In December 1936, King Edward VIII shocked the world with his abdication announcement.
He would leave everything behind for his love: an American divorcee named Wallis Simpson.
Six months after Edward stepped down, the two got hitched.
Bessie Wallis Warfield, as she was named by her parents, was born on June 19, 1896.
Simpson would later claim that her parents married in June of 1895.
Simpson and Montague leaned on relatives for years.
Her late father’s brother, wealthy railroad executive Solomon Davies Warfield, welcomed them into his Baltimore home.
They stayed with Warfield for a few years, but it wasn’t long before they were moving again.
They then spent some time living with Montague’s aunt before relocating once more.
Simpson’s childhood was defined by early parental loss and an unsettled domestic life.
Her stepfather died
Matters began looking up when Wallis Simpson’s mother remarried in 1908.
However, little did they know, another tragedy was just around the corner for their family.
After only five years of marriage, Rasin died, making Montague a widow yet again.
Rasin’s death, then, effectively robbed the young Simpson of two parental figures.
What’s more, the mother and daughter were again unmoored.
Although her family had the pedigree, Simpson evidently struggled to fit in with her classmates.
She reportedly had a reputation for smoking, breaking the rules, and flirting with boys.
Or, at least, what she thought was love at the time.
This created a lot of tension within his and Simpson’s marriage.
The two unofficially separated multiple times in the course of their 11-year marriage.
Simpson and Spencer finally divorced in 1927.
The catastrophic event is now known as The Wall Street Crash of 1929.
What followed was a decade of high unemployment and widespread poverty, otherwise known as The Great Depression.
It was messy, to say the least.
The two first had to be granted divorces from their respective spouses before marrying on July 21, 1928.
Then, they moved to England to start a new life.
However, the couple’s move eventually spelled the demise of this marriage as well.
So, she orchestrated a plan that made Mary look like Ernest’s mistress.
Kirk and Ernest did ultimately get together, but Kirk still resented her old friend for using her.
While many hypothesize that her goal was to eventually become queen this would never come to pass.
On the contrary, Simpson was pushed out of England altogether.
However, he refused to give her up as his mistress.
In December of that year, the news of their relationship leaked to the British public.
Caught in a media storm, Simpson fled to France.
Evidently, the media didn’t give up easily.
The following months saw a series of abdication laws unrolling across the U.K.
Meanwhile, Wallis Simpson remained wrapped up in complex divorce proceedings with her then-husband Aldrich Simpson.
Eventually, the reality of the situation settled in for both Simpson and the former monarch.
Tabloids painted her as an opportunist snob, and citizens evidently didn’t give her a warm welcome.
The reported harassment didn’t end there.
Even after she relocated to France, Simpson would continue to receive boxes upon boxes of hate mail.
She described life as “waking emptiness” and feels her entire existence is “one colossal bore.”
“Few who knew them well described what they shared as love,” Sebba toldPolitico.
In 1949, her jewelry was stolen
Wallis Simpson was a victim of a burglary in 1949.
In total, the Duchess of Windsor ended up losing 25,000 worth of jewels.
When inflation is factored in, this loss amounts to over 1 million today.
After news broke of the burglary, rumors swirled about what really happened.
However, no evidence of these claims were found, and the duchess never retrieved her losses.
One theory is that Simpson suffered complications from an abortion in her youth, leaving her unable to conceive.
According to Andrew Morton, she apparently was head-over-heels for a man named Herman Rogers.
Your guardian angel."
However, it wasn’t long until Rogers was engaged to another woman.
After having avoided London for years, Simpson finally returned to the city to attend the duke’s funeral.
She was eventually diagnosed with dementia, with her illness making her vulnerable to exploitation.
Often sedated and too frail to physically protest, Simpson was reduced to a prisoner in her own mansion.
Simpson died on April 24, 1986, of bronchial pneumonia.
She was 89 years old.
