Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

There’s almost constant chatter about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but long before there was a Harry and Meghan, there was a David and Wallis. While the severity of what happened during what will forever be known as the Abdication Crisis does not compare to the “spare” and his wife stepping back from royal duties, the media attention and social media wattage dedicated to the lives of the Sussexes, with or without their royal titles, brings back very unpleasant memories of that time in history.

There are those who say I have an unhealthy fascination (obsession, you say?) with the British Royal Family, and my very special subcategory of that fascination is in fact the Abdication Crisis. Naturally, when I saw this title for request in NetGalley, I immediately asked for it.

If you are younger or didn’t share my fascination with all things Windsor or Mountbatten-Windsor (that’s a whole other story), this book may seem like a wild, unbelievable story. It is fiction, after all. However, this is extremely well researched historical fiction. While the intimate conversations between the characters in this book are clearly made up, they are also clearly of the time and of the ilk of the people involved.

A brief synopsis of the Abdication Crisis may inspire you to read more about it, either by reading The Windsor Affair by Melanie Benjamin (Delacorte Press, June 2, 2026, 384 pages) or by reading nonfiction accounts of the events, many of the following titles I have collected over the years and read page by page front to back, such as:

• Winston and the Windsors: How Churchill Shaped a Royal Dynasty by Andrew Morton
• Wallis and Edward Letters 1931-37: the Intimate Correspondence of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor by Michael Block
• 17 Carnations: The Windsors, The Nazis and the Cover-up by Andrew Morton
• The Windsor Story: An Intimate Portrait of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor by J. Bryan III, Charles J. V. Murphy
• A King’s Story: The Memoirs of H.R.H. The Duke of Windsor K.G. By Edward VIII
• Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters by Andrew Morton
• Majesty: Queen Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor by Robert Lacey
• The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life by Charles Higham
• Edward VIII by Frances Donaldson
• Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler
• The Woman He Loved by Ralph G. Martin
• The King’s Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi
• Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson by Paul French

Okay, in black and white, it does seem more like an obsession than fascination…

Basically the story is this. King George V and his wife, Queen Mary of Teck, had five children, four princes and one princess. The oldest, Edward, was heir to the throne. In time he was made Prince of Wales, a title bestowed upon the heir to the throne when he reaches the age of maturity. The primary responsibilities of the Prince of Wales were quite simple: (1) prepare to ascend to the throne upon the death of his father and (2) marry a young, respectable British woman who would supply England with the next heir to the throne, thus assuring the continuity of the House of Windsor.

But Edward, who preferred to be called David—his seventh of seven given names, had other plans. He was a playboy, giving lavish parties at the Fort, a 40-room estate located on the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Here he entertained the rich and famous, including very wealthy Americans—especially the wives of wealthy Americans. It is at the Fort where he was first introduced to Wallis Warfield Spencer Simpson, the twice divorced American from Baltimore who set her cap for the Prince of Wales.

David and Wallis soon fell in love, “whatever ‘in love’ means” (IYKYK), although while David was smitten with Wallis, she was far more smitten by David’s wealth, title, and power. Then, the unthinkable happened. David’s father, George V, died, and David’s partying days came to a crashing halt as he ascended to the throne, naming himself Edward VIII.

The beginning of the Abdication Crisis was when David told the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that he would seek to marry Wallis, who legally was still married to her second husband Ernest Simpson. When it became clear that the government and the majority of the British people would not have it, Edward VIII abdicated the throne in December of 1936. His younger brother Albert “Bertie” ascended to the throne as George VI, and his heir to the throne was none other than Elizabeth II, later to become the longest reigning monarch in the history of the British monarchy.

David and Wallis (who called each other WE as a pet name, standing for Wallis and Edward, sort of like Brangelina) went on to marry, after her second divorce was made final, and they lived in exile in France until their deaths.

Now that you’ve had a mini-history lesson on the British monarchy, let’s talk about The Windsor Affair.

As you can see, I know a lot about this period of history, and there was nothing new in this novel to surprise me. The panic that ensued when David was discussing abdication with the Prime Minister and his younger brother seemed realistic, however, Wallis’s own reactions to her sporadic overseas conversations with David seemed a bit out of character from what I’ve read about her. This characterization, however, enabled Benjamin to create her ending, a somewhat alternate ending based upon what I’ve read.

The new king’s wife, Elizabeth the Queen Mother, held a lifelong grudge against Wallis, instrumental in the withholding of the HRH title that David went to his grave wishing to have bestowed upon his beloved Wallis. It is hard for me to believe that Elizabeth the Queen Mother acted the way she did at the funeral of the Duke of Windsor, when she blamed David and Wallis for the premature death of her husband at the age of 56, brought on by the pressures and stress of ascension when he had not been properly prepared to be king. The constant chain smoking did not help, which ultimately brought about the cancer from which he died.

This was my first book by Melanie Benjamin, and I’m curious to read others by her, particularly The Swans of Fifth Avenue, her 2016 historical fiction novel about Truman Capote and the NYC women he entertained whom he nicknamed “the Swans.”

Thank you to NetGalley, Delacorte Press, and Melanie Benjamin for the advanced reading e-copy which I read on my Kindle. It was an enjoyable read on a topic I will never tire of.