Video summary
The video presents a compelling narrative about two intertwined royal love stories, focusing on the decision of Princess Margaret to reject Captain Peter Townsend and instead marry Antony Armstrong-Jones. The narrator explains that while various factors influenced Margaret's choice, including opposition from her sister Queen Elizabeth, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and concerns regarding the Church of England, the most significant deterrent was a warning from her brother-in-law, the Duke of Edinburgh. He shared the tragic history of his own uncle, King Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne to marry the divorced Wallis Simpson, only to face a life of exile and loneliness. The story highlights how the establishment used Wallis's status as a divorced woman as a convenient excuse to remove Edward from power, despite his genuine affection for her and his progressive social views that had previously stirred some positive change in British housing.
Following Edward VIII's abdication, the British government launched a systematic campaign to erase him from public memory while elevating his brother, George VI, who became Margaret's father. The ex-king and his American wife were effectively ostracized by official Washington and London alike, leading them to drift between the French Riviera, New York, and Miami for three years before being granted the menial post of Governor of the Bahamas. Even in this remote position, Edward was depicted as deeply insecure, constantly checking on Wallis's presence at dinner and becoming frantic when she left the room. Over time, the monotony of their exile took its toll; while Edward remained fiercely loyal to his wife, Wallis began to appear bored and distant, eventually seeking companionship in nightclubs with other friends, leaving her husband often alone.
The narrator reflects on the irony that many friends predicted Edward would grow bored with married life given his past reputation as a womanizer, yet it was actually Wallis who seemed to lose interest first. This dynamic is poignantly illustrated by an incident where Wallis wrote a heartfelt letter defending her husband after the narrator published something critical of him, urging kindness toward the man she still loved. The video concludes by drawing a direct parallel between the Windsors' fate and the potential path awaiting Princess Margaret. The Duke of Edinburgh warned that if Margaret married a divorced man, she too would risk becoming homeless and socially exiled, wandering between locations like Long Island and Miami without true acceptance. Ultimately, the story serves as a cautionary tale about the heavy social costs of defying tradition, illustrating how love can lead to historical significance but also to profound personal isolation when it clashes with societal norms.
Read the full video transcript
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>> Today, ladies and gentlemen, I want to
report to you on one of the great love
stories of recent times. A love story
that made history.
I suppose I'd be more correct in saying
two love stories because one love story
influenced the other.
Now, there were several reasons, as we
know, why Princess Margaret finally
decided not to marry Captain Peter
Townsend, who was 40 years old with a
divorced wife and two children.
Her sister, the Queen, of course, was
hoping she would not marry.
Though, actually, Queen Elizabeth was
very understanding and sympathetic.
It's also known that the Archbishop of
Canterbury was opposed, and that during
one visit with Margaret,
he pointed out that her marriage to a
divorced man
would be a serious blow to the church,
which already had suffered from the
marriage of her uncle, the Duke of
Windsor,
to a divorced woman,
and from the divorce and remarriage of
Prime Minister Eden.
Well, all these things weighed heavily
with Margaret, but
perhaps the most effective human advice
came from her brother-in-law, the Duke
of Edinburgh,
about another love story.
And I'll be back in a minute to tell you
about it.
What the Duke of Edinburgh told Princess
Margaret was the story of another royal
Britisher who had married a divorced
person, her uncle, the Duke of Windsor,
and how he had stepped down from the
throne of England for a woman he loved,
only to wander through life homeless, a
virtual exile in a way of
nightclubs and Long Island society,
sometimes
very much alone.
I don't know whether the Duke of
Edinburgh told his sister-in-law all of
the story of that great love affair
because I don't think he knew all of it.
But perhaps I can fill in some of the
details because I knew the Duchess
before she became the Duchess of
Windsor.
When she was just Wallis Simpson living
in Washington in the carefree 1920s.
I sometimes wondered why men fell in
love with Wallis Simpson as almost every
young man did in those days.
I know I did.
She wasn't exactly beautiful. She was
thin, almost to the point of frailty.
Her skin was not particularly clear, but
her eyes were darkly fascinating.
And she had a wit that ranged from the
subtle to the caustic and which never
failed her. She was never at a loss for
the right word.
She was cool and yet she had the
opposite effect on men.
She had nerve
and yet she never stepped beyond the
bounds of propriety. She could go and
swim at midnight with as much grace as
at high noon.
And she danced divinely.
I said almost every man fell in love
with her at that time, but there was one
exception.
The handsome young secretary of the
Argentine Embassy, Felipe Espil.
Wallis even used to come to the outside
of the office of the Argentine
Chancellery on Corcoran Street to talk
to him through the window.
Once in my Georgetown garden when both
had come to dine, they made up for a
time, but Wallis shortly thereafter
sailed to England where she met the most
sought-after bachelor in the world,
Edward, Prince of Wales.
I saw her in London a year or so later.
I was spending the winter there covering
the 1930 Naval Conference and met Wallis
at at a dance, but
I had a very hard time dancing with her.
She was much too popular.
She had just come to know the man who
was to leave the throne of England for
her.
And there was talk in England that
Edward finally had met the girl.
Well, he could have married any number
of women all the way from Argentina to
America, just as Princess Margaret could
have had her choice of any number of
young men.
Edward had inherited some of the nervous
temperament of his mother, the late
Queen Mary.
He had a slight impediment in his
speech.
And to watch him deliver a speech was
like watching the convulsions of a
drowning man. He would finger his
necktie, tap nervously on the table,
jerk his head from side to side.
To overcome this nervousness, he drank a
a little too much.
Seven or eight cocktails before dinner
was his usual quota.
And sometimes his aide almost had to
prop him up when it came time to make a
speech.
Finally, his doctors ordered him to have
a piece of knitting at hand whenever he
felt the urge to tap his fingers on the
table.
Well, into this highly nervous, exciting
life of the future king of England
came a slow-moving, cool, calm girl with
a slight southern drawl
and a delightful sense of humor and the
gift of making those around her feel at
home.
Gradually, Edward gave up his drinking,
got over his nervousness,
and decided that Wallis Simpson,
the twice-married girl from Baltimore,
was the one and only woman
he had ever loved.
Well, by this time Edward, Prince of
Wales, had become Edward the VIII, King
of England and Ireland, ruler of all the
British dominions beyond the seas,
Emperor of India.
A position where custom required that he
take a wife,
and not
a divorced wife.
Wallis Sim- Simpson shortly thereafter
obtained her second divorce from her
naval officer husband. And the king
summoned Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin
to ask his advice about marrying her.
Well, at this point in the story which
the Duke of Edinburgh told Princess
Margaret,
her uncle Edward encountered exactly the
same opposition from the Church of
England. However,
there was other secret but potent
opposition.
It came from the nobility of England,
the powerful British ruling classes who
didn't like the new king's leaning
toward labor.
He had shocked them profoundly by
visiting the Karl Marx house in Vienna,
the socialist housing project named for
the founder of Marxism socialism.
And when he inspected unemployment in
the coal fields of Durham,
he asked an old Quaker operating a
relief station,
"Did Lord so-and-so, the owner of the
coal mine, contribute to your fund?"
"Yes, your majesty," was the reply, "100
pounds." "The bloody lousy beggar!"
exclaimed the king of England. "Here's
my check for 1,000 pounds. Let's see his
lordship match that."
So, the ruling classes of England were
delighted to use Wallis Simpson as an
excuse to get Edward off the throne. And
they wept no tears when he left the
throne
for the woman he loved.
In the streets of London,
small boys sang, "Hark the herald angels
sing, Mrs. Simpson pinched our king."
But in England,
a change took place in the course of
British history.
Edward's scathing denunciation of poor
British housing in Glasgow and Wales had
stirred new housing activity. But after
his abdication,
that activity stopped.
After his abdication, also the British
ruling classes went on ruling just as
they always had.
Well, I'll be back in a minute
with the rest of this great and rather
tragic love story.
After Edward VIII stepped down from the
throne of England, those who run the
affairs of England began a very
systematic campaign to make England
forget all about him.
I'm not sure the Duke of Edinburgh told
all this to Princess Margaret the other
day,
but the fact was that no step was
neglected to build up his brother who
became George VI, her father.
And the ex-king with his American wife
were left to drift
and it was hoped to be forgotten.
Six months after they were married, they
planned to visit the United States, but
official Washington, taking the cue from
official London, proceeded to snub them.
Baltimore hoped that Wally would come
back to the old hometown, but the
British Embassy remained strictly,
coldly aloof.
And the State Department, taking its cue
from the Embassy,
did likewise. Finally, the trip got so
snarled up that it was called off.
The Windsors continued to rust and
rusticate in their villa on the French
Riviera. Finally, after 3 years of being
officially forgotten,
the British government considered it
safe to reward the ex-king of England
with one of the most insignificant jobs
it could possibly give him.
Governor of the Bahamas, those sleepy
azure islands off the coast of Florida.
There, Edward Albert George Andrew
Patrick David, ex-king of England, who
once had the world at his feet,
handled the minor problems of the
Bahaman Negroes, and clung almost
frantically to any American tourist who
came along in order to relieve the
monotony.
At dinner, the Duke would look across at
his wife to make sure she was there.
Sometimes, he even had the flowers
removed from the table so he could see
her.
And after dinner, when the ladies left
the men for coffee,
he would sometimes look around, notice
the absence of Wallace, and follow her
into the next room.
The Duchess, meanwhile, was beginning to
look just a bit bored.
Finally, the Bahamas became too boring
altogether, and they left.
Left to wander between New York and
Miami, Miami and New York, Paris and the
Riviera,
the Riviera and Paris.
Well, time passed.
The Duke's brother, King George VI,
died. The Duke went home,
entering quite unobtrusively the country
that had made him almost an exile.
More time passed. His mother, Queen
Mary, died. He went home again.
The people of London paid no attention.
The people of England whom he had ruled,
whose housing he had tried to improve,
whose races and steeplechases he had
featured, whose newspapers had written
thousands, millions of words about him,
left him
almost alone.
They had been taught to forget.
And they had learned their lesson well.
For the ex-king of England had flouted
one of the great pillars of the empire,
the Church of England.
One of the great social conventions,
taboo on divorce.
Most of his friends had predicted that
after the first blush of his infatuation
for Wallis Simpson, the Duke would
become bored with married life.
For as Prince of Wales, more women had
thrown themselves at his feet than any
other young man in the world. But,
it was his wife Wallis who now seemed
just a bit bored.
Sometimes today she's seen in nightclubs
with other friends.
Sometimes the Duke is seen alone.
Once Wallis was so infatuated,
so loyal that when I wrote something
which he considered critical of the
Duke, she wrote me a long letter
reminding me of an old friendship,
and asking me to be kinder to her
husband.
I've often thought of that letter in
these latter days, thought of it as the
Duke and his bored Duchess
wander from Long Island to Miami,
Miami to Long Island, Paris to the
Riviera,
the Riviera to Paris, virtual exiles
from the land he once ruled,
and from whose throne he stepped down to
marry the woman he still loves,
but who doesn't always seem to love him.
Well, that is the love story that the
Duke of Edinburgh told his sister-in-law
Princess Margaret.
And he added the prediction
that if she married the man she loved
who also was divorced,
she too would wander through life
homeless,
almost an exile.
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