On December 11, 1936, a man spoke on the BBC. Millions of listeners held their breath as he announced his resolve to go forward with a decision that was, and remains, unique in British history: his abdication from the throne. That man was Edward VIII. The reason behind his abdication was his love for a woman that the British Court and the establishment would have never accepted as a Queen: the American, twice-divorced Wallis Simpson.

In today’s Biographics, we are going to present their story—one of frustration, unhappy marriages, and fraught relationships. It is the story of how a man and a woman renounced the British Crown, apparently for love, and of how they were tempted to reclaim the throne by the machinations of their supposed enemy, the Third Reich.

Edward was born on June 23, 1894, in Richmond, Surrey. He was the eldest child of the future King George V, the grandchild of King Edward VII, and a great-grandchild of Queen Victoria, who was still alive at the time of his birth. He was always known in his family as David, the last of his many middle names. From a young age, Edward was set on a naval career. However, the quick ascension to the throne of his father George V in 1910 meant that Edward was immediately appointed Prince of Wales on his 16th birthday. Edward had to quit his naval studies and enroll at Oxford. It’s generally agreed that Edward was not particularly interested in studying. Besides a good performance with his polo team at Oxford, he had little academic achievement and left university after eight terms with no degree.

At the outbreak of World War I, Edward joined the Grenadier Guards. The young Prince was keen to see action on the Western Front, like his counterpart, the German Crown Prince Wilhelm. However, the British Government forbade this due to the risk of losing the heir to the throne. After the war, in January 1919, Edward’s youngest brother, Prince John, died at the age of 13 after a long struggle with epilepsy. Edward referred to John’s death as “little more than a regrettable nuisance.” His limited contact with John due to his illness led him to remember him as “more of an animal than anything else.” Edward had to write a letter to his mother, apologizing for being such a “cold-hearted and unsympathetic swine.”

Throughout the 1920s, Edward undertook extensive foreign tours, particularly in the British Empire, representing his father. He also visited areas of high unemployment and deprivation in Britain during the economic depression of the early 1930s. These occasions made his figure familiar and popular with the press and the public. His image at this stage was that of a dashing dandy: good-looking, well-dressed, skilled at playing polo and flying airplanes. He earned a pilot’s license in 1918 and was the first British monarch to fly an aircraft.

In the 1920s, Edward also dedicated time to another passion—he had a string of affairs with several married women, which cemented his status as the world’s most desirable bachelor. At the same time, his affairs seemed to keep him from fulfilling one of his duties as Prince of Wales: finding a suitable match. In late 1930, Edward began a relationship with Thelma, Viscountess Furness, who was also married at the time. It was Thelma who, probably in January 1931, introduced him to her beautiful, intelligent, and witty American friend, Wallis Simpson.

Wallis Simpson was born Bessie-Wallis Warfield on June 19, 1896, in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania. This was a spa town where her father, Teackle Wallis, was seeking treatment for tuberculosis, which unfortunately claimed his life when Bessie was only a few months old. Alice, Bessie’s mother, was an impoverished widow, but fortunately, she was taken in by Solomon, her late husband’s wealthy brother, living in Baltimore. Solomon also paid for Bessie-Wallis’ education in an exclusive all-girls private school.

As a teenager in Baltimore, Wallis dropped the ‘Bessie’ and was subject to many girlhood passions. She fell madly in love with two teachers and several girlfriends, sending them letters describing them as “beautiful little partridges.” There is no proof that she may have had romantic relationships with women, though. After graduating, Wallis dated many handsome men, despite not being well-off or especially attractive by the standards of that time. In 1916, Wallis married an airman named Win Spencer. The marriage was not a happy one. When Win tried to kiss her on their wedding night, Wallis recoiled. Later, she asserted that the marriage was never consummated.

The marriage was doomed to failure. Win was transferred to China, where their relationship eventually broke down due to his alcoholism. Wallis left the household and went to live with her friend Katherine and her husband, Herman Rogers. Herman was not just a friend; Wallis considered him to be the true love of her life. Although according to her biographer Andrew Morton, this relationship never evolved into a sexual one. Later, she met a South American man, Felipe Espil, who also undoubtedly became the true love of Wallis’s life, though she never had a sexual relationship with him either.

Wallis then moved to England, where she married Anglo-American businessman Ernest Simpson. Ernest may not have shared Win’s alcoholism, but this second marriage was also platonic, according to Wallis’ own version as reported by Morton. In London, Wallis became friends with Thelma Viscountess Furness, who introduced her to Edward. From then on, Wallis became a regular presence in the royal social scene, and she started to receive letters signed simply ‘PW’—Prince of Wales.

When the affair between Thelma and the Prince of Wales came to an end, Wallis took her friend’s place. Very early in the relationship, Wallis became indispensable to his household. She organized his dinner parties and went on exotic foreign holidays with him. Royal courtiers were not openly hostile at this stage, yet they were wary of Wallis’ hold on the Prince. Evidence suggests that their relationship was not of a physical nature, and there are questions about the true nature of their attraction. Wallis may have been attracted only by the proximity to power, while Edward may have seen in Wallis, a twice-divorcee, a way out from his future duties as a King.

But Edward soon had to face reality: on January 29, 1936, George VI died after a prolonged illness. It was time for Edward’s accession to the throne. The new King did not intend to interrupt his love story with Wallis, and the two continued to be seen together at official occasions, such as the Proclamation of his own accession. At this stage, their affair was not widely known to the public, as the British establishment did its best to hush up the whole story. However, members of high society had started spreading stories that made their way to the US and other countries. Readers abroad began collecting news clippings from gossip columns and posting them to relatives in the UK.

An article from the Milwaukee Journal, dated October 30, 1936, tells how American newspapers were mysteriously removed from newsstands in central London. Sometimes, just a selection of pages was ripped out. After a while, the whole world seemed to be in on the story—except for the British press, which feigned ignorance or chose to ignore the affair. When Wallis finally divorced her husband, a modern-day journalist would have made a field day out of it: this meant that Wallis and Edward were one step closer to marrying. Yet it was covered by a single article at the bottom of page 10 in The Guardian.

The story of the affair between the King and a twice-divorced American finally exploded in December 1936 when Bishop Blunt of Bradford denounced the couple from his pulpit. With the cat out of the bag and Wallis’ divorce out of the way, a word started to make the rounds among the British Cabinet of Ministers: abdication. As King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Edward was also head of the Church of England. At that time, the Church did not allow divorcees to remarry unless their former spouse was already dead. So, could the head of the Anglican faith violate one of the tenets of his own Church? For this reason, the Cabinet feared that the British people would never accept Wallis as Queen. Edward had to choose: either Wallis or the Crown.

Initially, he tried to negotiate with the Cabinet. He proposed the idea of a morganatic marriage to Prime Minister Baldwin in November 1936. A morganatic marriage would leave Edward on the throne, assign Wallis a lesser title instead of queen, and revoke rights of succession to any offspring. When Baldwin rejected the proposal, Edward had only one option left: abdication.

On December 10, 1936, King Edward VIII submitted his abdication to the Government, which was endorsed by Parliament the next day. He became the only British monarch ever to resign voluntarily. His brother Albert, Duke of York, would rise to the throne as King George VI. On December 11, the now former Edward VIII announced his decision to the nation. This part was true, although at the time few believed Edward’s words. Wallis was horrified at the idea that Edward would abdicate for her and tried to talk him out of it. Theirs had only been an affair, not real love. Wallis was still in love with Felipe and with Herman. But once the abdication was announced, she felt obliged to go through with the charade and marry Edward, now styled the Duke of Windsor.

Biographer Andrew Morton reveals that on the day before the wedding, she begged Herman, her one true love, to get her pregnant. This would not have been possible, as a previous surgical operation had left Wallis incapable of conceiving. In any case, Herman refused her proposal. Edward and Wallis married on June 3, 1937, at the Château de Cande, near Tours, in France. A Guardian article from the time reports that Herman Rogers was present and very active at the ceremony. He played host to the groom, walked Wallis to the altar, and even delivered an address to the press on behalf of Edward, asking for the couple’s privacy to be respected. Based on what we know today about Wallis and Herman, the whole wedding must have felt incredibly awkward for the two souls.

In any case, the marriage was sealed, and the newlyweds left for a three-month honeymoon in Austria. Yet again, based on Morton’s accounts, Wallis’ third marriage remained unconsummated.

For the following two years, Wallis and Edward, or the Windsors, lived mainly in France. Their relationships with the Royal Family were severely strained. Edward was furious at George VI for refusing to style Wallis as ‘Her Royal Highness.’ On the other hand, George forbade his brother to return to Britain, lest he rescind his generous allowance. The relationship with the Court and the Cabinet worsened when the Windsors visited Germany in October 1937. The official reason for the visit was for Edward to learn more about the regime’s employment and housing policies. In truth, Edward was craving princely treatment—especially for Wallis—and knew that the German leadership was all too keen to roll out the red carpet.

During their visit, the Windsors met with Goering, Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Himmler, and Rudolph Hess. They even spent two hours with the Führer, and the Duke was photographed delivering a Nazi salute. The British Government saw this as an embarrassment. Two years later, after the declaration of war on Germany, Edward was appointed liaison officer to the French Army. When the Germans finally invaded in May 1940, the Windsors escaped to southern France, then to neutral Spain, and finally to Portugal in July. New Prime Minister Winston Churchill was keen to get the Windsors back to Britain as soon as possible. But the Duke delayed proceedings as he wanted to negotiate a post befitting his rank and “simple courtesies” for Wallis—in other words, recognition of their royal status.

Meanwhile, the Germans were conspiring to get hold of the Windsors. In their plan, should the invasion of Britain succeed, Edward would have made a good collaborationist King. Their theory was confirmed by intelligence reports from Madrid and Lisbon, which indicated that “Windsor spoke strongly against Churchill and against this war,” and that the Duke was “convinced that had he remained on the throne, war would have been avoided and described himself as a firm supporter of peaceful compromise with Germany.”

A certain show about the British Royal Family builds on this idea, suggesting that Edward may have inspired the carpet bombing of civilian targets in Britain. This is not verified, and surely the Luftwaffe did not need this passing comment to inspire their strategic plans. What we can say with more certainty, though, is that Edward was potentially pro-Nazi, still believed in the 1930s politics of appeasement, and was a defeatist, to say the least. Churchill was aware of the danger of the Duke’s declarations and issued orders to keep an eye on him, lest he speak against the Allied war effort to the press. He even sent him a direct warning, ordering him not to mention “any view about the war, or about the Germans, or about Hitlerism, which is different from that adopted by the British nation and Parliament.”

But the Duke’s delaying tactics continued. Churchill’s ultimate solution was to get the Duke as far away from Europe as possible by appointing him Governor of The Bahamas. But Edward refused, claiming the Bahamas to be a “third-class British colony” and considered returning to Spain as Franco’s guest instead. Von Ribbentrop took advantage of the stalling situation and sent an explicit offer to the Windsors: “Germany is determined to force England to peace by every means of power and upon this happening would be prepared to accommodate any desire expressed by the Duke, especially with a view to the assumption of the English throne by the Duke and Duchess.”

The offer did not solicit an immediate agreement, but neither a flat-out rejection. A German agent reported that the Duchess appeared to be considering this proposal very thoughtfully. But this was not enough for Berlin. The Germans needed to take the Windsors back to Madrid to better control them, and so they launched a secret operation, codenamed ‘Willi,’ to ensure that the Duke bent to their will. The head of Nazi counterintelligence, Walter Schellenberg, traveled to Lisbon to oversee the simple plan. It involved a threatening message relayed by Miguel Primo de Rivera, a Spanish nationalist very close to Franco. De Rivera informed the Windsors that they had uncovered a British plot to murder them and urged them to seek Spain’s protection.

Eventually, Plan Willi failed. Winston Churchill threatened the Duke with a Court Martial if he refused to accept the post in the Bahamas. Edward was, after all, a Major-General of the Army and subject to military justice. The Windsors eventually left for the Bahamas on August 1, 1940. The Duke may have still been wary of the warnings from De Rivera, as he demanded a Scotland Yard detective for personal protection. Edward had been physically removed from the war in Europe, but he still managed to create more embarrassing situations.

In late 1940, for example, when interviewed by an American magazine, he said: “There will be no revolution in Germany and it would be a tragic thing for the world if Hitler were to be overthrown. Hitler is the right and logical leader of the German people… Hitler is a very great man.” As Governor of the Bahamas, Edward disliked the job, but he did some good work there. The Duke launched initiatives to raise wages for Bahamians and promoted plans to relieve poverty. But true to character, he could not help yet another faux pas. As he addressed these social problems, he blamed them on “men of Central European Jewish descent, who had secured jobs as a pretext for obtaining a deferment of draft.”

Full reports on the whole relationship between the Windsors and Nazi Germany were collected after the war in the so-called Windsor File. Most of it, however, remains classified, and for the moment we will not know the full extent of the Duke’s sympathy or even collaboration with the regime. What we have are his public declarations and interviews. In the 1950s, he blamed WWII on “anti-appeasement politicians in Britain, Roosevelt, and the Jews.” In 1966, he told an American newspaper he believed the UK should not have intervened. “I thought the rest of us could be fence sitters while the Nazis and the Reds slogged it out,” and privately, he expressed the view that “I never thought Hitler was such a bad chap.”

After the war, the Windsors lived between the US and France. On the outside, it appeared as if Wallis and the former king lived a happy life of leisure, thanks to the allowance still granted to them. But the reality was not as it seemed, as Andrew Morton uncovered by reviewing Wallis’ letters. Edward was always besotted, completely infatuated with her. Wallis always treated him with deference and respect, at least in public. She always referred to him as ‘the Duke’ and called him ‘Sir’ in public. But in private, things were very different. She spent her days being unpleasant to all those around her and treated her husband with harsh coldness, denying him any intimate contact. He would often say to her, “Am I going to go to bed in tears again tonight?” According to Morton, all they shared in later life was “a mutual interest in golf, fascism, and casual racism.” Wallis never forgot her first true loves, Felipe, but especially Herman. Many of the letters uncovered by Morton are addressed to him. When Herman and Felipe died, Wallis was devastated and retreated from the world, paying little to no attention to her husband.

Edward paid only short visits to Britain after the war, mainly to attend funerals of family members. His relationship with the Royal Family remained strained and distant. His health deteriorated, and in the early 1970s, Edward was diagnosed with throat cancer. During his dying moments, on May 28, 1972, the former King was being comforted by a nurse. With his last breath, he whispered, “Wallis, Wallis, and Wallis.” But Wallis was not there. Edward died in the arms of a stranger, rather than the woman for whom he had abdicated.

After the Duke’s death, Wallis settled in Paris. Once a known socialite, described as one of the best-dressed women in the world, Wallis retreated from the world and stopped entertaining. She died of coronary heart disease on April 24, 1986. Without any heirs or relatives, she left her estate to the Pasteur research institute.

And so ends one of the saddest personal stories of the 20th Century. As Wallis and Edward’s lives have been told on film many times