Wallis Simpson

Bessie Wallis Warfield grew up in Baltimore, her widowed mother leaning on wealthier relatives after her father's early death. Her first marriage to Navy officer Win Spencer collapsed through separations and divorce. In 1931, while married to her second husband Ernest Simpson, she met Edward, heir to the British throne. Five years later Edward became king, Wallis divorced Ernest, and his determination to marry her — a woman with two living ex-husbands — forced a constitutional crisis across the United Kingdom and the Dominions. He abdicated in December 1936, becoming Duke of Windsor; she becam…