Edward VIII

Born in 1894 as the eldest son of the future George V, Edward was created Prince of Wales at sixteen and spent his youth as the Empire's most charming export—popular, stylish, prone to affairs that unnerved his father and the prime minister. When George V died in January 1936, Edward became king but immediately clashed with constitutional convention, impatient with protocol and careless about political neutrality. Within months he announced his intention to marry Wallis Simpson, an American in the process of her second divorce. The prime ministers of Britain and the Dominions refused to accept…