The Scandalous Women King Edward VIII Loved Before Wallis Simpson

In 1934, after 16 years of daily phone calls and 260 surviving love letters, Freda Dudley Ward picked up her receiver in Curzon Street and was told the palace switchboard had been ordered not to put her through. She never spoke to Edward, Prince of Wales again. He sent no letter, no telegram, no warning. Her hair, she later said, went grey within the month. She was the second of four women he discarded before Wallis Simpson — and the pattern that destroyed her destroyed the throne two years later. In this video, we talk about the women King Edward VIII loved and abandoned before the abdication, including Lady Rosemary Leveson-Gower and the engagement Queen Mary forbade in 1918, Freda Dudley Ward and the Zeppelin raid that brought them together in a Belgrave Square doorway, Marguerite Alibert and the Paris courtesan who held his indiscreet wartime letters and used them to walk free from an Old Bailey murder trial, Thelma Furness and the favour she asked Wallis Simpson at Waterloo Station that ended her own life at the centre of his court, the Fort Belvedere weekends, the queen mother's hostess politics, Lord Stamfordham's quiet diplomacy at the Fahmy trial, and the lettuce moment at lunch that revealed everything. Subscribe so you never miss a story the palace spent half a century arranging not to tell. Drop a comment below with where you're watching from and tell us which of the four women you feel was treated most cruelly by Edward. Share this with anyone who still thinks the abdication was a love story — Facebook, Reddit, your group chats, anywhere people read royal history. You're the reason this channel keeps digging. #RoyalScandals #EdwardVIII #DukeOfWindsor #FredaDudleyWard #WallisSimpson #BritishMonarchy #RoyalHistory #ThelmaFurness #MargueriteAlibert #LadyRosemary #Abdication1936 #FortBelvedere #SavoyHotel #FahmyTrial #BritishRoyals #RoyalLoveAffairs #PrinceOfWales #HouseOfWindsor #QueenMary #InterwarBritain #RoyalScandal #BritishHistory