpson, left England for Europe. They were married on the 3rd of June, 1937. Had George V lived, it would’ve been his 72nd birthday. The furious Queen Mary, the Queen Mother, strongly suspected that her son chose this particular date for his wedding as a slight against the rest of his family, who had effectively disowned him for his disgraceful actions.
For the rest of his life, the Duke of Windsor, and his wife, the Duchess of Windsor, were not welcome in England. When Edward’s brother Albert ascended the throne as George VI, he refused to grant Wallis Simpson, by then Duchess of Windsor, the traditional “H.R.H” (‘Her Royal Highness’) form of address for a royal duchess. Edward was furious about this. Although only three little letters, their addition to the front of Wallis’s name (which would then read: “Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Windsor’), would mean that she was officially part of the British Royal Family. This would mean that people would have to bow and curtsy to her, as such. George VI did not believe (and neither did his wife, or mother believe) that she deserved such privileges, and so denied her the form of address which his brother so vehemently wanted.
King George VI died in 1952. During the war he became an incredibly heavy smoker and drinker, with stress-levels shooting through the roof. The stress, combined with the other tolls taken on his body meant that he was dead before he was even sixty years old. By contrast, his brother continued to live the carefree, playboy life that he’d always done. He died in 1972 at the age of 77. Wallis Simpson in 1986 at the age of 89.