Wallis Simpson: Britain's royal drama.

Duke and Duchess of Windsor, wedding day June 1937 photograph by Cecil Beaton. Britannica A familiar story was that handsome, popular Prince Edward was expected to marry an aristocratic virgin who’d become Queen when he became King. But at 37, Edward fell in love with divor­ced American, Wal­l­is Simp­son. No one thought the affair would last, especially after his coronation. The 2019 book, Untitled: The Real Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor was the first to see Wal­lis as a warm, loyal, intelligent woman ad­or­ed by her friends; a woman written off by cunning, in­fl­uential es­tab­lishment men seeking to destroy her rep­utation. Author Anna Pasternak arg­ued that, far from being the villain of the British drama, Wallis was actually the vic­t­im. So in reviewing this book, I asked if there any legitimate, altern­ative views about Wallis Simpson, the woman whose relationship with Ed­ward VIII “precipitated” his abdication in Dec 1936. But was the real Wallis an opportunistic American…