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When American socialite Wallis
Warfield Simpson captured the heart of Edward, the Prince of Wales, the romance
plunged Britain into a constitutional crisis and made Mrs. Simpson "the
most-talked-about, written-about, headlined and interest-compelling person in
the world," according to the TIME article naming her Woman of the Year for 1936.
Declaring it impossible to carry
out his duties "without the help and support of the woman I love," Edward became
the only monarch in the history of Great Britain to voluntarily abdicate the
throne. TIME said "the news that the King, as King, wanted to marry Mrs. Simpson
was the final culmination of a tide of events sweeping the United Kingdom out of
its cozy past and into a more or less hectic and 'American' future." The Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, as they were henceforth known, lived for several years
in the Bahamas, and spent their remaining decades in Paris.
Researched by Joan Levinstein, the Time Inc. Research
Center
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