The Real Wallis Simpson: A New History of the American Divorcée Who Became the Duchess of Windsor

Pasternak (Princess in Love) bluntly aims to rehabilitate Wallis Simpson (1896–1986), the much-excoriated American divorcée held responsible for the abdication of Edward VIII, a scandal that rocked the English monarchy and the world in the 1930s. The author makes no secret of her intent to write a revisionist biography. Using Simpson's own memoirs and previously unseen correspondence, diaries, and reminiscences of associates, Pasternak presents an intelligent woman unfairly vilified by cunning men, a victim of the abdication and not the Machiavellian manipulator behind the marriage that cost Edward the throne. She sensitively and sympathetically details the injustices Simpson endured, all the while arguing that Edward's "obsessive desire" for Simpson and unhealthy dependence on her motivated his actions. The details of the abdication are also related in painstaking fashion. Inspired by a contemporary awareness of how the royal family is clearly changing, the subtext here that Edward was surprisingly ahead of his time, an honorable man who desired the woman he loved to be his wife rather than mistress.