Eddie and Wally were fans of Hitler. Had Germany won the war, they would have been the Puppet Royalty of the British Empire.

I always got the impression that Eddie was a bit of a twit and an idiot, and Wally led him round by the nose. She just luvvvved her some Nazis--not sure if it was the authoritarian attitudes or the snazzy uniforms that turned her twisted head!

Last edited Sun May 6, 2012, 06:27 AM - Edit history (1)

I've read he was more or less impotent until Wallis managed to do it for him.

Or maybe worse!

Very German, dating all the way back to the Hanoverians (George I).

that be get rid of him. They would have found some way around the Wallace situation - but not the Nazi thing.

Didn't know that--thanks to all for the information.

to use the servant's entrances and the like. What a pathetic little unfit man. But then, he was raised lonely and unloved. His mother, Queen Mary was the last of the old time hide bound traditionalists in her role.

And how some articles in the newspapers were very kind to him.
My parents weren't very kind after he passed away, though.
They both told me about his ties to the Nazis and how many people despised him right up until the day he died.

All that Nazi business got swept under the rug as best could be managed, in order not to blemish the Family Franchise.

I'm guessing if the miserable bastard had a crystal ball and could have seen twenty years into the future, he would have dumped Wally like a three-day old fish. She gave him all kinds of crap in his later years (no pity from me on that score, though).

alle!~

It was always known that Archbishop Lang opposed the King's marriage and contributed to his abdication, though some of the details are new.

In any case, though the furore about his marrying a divorcee was rather ridiculous, it is just as well that he abdicated, since he had rather too many sympathies with Nazi Germany.

The Yorks didn't set up a "rival court" in hopes of snagging the monarchy--they were horrified and upset about it. George VI cried on his mother's shoulder for an hour when it was clear that it was inevitable, and realized that he'd never been trained for the job, as being a naval officer was all he ever knew.

Once Wallis came into the picture (and while I don't particularly like her, I don't blame her--the obsessive love was one-sided), Edward/David was paranoid about anybody who didn't agree with him, and that included the Archbishop of Canterbury. He would have been a horrible, self-focused king along the lines of George IV, so if Cosmo Lang was dead-set against him, thank goodness for that. Every little bit helps.

The new Queen Elizabeth probably sent Lang a thank-you note out of politeness and gratitude for his emotional support, not for his having gotten them onto the throne. They didn't want it--she had turned Bertie (later George VI) down three times before accepting him, because she didn't even want the life of a royal duchess, let alone that of a queen) and she later felt that the stresses of kingship had shortened her husband's life.

Goodness, I need to get a life. But however pathetic it is that I have any feelings at all on this matter, this article is full of poo about people's motives, even if it's correct about what happened.

you admit you have a bias and you are concise.

I found it interesting. Thank you.

She just wanted to enjoy the social power associated with being his mistress. HE was the one who was obsessive about her, even after she left the country and told him to drop the whole marriage thing. David was an emotionally immature, rather stupid man who was known to gleefully bed other men's wives as his "right."

George V stated that he hoped David never had children, so that nothing would keep Bertie (George VI) and Lilibet (Elizabeth II) from the throne. He knew David was a loose cannon frat boy who didn't understand duty. Imagine him during the Blitz???

far from the angel she was made out to be. She was manipulative and ambiguous. Your description of her is simply proof how effective the efforts were to spin the situation to protect the British monarchy.

He was entirely self-focused and an embarrassment with his open womanizing and playboy lifestyle. He was never interested in being King in the first place and wasn't shy about who knew it... he used to frequently joke with Princess Elizabeth calling her "Queen Elizabeth" as he had already long been considering abdication even before meeting Wallis. He just wasn't interested in the job and was continually at loggerheads with his ministers about everything that he wanted to do (even the good things like the government helping out the poor miners in Wales which horrified the "1%" government), though it was his Nazi sympathies that were likely the most upsetting thing about him to the government.

The law forbade his marriage to Wallis as both her previous husbands still lived. He even offered to cut any children by him and Wallis from the succession, but according to the law he couldn't unless he wanted to cause a constitutional crisis which he wasn't willing to go that far and do. His choices were either dump her or abdicate, so he chose abdication, which was not such a big deal to him since he didn't really want to be King anyway. And thank goodness he did because he would have been a horror as King especially considering the huge problem of Germany at that time.

If they had been able to invade Britain (it still amazes me they didn't), which is why The Government installed him as Governor as the Bahamas so the Yanks could keep an eye on him, far from Germany (He had to be forced to return to British soil after Germany invaded France. He was threatened with a court martial for treason).

Goerring told him the Luftwaffe could get rid of Britain's air defences thereby making it an easy target for invasion, but the Luftwaffe's plan to bomb British airfields was thwarted by superior equipment in the form of Spitfire fighters which were faster and more manoeuvrable than the German fighter escorts. This was the Battle of Britain in 1940. Hitler had been all set to invade that year, but when Goerring's airforce was shown to be inadequate for the job, and lost many aircraft, Hitler switched to bombing cities, the invasion was indefinitely postponed and never happened because then he decided to invade the USSR and the rest, as they say, is history.

And for what little it is worth, I agree with your sense of the motivations of the principal players in this little royal drama!

Renate, your analysis seems the most plausible to me. Yes, the Queen Mother blamed Wallis, but she often referred to her as the "woman who killed my husband." She believed that Edward's abdication and her husband's accession to the Throne shortened George VI's life. They never wanted to be King, so to suggest that they had set up a rival Court is absurd. Bertie did everything in his power to keep Edward on the Throne.

What an amazing bouffant updo. Rivals Marie Antoinette in style. Interesting discussion.

About George V, Elizabeth II's grandfather:
George's relationship with his eldest son and heir, Edward, deteriorated in these later years.

George was disappointed in Edward's failure to settle down in life and appalled by his many affairs with married women.[13] In contrast, he was fond of his second eldest son, Prince Albert (later George VI), and doted on his eldest granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth; he nicknamed her "Lilibet", and she affectionately called him "Grandpa England".[63]

In 1935 George said of his son Edward: "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months", and of Albert and Lilibet: "I pray to God my eldest son will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."

He must have been a very wise man to foresee what happened.