The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Sunday 19 November 2006

Seventy Years after the Abdication

Caveat: If you are a "fan" of the late Duke of Windsor, you probably will not like this month's column at all.

This coming December 10 marks the 70th anniversary of the accession of King George VI to the throne, and the day when H.M. the Queen became the Heiress Presumptive at the tender age of 10. Oh, and by the by, it is also the 70th anniversary of the abdication of King Edward VIII.

Not surprisingly, this December 10 finds virtually none of the original cast of characters from the abdication crisis still living. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, King George and Queen Elizabeth, the other children of George V and their spouses, Earl Mountbatten, and others who were intimately involved in the drama of December 1936 are dead. Many of them lie together in the royal burial ground at Frogmore. The politicians, churchmen, and journalists are also long since gone to whatever reward awaited. Only the Queen, her cousin the Earl of Harewood, and a handful of others who were children at the time remain. The Duke of Kent was only a year old back then, and Princess Alexandra was actually born two weeks into the new reign. Of the larger cast of characters variously involved in those days it is interesting to note that David Cameron's great-granduncle, Duff Cooper, was a member of the Windsor circle who successfully transitioned into the new reign of George VI.

I remember very clearly the day in 1986 when I heard on the radio that the Duchess of Windsor had died. I was just about to go out the door to meet with one of my graduate professors. As I walked into her office I mentioned the news, just in passing. My professor, a Jewish woman, got a very earnest -- almost fierce -- expression on her face and said, very strongly, "That woman did a GREAT thing for Britain!"

So, December 10 marks the anniversary of the "great thing" Wallis Simpson unintentionally accomplished, the abdication of King Edward VIII... "for the woman he loved." On that dark and gloomy day the king signed the abdication instrument at Fort Belvedere in the presence of his three brothers, and later that evening made his famous farewell address (written with the help of Winston Churchill) from Windsor Castle. The former king sailed for France in the night, and the act was confirmed by parliament on December 11, which just happened to be the 247th anniversary of the flight into exile of another misfit king, James VII / II.

The Revolution of 1936 - for such I believe it was - was not termed "Glorious" like that of 1689. But it was important. It may well have saved the British monarchy. The ill-fated reign of Edward VIII had begun with a bad omen that he himself noted in him memoirs. As the new king and his brothers had followed their father's coffin in the funeral procession through London on January 23, 1936, the orb and cross that topped the imperial crown fell off into the street... being quickly being retrieved by one of the guards in the escort. The real omen, however, was evident for any with eyes to see. Her name was Wallis, and within the year she had gotten her man. A few months later, shortly after their marriage, they went off to Germany and visited Herr Hitler.

One of the Earl of Wessex's better efforts during his Ardent venture was the documentary Edward on Edward, in which the Prince examined his great-uncle's story. Besides looking in detail at the story of the previous Prince Edward's love affair with Mrs. Simpson, the documentary also looked - perhaps a bit too discretely - at the ongoing controversy about the degree of Edward and Wallis's conscious engagement with the Nazis from the mid-1930s up until being packed off to the Bahamas for the duration of WWII. The Duke of Windsor's great-nephew and namesake finds the charges against his predecessor at least unproven -- though even he acknowledges an almost monumental naivet� and arrogance that certainly could be read at times as possibly collaborationist.

For myself, I carry a bit more suspicion of the Windsors' collaborationist tendencies than does the current Edward. (Wallis, for instance, was said to have to regularly associated with a number of suspected Nazi sympathizers and German diplomats in London.) But at the very least I agree with my former professor that Great Britain and the Empire really lucked out seventy years ago. While on the one hand I can sympathize with the bullied young prince coping with his belligerent father and coldly distant mama, it is also clear that the then Prince of Wales was a willful man, careless of his duties, and lacking the stability, savvy, or focus to be the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. When it came down to it, he could not even make a success as the wartime Governor of the Bahamas!

If Edward VIII had managed to remain on the throne, and lived out the same lifespan that he achieved, he would have reigned from 1936-1972 -- thirty-six years. I cannot imagine that it would have been a "happy and glorious" reign. What would have been different? Besides the questions as to how he might have behaved during the war, one wonders how the break-up of the empire would have proceeded with him as king? How might the crown have responded during key moments such as the Suez crisis in 1956, or Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence, etcetera? Would the monarchy itself have survived such an ambivalent steward? Might Churchill have even found himself reluctantly forced to play the role of another Oliver Cromwell during WWII, his hand forced by "cruel necessity" and a king overeager to make a deal with Germany? Might King Edward have resisted having the ferociously anti-Nazi Churchill take the premiership? Even more startling is the notion of Wallis as queen, and then as dowager, up until 1986. During those years the late Queen Mother would have never been any more in the forefront than her other sister-in-law, Princess Alice of Gloucester. At least the heir to the throne in 1972 would still have been Princess Elizabeth... but she would have come along as a more middle-aged heiress (age 46) and missed out on the rather heady "New Elizabethan" period of the early days of her reign.

At the time of the Windsors' marriage in 1937, King George VI felt it appropriate (though probably not legally valid) to deny Wallis the HRH title, and to stipulate that any children born to the union would be non-royal. The latter point proved moot. It seems probable that the thrice-married Bessie-Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson Windsor may have been unable to bear children. (Speculations on this have been around for many years, but so far as I know no one can actually confirm or deny that this was the case.) And by the time she and the Prince of Wales were married it would have been somewhat late -- though not impossible -- for them to have had any children together. But, as I have noted previously in this column (Sept. 2005), it does seem that the Prince of Wales may have been the biological father of the actor Tim Seely (b. 1935), the son of Freda Dudley Ward's sister Vera. And it is also believed that Freda Dudley Ward's daughter, Clair Angela Louise Ward (b. 1917), may well have been the Prince's child. If the latter is the case, he acted all the more the complete cad by utterly severing all connections to Angela - in whose life he had always taken an active and affectionate role - after taking up with Wallis in 1934. (See Anne Edwards book, Matriarch, p. 358, and 367f.) So not only did the Duke of Windsor turn his back on his throne, his mother and siblings, but even on the closest relationship he ever had to having his own child?.

Readers to this point will have realized that I have very little use, let alone respect, for the late Duke of Windsor. As an individual, I am glad he found his place of peace and a degree of happiness in life. But Great Britain was well rid of him at the time, and ever after. An old folktale, reported by none other than U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in his biography of Oliver Cromwell, says that descendants of those convicted of the regicide of Charles I in 1649 used to do penance on the anniversary of that unfortunate king's execution. It seems this never actually happened. But, by contrast, I think it would do no harm for those who wish to say a few prayers of thanksgiving on December 10 for the happy outcome of that dark wintry day 70 years ago. And throw in a quick prayer for the Queen's aching back while you're at it!

Yours Aye,

- Ken Cuthbertson