Wallis Simpson

There she made friends with heiress Renée du Pont, a daughter of Senator T. Coleman du Pont, of the du Pont family, and Mary Kirk, whose family founded Kirk Silverware. A fellow pupil at one of Wallis's schools recalled, "She was bright, brighter than all of us. She made up her mind to go to the head of the class, and she did." Wallis was always immaculately dressed and pushed herself hard to do well. A later biographer wrote of her "Though Wallis's jaw was too heavy for her to be counted beautiful, her fine violet-blue eyes and petite figure, quick wits, vitality, and capacity for total concentration on her interlocutor ensured that she had many admirers." Read Less

Edward denied this to his father, despite his staff seeing them in bed together as well as "evidence of a physical sexual act". Wallis soon ousted Lady Furness, and the Prince distanced himself from a former lover and confidante, the Anglo-American textile heiress Freda Dudley Ward. Read Less

As the German troops advanced, the Duke and Duchess fled south from their Paris home, first to Biarritz, then in June to Spain. There, she told the United States ambassador, Alexander W. Weddell, that France had lost because it was "internally diseased". In July, the pair moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they stayed at the home of Ricardo de Espirito Santo e Silva, a banker who was suspected of being a German agent. In August, the Duke and Duchess travelled by commercial liner to the Bahamas, where the Duke was installed as Governor.

Wallis performed her role as the Governor's lady competently for five years; she worked actively for the Red Cross and in the improvement of infant welfare. However, she hated Nassau, calling it "our St Helena", in a reference to Napoleon's final place of exile. She was heavily criticised in the British press for her extravagant shopping in the United States, undertaken when Britain was enduring privations such as rationing and the blackout. Her racist attitudes towards the local population (she called them "lazy, thriving niggers" in letters to her aunt) reflected her upbringing. Read Less

The Duchess did not attend; the previous October whilst staying in London she had told her husband, "I hate this country. I shall hate it to my grave." Later that year, they were offered the use of a house by the Paris municipal authorities. The couple lived at 4 route du Champ d'Entraînement in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris for most of the remainder of their lives, essentially living a life of easy retirement. They bought a second house in the country, Moulin de la Tuilerie or "The Mill" in Gif-sur-Yvette, where they soon became close friends with their neighbours, Oswald and Diana Mosley. Years later, Diana Mosley claimed that the Duke and Duchess shared her and her husband's views that Hitler should have been given a free hand to destroy Communism. As the Duke himself wrote in the New York Daily News of 13 December 1966: " it was in Britain's interest and in Europe's too, that Germany be encouraged to strike east and smash Communism forever... I thought the rest of us could be fence-sitters while the Nazis and the Reds slogged it out." Read Less

Later royal biographer Hugo Vickers called Blum a "Satanic figure … wearing the mantle of good intention to disguise her inner malevolence". Read Less

Her funeral was held at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, attended by her two surviving sisters-in-law: the Queen Mother and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, and other members of the royal family. The Queen, Prince Philip, and the Prince and Princess of Wales attended both the funeral ceremony and the burial. She was buried next to Edward in the Royal Burial Ground near Windsor Castle, as "Wallis, Duchess of Windsor". Until an agreement with Queen Elizabeth II in the 1960s, the Duke and Duchess had previously planned for a burial in a purchased cemetery plot at Green Mount Cemetery in Baltimore, where the father of the Duchess was interred.

In recognition of the help France gave to the Duke and Duchess in providing them with a home, and in lieu of death duties, the Duchess's collection of Louis XVI style furniture, some porcelain and paintings were made over to the French state. The British Royal Family received no major bequests. Most of her estate went to the Pasteur Institute medical research foundation, on the instructions of Suzanne Blum. The decision took the Royal Family and the Duchess's friends by surprise, as she had shown little interest in charity during her life. In a Sotheby's auction in Geneva in April 1987 the Duchess's remarkable jewellery collection raised $45 million for the Institute, approximately seven times its pre-sale estimate. Blum later claimed that British-based Egyptian entrepreneur Mohamed Al-Fayed tried to purchase the jewels for a "rock bottom price". Read Less