“He took the job on with the hope of marrying her. He wanted the divorce secure and everything in preparation so they could be married before the Coronation.”
The former King told Mr Murphy: “What was really at stake was my right as King to a private life, to an independent existence, to ‘a life outside the office’.”
Edward felt that as monarch he had the right to choose his wife himself, however as a divorcee Wallis was deemed unsuitable to be Queen and was not a popular choice with the British government either.
One royal expert told Express.co.uk that Wallis ultimately “did Britain a favour” by taking Edward away from the monarchy and allowing his younger, more dutiful and sensible brother George VI to take the throne.
Marlene Koenig said that Edward was completely “unsuitable” to be King, adding: “As a young man, who toured the US and Canada Edward, known as David, of course, was very popular, but his sense of duty did not match the efforts from his younger brothers, especially the Duke of York, who married the right woman, had two young daughters.
“David was making no attempt to find a suitable bride to be his Princess of Wales and future Queen Consort.”
Another reason for their unsuitability was their sympathies towards Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, even though fascism was not an unpopular political stance amongst the British aristocracy in the 1930s.
Photographs even emerged of Wallis and Edward meeting the dictator of Germany before the Second World War, however the couple eventually set up their home in France.
Known as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, they lived in their French villa near Paris together until Edward died in 1972, with Wallis living there alone until her own death in 1986.
