Wallis Simpson Was Victim of Vicious Smear Campaign Concocted by the Establishment, New Book Claims

Women marrying into the royal family have faced criticism long before modern times.

Royal brides of the present day — like Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle — face ample criticism; so too did their shared mother-in-law, Princess Diana, as well as Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. Long before she was Queen Camilla, the former Duchess of Cornwall (known before that as Camilla Parker Bowles) also faced harsh criticism when she and King Charles married in 2005, but before all of them, one royal bride in particular was loathed and vilified: Wallis Simpson.

Wallis, an American, was twice divorced when King Edward VIII chose her over the British throne, abdicating on Dec. 11, 1936 and eventually marrying her the next year, on June 3, 1937. In the process, the entire line of succession shifted, with Edward’s younger brother, now King George VI, taking over in his brother’s absence, leading to Queen Elizabeth’s historic 70-year reign and King Charles’ eventual reign, as well.

To say that Wallis was reviled would be an understatement. Fervent gossip about Wallis surrounded her time in China, in particular. The tales told ranged from rumors that she’d “had numerous affairs” to stories that she “posed for pornographic pictures, worked for gangsters and had spent time in a bordello learning something called ‘the Shanghai grip,’ ” according to The Times in the U.K., which profiled Paul French’s new book Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties and the Making of Wallis Simpson about that time in her life. When he was still the Prince of Wales and not yet King, and as he was growing close to Wallis, “gossip about her time in China abounded,” according to The Times.

These accusations stemmed from a document called the China Dossier — and none of it was true. The Times called Wallis “a victim of one of the most effective establishment whispering campaigns ever mounted,” and French analyzes the China Dossier claims in Her Lotus Year, out Nov. 12. In the book, French found that each of the claims stemmed from something that did happen in China in the 1920s — just not to Wallis. French suspects that a British Secret Intelligence Service officer based in China may have been the source of the rumors, and even though the infamous China Dossier has been mentioned and referenced again and again, there’s no real evidence that it actually ever physically existed or that anyone actually saw it.  

“They just wanted to scupper this relationship somehow,” French said.

Wallis went to China in 1924 with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr.; after they split up, Wallis toured the country as a single woman, a decade before she’d ultimately meet and charm Edward, then Prince of Wales. 

“There was a great appetite among the establishment to prevent a relationship between the heir to the throne and an American divorcee,” The Times reported. “Soon, tongues were wagging with tales of the China Dossier.”

The takedown campaign was fierce, and followed a pattern: each accusation took a sprinkle of truth and was then summarily spun into a falsehood about Wallis. The rumors, gossip and innuendo spread through London society, and included rumors of alleged affairs, nude photos (“no one has ever produced the alleged images,” according to The Times), gambling, opium use and the aforementioned “Shanghai grip,” which even made it into a scene from the 2010 film The King’s Speech. (“Apparently she has certain skills — acquired in an establishment in Shanghai,” said the character of the Queen Mother, played by Helena Bonham Carter.)

“There was one man who was the head of British intelligence in the Far East and was based in Shanghai, and that is a guy called Harry Steptoe,” French said. “He was incredibly powerful, and he was the one person who would have known all of these stories from China.”

Whether Steptoe is the originator of the rumors is unproven, as is the existence of the China Dossier in the first place.

“I would love someone to say I was up in my nan’s attic and I found the China Dossier,” French said. “Because then we could go through it word by word and prove it was false.”

Though the establishment allegedly tried to lure Edward away from Wallis with fantastical tales about her to smear her reputation, the ruse didn’t work. Less than a year after Edward’s father King George V died on Jan. 20, 1936, Edward sparked a constitutional crisis after Wallis was deemed unacceptable as a queen consort, with detractors arguing that a marriage to a twice-divorced woman would have conflicted with the King’s role as head of the Church of England (which at the time disapproved of remarriage after divorce if a former spouse was still living). After realizing he could not remain on the throne and marry Wallis, Edward abdicated on Dec. 11 of that year, and married her six months later — becoming one of the shortest-reigning British monarchs in history at just 326 days. 

When he made the announcement via radio broadcast, the King said, “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

The bold move, though, “was the last thing she wanted,” royal author Anna Pasternak previously told PEOPLE, calling Wallis “a convenient scapegoat and took the rap for the abdication.” Pasternak, who wrote the 2019 book The American Duchess: The Real Wallis Simpson, said Edward had “this kind of ferocious, obsessive love for her — he was never going to let her go.”

Though the abdication was Edward’s decision, it was Wallis who took the lion’s share of the blame. 

“Being blamed in perpetuity for stealing a beloved, popular king from his throne and almost destroying the British monarchy would prove to be a lifelong annihilating burden that Wallis was forced to bear,” Pasternak wrote in The American Duchess.

After abdicating, Edward became the Duke of Windsor, and Wallis the Duchess of Windsor, and they remained married until his death in 1972. Wallis died 14 years later in 1986.

Pasternak said that the relationship between Edward and Wallis “was a genuine love story right to the very end,” and added, “The Duke always said that not once did he regret the abdication, because he was so happy.”

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The smear campaign against Wallis wasn’t the last the royal family would see for women marrying into the family. Almost no royal bride has escaped vilification from the public to some degree — from minor to major — but men marrying into the modern royal family, like Mike Tindall (married to Princess Anne’s daughter Zara Tindall since 2011), Jack Brooksbank (married to Princess Eugenie since 2018) and Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (married to Princess Beatrice since 2020) don’t seem to endure the same scrutiny.