Edward VIII

June 23, 1894 – May 28, 1972

King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from January to December 1936, who abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson. He was afterwards known as the Duke of Windsor.

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Biography

Edward VIII was born in 1894, the eldest child of the future George V and Queen Mary. He attended the Royal Naval Colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth and then Magdalen College, Oxford, and was made Prince of Wales in 1910. He served with the Grenadier Guards in the First World War, though he was kept away from the front line. He made several overseas tours on his father's behalf and became a popular, fashionable figure, while his private life worried his father and prime minister Stanley Baldwin.

He became king in January 1936 and soon unsettled ministers by his disregard for convention. His wish to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée seeking a second divorce, was opposed by the British and dominion governments and was at odds with his role as head of the Church of England. Faced with the government's resignation if he went ahead, he abdicated in December 1936 after a reign of 326 days and was succeeded by his brother George VI.

Created Duke of Windsor, he married Simpson in France in June 1937. In October that year the couple toured Nazi Germany and met Hitler, which fed suspicions of Nazi sympathies. Early in the Second World War he served with the British Military Mission in France; after France fell he was appointed governor of the Bahamas in 1940 and held the post until March 1945. After the war he lived in France, where he died in 1972.