© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

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government: in August a British warship dispatched the pair to the Bahamas. The Duke of Windsor was installed as Governor, and became the first British monarch to ever hold a civilian political office. He enjoyed the position and was praised for his efforts to combat poverty on the island nation. He held the post until the end of World War II in 1945. (See also Operation Willi.)

Many historians have suggested that Hitler was prepared to reinstate Edward and Wallis as King and Queen of Britain, if he conquered the country, and is apparently to have said to Wallis, "you would make a good Queen."

Some historians have suggested that the Duke (and especially the Duchess) sympathised with Fascism before and during World War II, and had to remain in the Bahamas to minimise their opportunities to act on those feelings. These revised assessments of his career hinge on some wartime information released in 1996, and on further secret files released by the U.K. government in 2003. The files had remained closed for decades, as Whitehall judged that they would cause the Queen Mother substantial distress if released during her lifetime. U.S. naval intelligence revealed a confidential report of a conference of German foreign officials in October 1941, that judged the Duke "no enemy to Germany" and the only English representative with whom Hitler would negotiate any peace terms, "the logical director of England's destiny after the war". President Roosevelt had ordered covert surveillance of the Duke and Duchess when they visited Palm Beach, Florida, in April 1941. The former Duke of Wurttemberg (then a monk in an American monastery) convinced the FBI that the Duchess had been sleeping with the German ambassador in London, Joachim von Ribbentrop, had remained in constant contact with him, and continued to leak secrets. This evidence supports a theory held by many of the top officers in the British Army, as well as more than a few members of the civilian population, that Edward had passed details of the movements of the British Expeditionary Force in France, leading to the disaster at Dunkirk.

Adrift

After the war, the couple returned once again to France in Neuilly near Paris, where they spent much of the remainder of their lives essentially in retirement, as the Duke never occupied another professional role after his wartime governorship of the Bahamas. They hosted parties and travelled extensively, shuttling between Paris and New York; in 1951 the Duke produced a ghost-written memoir, A King's Story. The couple appeared on Edward R. Murrow's television interview show "Person to Person" and were invited to a state dinner at the White House by President Richard M. Nixon; otherwise they largely disappeared from public consciousness, their significance a matter of a long-past episode that was soon eclipsed by events of far greater substance. When the Duke and Duchess's correspondence was published after the Duchess's death the book failed to sell, with interest largely confined to the magnitude of the Duke's uxoriousness and his curious term of endearment for her: "Eanum Pig."

The Royal Family never accepted the Duchess and would not receive her formally, although the former King sometimes met his mother and a brother after his abdication. It is believed that Queen Elizabeth, Edward’s sister-in-law, remained dubious about Wallis for her role in bringing her husband to the throne but also regarding her inappropriate and arrogant assumption of the role of consort to the king while still married to Ernest Simpson and her well-known scorn for both King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. In 1965, the Duke and Duchess returned to London. They were visited by the Queen, Princess Marina and also the Princess Royal. They later attended a memorial service for the Princess Royal, who died the following week. In 1967 they joined the Royal Family for the centenary of Queen Mary's birth. The last occasion they were in the UK together was the funeral of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent in 1968.

The Duke died of throat cancer in 1972 in Paris, and his body was returned to Britain for burial at Frogmore, near Windsor Castle. The increasingly senile and frail Duchess travelled to England to attend his funeral, staying at Buckingham Palace during her visit. The Duchess, on her death a decade and a half later, was buried alongside her husband in Frogmore simply as "Wallis, his wife".

The Duke and Duchess had no children, though an Australian magazine, the Australian Women's Weekly, published an article (with photographs depicting startling likenesses) purporting that the Duke, as Prince of Wales, had an affair with a young Australian woman named Mollee Little and produced a son, known as David Anthony Chisholm (1921-1987). Chisholm later had a daughter, Barbara, with an aborigine mistress; his grandson by this daughter, and presumably the Duke's great-grandson, is Australian footballer Scott Chisholm.

Titles from birth to death

In addition to his seven personal names, the specific styles and titles held by the future Duke of Windsor changed several times before his ascension to the throne. Under Queen Victoria's Letters Patent of 30 June 1864 and settled practice dating back to 1714, as a male-line great-grandchild of the Sovereign, Edward was a prince of Great Britain and Ireland with the qualification of Highness (not Royal Highness). Queen Victoria's Letters Patent of 27 May 1898 expressly granted the titles of prince and princess of Great Britain and qualification of Royal Highness to the children of the surviving son of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII). As a male-line great-grandson of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha he bore the titles Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and Duke of Saxony (with the qualification of Highness). George V's Order in Council on 20 July 1917 relinquished for himself and all descendants of Queen Victoria who were British subjects the "use of the Degrees, Styles, Dignities, Titles and Honours of Dukes and Duchesses of Saxony and Princes and Princesses of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and all other German Degrees, Styles, Dignities, Titles, Honours and Appellations". From his father's ascension to the throne on 6 May 1910 until his own accession on 20 January 1936, he held the titles Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Prince and Great Steward of Scotland. His full title as king was "Edward VIII, of Great Britain, Ireland, and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India". The Duke of Windsor's titles and styles were as follows:

• His Highness Prince Edward of York (23 June 1894-27 May 1898)

• His Royal Highness Prince Edward of York (27 May 1898-22 January 1901)

• His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Cornwall and York (22 January-9 November 1901)

• His Royal Highness Prince Edward of Wales (9 November 1901-6 May 1910)

• His Royal Highness The Duke of Cornwall (in Scotland "His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, Duke of Rothesay") (6 May 1910-2 June 1910)

• His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales (in Scotland "His Royal Highness The Prince Edward, Duke of Rothesay") (2 June 1910-20 January 1936)

• His Majesty The King (20 January 1936-11 December 1936)

• His Royal Highness The Prince Edward (11 December 1936-12 December 1936 / 8 March 1937)

• His Royal Highness The Duke of Windsor (12 December 1936 / 8 March 1937-28 May 1972)

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