That Woman

BRIAN: Major funding for BackStory is provided by the anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation’s.

JOANNE: From Virginia Humanities, this is BackStory.

BRIAN: Welcome to BackStory, the show that explains the history behind today’s headlines. I’m Brian Balogh.

JOANNE: I’m Joanne Freeman.

ED: And I’m Ed Ayers.

BRIAN: An English prince has his heart set on it American actress. On May 19th, 2018, Prince Harry of Wales is set to marry California native, Meghan Markle. When the couple’s relationship became public, the press coverage was so intense and so negative that the royal family issued an official statement warning the press off.

MALE SPEAKER: The Royals rarely talk about their love lives, but Prince Harry just confirmed that he is dating American actress, Meghan Markle.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yeah, he broke the news in order to slam the press. He is royally upset about the way his girlfriend is being treated, calling it–

FEMALE SPEAKER: Abuse and harassment, racial undertones, outright sexism and racism of social media trolls. Megan’s father is white, her mother is African-American.

MALE SPEAKER: The private life has to be private.

JOANNE: But this is not the first transatlantic royal relationship and Meghan Markle is not the first American woman to become a tabloid sensation after getting involved with a British Royal.

ANNE SEBBA: The world’s press reported on it and took photographs.

JOANNE: This is historian, Anne Sebba.

ANNE SEBBA: And there was one photograph in particular with her hand resting lovingly on the King’s arm.

JOANNE: That photograph was taken in 1936. The woman resting a proprietorial arm on her beloved was about to become the most hated woman in England. She would set off a constitutional crisis that shook the British monarchy to its foundations. She was an American divorcee named Wallis Simpson.

ANNE SEBBA: She was brash and open and had affairs. And that was very different from the sort of sheltered English rose type of woman.

BRIAN: In 1928, Wallis Simpson had arrived in London with her second husband, Ernest, an Anglo American shipping executive.

ANNE SEBBA: She wanted real money, real stability. She did not want the sort of insecurity that she had seen her mother suffer from.

BRIAN: The Simpsons attended and hosted parties for members of the British elite and Wallace stood out. She was smart, she was assertive and she knew how to hold a man’s attention.

ANNE SEBBA: And one of her early guests is the Prince of Wales, but she can’t really afford to entertain the Prince of Wales and his circle in the way that she would like to. And that’s really where the trouble starts, because Edward is totally smitten, and he loves going to visit Wallace to discuss affairs of state, or to have a cocktail, or rather a KT as it became known. Wallace was a dab hand at mixing a KT. And it’s a slippery slope, because the Prince of Wales starts giving her jewelry and furs and even sets up a trust fund for her in Canada, because he does not want to lose her merely because she’s worried she hasn’t got enough money. He can certainly do with that little problem.

JOANNE: Wallis Simpson soon became the Prince’s mistress. She wasn’t the first married woman to take the eye of the future King.

ANNE SEBBA: And normally, it’s just an affair and when it runs its course, they’ll be dumped. So Wallis was historically correct in thinking that soon enough, the affair would dwindle and Wallis would, like all royal mistresses, be handed back to her husband. And she was just waiting for that to happen, which shows I suppose that at the beginning, she totally failed to understand what a desperately needy and really troubled man Edward was.

JOANNE: In fact, Edward had long chafed at the restrictions of his royal role.

ANNE SEBBA: And he says, he would rather die than have the sort of throne and courtiers that his father has created, the stuffy old world establishment. He says, I love America, I love all things American. And it’s not just trouser turn ups and jazz and the telephone, it’s American democracy. He actually says, he feels the days of monarchy are over and his father’s a tyrant.

BRIAN: King George the 5th died in January of 1936. Edward was officially King Edward the 8th. His feelings towards Wallis hadn’t changed. In fact, it would soon become clear that he intended to marry her. And that created a whole new problem, because the King of England is also the head of the Church of England and Wallis Simpson was a divorced woman.

ANNE SEBBA: It wasn’t so much illegal as, you couldn’t marry in church if you’d already been divorced and Wallis had two living husbands. So it was simply not possible for her to be queen.

BRIAN: But Edward refused to give her up. Discreet inquiries were made about how his subjects might feel about a queen with two living husbands. And it turns out, they did not approve. British dominion’s like South Africa, Canada and Australia threatened to leave the empire if Wallis were made queen. The love affair became a full blown constitutional crisis And to Edward, there was only one possible resolution.

KING EDWARD: But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman that I love. And I want you to know that the decision I have made has been mine and mine alone.

JOANNE: On December 11th, 1936, less than a year after becoming King, Edward became the only English monarch to voluntarily abdicate his throne. The idea of a King just walking away to be with a woman, especially that woman, was unthinkable. And across the pond, Americans were just eating it up.

ANNE SEBBA: Everybody thought this was a great love story, the greatest romance of the 20th century. And so if an American woman had provided everything that a handsome, charming young prince wanted when he could have had any English rose, any aristocratic woman in the world, and she chose a twice married American woman. Wow, she must be very, very special. So of course there was American pride in all of that.

JOANNE: But back in England, Wallis Simpson was a pariah.

ANNE SEBBA: Nobody knew nothing about Wallis, so there really was a belief that she must have witch like powers, she must be a gold digger, an adventurous, a whore, a Nazi– they threw every single insult they could find at her.

JOANNE: Sebba says that it was Edward’s obsession with her that ultimately led to the couple’s downfall.

ANNE SEBBA: When you look at the story, it’s Edward who wanted her, Edward who was doing the chasing, but people didn’t know that at the time, because he didn’t give interviews and all people thought was, he’s handsome and charming and he’s been lured away by this woman. I’m not saying she’s perfect and wonderful, she did her fair share of manipulating, but she got caught by her own machinations.

JOANNE: Wallis divorced her husband and married Edward in a small ceremony in France in front of a few friends. No Royals attended. The couple could be together forever. And from that point onward, their relationship seemed to deteriorate. Wallis would continue to write to her second husband even after they divorced and her letters seem filled with regret. She refers to Edward as Peter Pan, a man child who will never grow up. His devotion to her was claustrophobic and she grew increasingly bitter. Sebba says, few who knew the couple described what they shared as love.

BRIAN: Despite the national trauma brought on by Edward’s abdication, Sebba says that in the long run, it may have been for the best for both the Royal Family and the United Kingdom.

ANNE SEBBA: How lucky, because if Edwards had broken up the empire, he would have done, it’s impossible to imagine Britain prosecuting a war without the help of Canadian soldiers, Indian soldiers, Australian, the lot. So all of that was critical. And I do believe we got the better brother and the more supportive wife.

BRIAN: The abdication of Edward VIII removed a weak and pro-German King from the throne at the fairy moment Britain was on the verge of war with Nazi Germany. The playwright Noel Coward quipped, a statue should be erected to Mrs. Simpson in every town in England for the blessing she has bestowed upon the country.

JOANNE: Even today, royal marriages can have big political consequences. And as for Harry and Meghan Markle, Anne Sebba says, while their courtship may have echoes of earlier royal relationships, there is at least one big difference. Unlike his great, great uncle, Harry will never be King of England.

ANNE SEBBA: Harry is sixth in line to the throne. He can really do what he likes, but I think he will realize that actually, he has a job to do and the survival of the Royal Family really depends on how well that job is done. And I think with Megan, he will do it absolutely brilliantly.

BRIAN: So today on the show, with a royal wedding dominating headlines around the world, we’re looking at the surprisingly long history of American women who marry into royal and aristocratic families and the often outsized political impact that those marriages have. We’ll hear about American women who traded family fortunes for aristocratic status in the Gilded Age, plus, we’ll look at how women have shaped her own political dynasties here in the US, even if they couldn’t always play a formal role in politics.