“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 I love.”

Edward VIII, after eleven months as king, abdicates. He does so because he has fallen in love with Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee. The Church of England does not recognize divorce. The king is also the head of the church.



Edward as Prince of Wales. He was the world’s Most Eligible Bachelor in the 1920s and 1930s.

The story doesn’t have a happy ending. There’s a sadomasochistic twist to the marriage of Edward and Wallis, who chews him out within earshot of visitors, as if he were a little boy. She is a harpy and never forgives him for the couple’s exclusion from court and the perks of royalty. The two also develop a fondness for Adolf Hitler.

I apologize for cutting off Wallis’s image. However, that may be merciful. “David” certainly looks happy.

Maybe Kate in her wedding dress made up a little for Wallis. But just a little.



During the war, after they’d been given the honorary title Duke and Duchess of Windsor, they were installed as royal functionaries in the Bahamas, as far away from Germany as possible.

The happy ending isn’t Edward’s. It belongs instead to his little brother, George VI, who gets an entire film made about HIS speech, the one that earned Colin Firth an Oscar.

It’s a moving scene, but one that sticks with me, too, comes earlier in the film, when David (Edward’s family familiar) mocks Bertie’s (George’s family name) stutter. In an evocative piece of acting, you watch Firth’s character shrinks, deeply wounded, in the face of the abuse.


“David” and “Bertie,” the young princes, in naval uniform.

Royals, you may have noticed, are often shallow silly people. Edward was a bully, and he reminds me of Joe Kennedy, the eldest son, who blew himself in a B-24 bomber trying to outdo Jack’s PT 109 exploits.


Joseph Kennedy Jr., Kathleen (“Kick”) and Jack, in London before World War II.

But George, who I am sure had plenty of faults of his own, had courage, I think, and character. I do know that he loved his little girls, Elizabeth and Margaret.

He certainly had no grounding in familial love, between his big brother and his parents. Queen Mary, once Mary of Teck, holds newborn royals looking as if she’s about to dine on them. Terrifying woman. George V was a cold man. And Kaiser Wilhelm, who alternated between brimming with undeserved self-confidence and hysteria, was his great uncle. What a family.

The principles, a jolly bunch. George V, center, who predicted that his son would muck it up, Queen Mary, lower right, David (Edward VIII) at left, Bertie (George VI) behind Papa.


And so Firth’s performance in this scene, along with Geoffery Rush’s performance as his speech therapist, are to me indelible.

God save this king, anyway.