A new wife for King Edward VIII

Started by LouisFerdinand, April 27, 2017, 12:30:11 AM

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LouisFerdinand

Would it have made a difference if Queen Mary had suggested a few acceptable young ladies for her son Edward to become acquainted with?   
Eventually Edward and the lady might have married. Then there may have been no Wallis Warfield Simpson.


Curryong

^ As I think I've written before, once the chance of marrying Rosemary Leveson Gower fell through just after the First World War, Edward never interested himself in debutantes or their slightly older single equivalents again. All his longterm mistresses, from the time he met Freda Dudley Ward in WW1 until he married Wallis, were married women, two of them American.

When Edward came back from World War One he was a grown man and Queen Mary, especially, did not discuss his love affairs with him. King George told him off about his lifestyle from time to time  and made it clear that Mrs S was persona non grata but really, neither parent interfered, though of course they heard court gossip.

What would have been the use of Queen Mary introducing him to young women he had no interest in, even if she had known any extremely well? The era of that sort of arranged or semi-arranged marriage, had passed with the War. If Edward had been born even twenty years earlier, then he may have met a lot of German relatives and been married off to one of them in his twenties, but that time had gone.

amabel

he met lots of women. He wasn't interested in making a sutiable marriage for a royal, either to another princess or to a British aristocrat like his brothers did..He preferred to remain single and showed no signs of wanting to do his duty and provide heirs..

royalanthropologist

If they had forced Edward to marry a woman who was not his choice, you would have the Charles-Diana crisis in advance at a time when the public would certainly not have entertained a royal mistress being raised to the crown. My own person view is that they should have let them be and banned him from the throne with explicit justification based on his Nazi sympathies.
"In the past, people were born royal. Nowadays, royalty comes from what you do"...Gianni Versace

amabel

unless he was a traitor, or overstepped the mark by speaking of sympathy with Germany too openly against the wishes of the GOvt. his political beleifs could not have "banned him from the throne."

LouisFerdinand

In May 1923, Princess Nicholas of Greece was a guest with her daughter, Princess Marina at Windsor.   
Queen Mary arranged that Prince Edward meet Princess Marina.The Prince of Wales was not impressed with Marina.


Curryong

^ Edward was still deep in the throes of luuuuve for Freda Dudley Ward in 1923 and didn't wish to marry anyone.

LouisFerdinand

How persistent would Queen Mary have had to been to persuade Edward to see the marvelous qualities that Marina had as a potential Princess of Wales?


Curryong

#8
^ I've already said in a previous post that King George and Queen Mary did not push possible partners on to their children.

Marina came on a vist, she and Edward didn't click and that was that. Marina may have had some marvellous qualities. She also had some not so great ones. She didn't marry until she was almost 28, which was quite old in those days.

Her mother Helen, Princess Nicholas of Greece, was a roaring snob, something Marina inherited to a certain extent. She once described her older sisters in law, to whom as the wife of the youngest son she had to give precedence, as 'those little Scotch girls'. Alice Gloucester was the daughter of a Duke and was from an ancient Scottish family, Elizabeth, the daughter of a Scottish Earl, the same.

Having trawled her daughter around Europe for over ten years in search of suitable heirs, Helen, who had been a Russian Grand Duchess, was forced to settle for a King Emperor's fourth son. Not bad but scarcely the height of her previous vaulting ambition, as Marina was attractive and elegant.

There's a little clip I've seen on YouTube  in which a newly engaged Marina gives a reporter a couple of minutes of her time which gives an idea of her manner towards the hoi polloi in the 1930s though she thawed somewhat as she grew older. I'll have to look for it.

amabel

well as the daughters of noblemen, Lady Alice Scott and the QM weren't as high ranking as her, that's a fact, even if by marriage they did outrank her.. Probably most European Royals felt the same about the idea of royaity marryng into the upper classes rather than to other royals.  Anyway really this is all completely moot.  Edward wasn't keen on getting married till he met Wallis S.