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00:00How many thousands of my poorest subjects are at this hour asleep?
00:07Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
00:12Royal births, marriages and deaths have determined the course of British history.
00:19We're all born, we all die, if we're lucky we get married,
00:25so we can relate to these events happening in the royal family.
00:29Charles, right from the outset, was the future.
00:36In those dark years of post-war austerity,
00:39this really was a moment of celebration.
00:42Here was the grandchild of a sovereign who was going to be called Mr.
00:46There was not going to be any title.
00:48Wallis Simpson was known to be incredibly chic,
00:57and her wedding dress was a beautiful pale blue silk crepe known as Wallis Blue to match her eyes.
01:05She had to stick with him, and there was a sense of her certainly going to her doom with this wedding.
01:16There are a lot of reasons why Jane might not have survived the birth.
01:19It was a very risky thing to do.
01:25Here in the archives, we can hear these voices.
01:29The hopes wrapped up in a longed-for royal baby.
01:33The fairytale weddings that end in disaster.
01:36This is where we find the grisly deaths.
01:42This blessed plot.
01:45This earth.
01:47This realm.
01:49Every royal wedding has its own unique charm.
01:59From Philip and Elizabeth's post-war ceremony that lifted the spirits of a nation,
02:04to the splendour of Charles and Diana's St. Paul's nuptials.
02:08But perhaps the chicest wedding in royal history was the 1930s boutique ceremony of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.
02:15On a warm summer's day in 1937, in an idyllic chateau in the Loire Valley,
02:22a royal love story that had done nothing less than cause a constitutional crisis appeared to get its happy ever after.
02:32In some ways, the most consequential royal wedding of the 20th century
02:37was the wedding of somebody who wasn't king, but who gave up being king in order to marry the woman he loved.
02:42This was the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the former King Edward VIII,
02:47and his bride, the twice-divorced American, Wallis Simpson.
02:52The wedding of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII was at the Chateau de Condé in the Loire.
02:58It was a big chateau owned by a man called Charles Beddow, who'd lent it to them.
03:02The chateau was the ideal romantic backdrop for a wedding which the world's press were desperate to get a glimpse of.
03:11We have footage of the wedding, and we see them, for example, posing on the steps, so that actually we can see the event.
03:17It looks quite formal, the two of them. She was a stick-like figure. Someone described her looking like a playing card.
03:24Married twice before, Wallis may not have been classically beautiful, but what she did have was an impeccable sense of style.
03:31Wallis Simpson was known to be incredibly chic, and her wedding dress was a beautiful pale blue silk crepe known as Wallis Blue to match her eyes.
03:46And it was designed by an American designer based in Paris called Mainboker, and it was apparently copied the world over.
03:53To the watching world, everything about this royal marriage seemed like the epitome of chic.
04:01The happy ever after of a love story that had captured the nation's imagination.
04:08It was six years before their marriage in January 1931 that Wallis Simpson and Edward, then the Prince of Wales, first met.
04:17He had a string of failed relationships behind him, and at the age of 34, she was married to her second husband, Ernest Simpson.
04:27Well, Edward had met Wallis when she was brought to a hunting weekend in the early 1930s, when her husband was away.
04:35And they got very friendly, they saw a lot of each other.
04:38Wallis was, you know, she was a society girl. She and her husband were thrilled to be included in social events that also had the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII as part of it.
04:55And Wallis never thought for a living second that Edward VIII would be interested in her.
05:00But for the Prince, who was all too often surrounded by fawning subjects, the confident, sharp-talking American was a breath of fresh air.
05:10I think Edward was attracted to her because she didn't treat him in a reverential way like so many other people did, and she bothered him.
05:19The Prince of Wales was enamoured. She was a wisecracker, she was smart, and she wasn't intimidated by him.
05:26And for Wallis, whose own upbringing couldn't have been further from the corridors of royal power, the Prince fulfilled a very different need.
05:36Her father died when she was very young, and her mother had been forced to take and paying guests to basically keep going.
05:42And I think there's always been a strong sense of a need for both emotional support, but also financial security.
05:48And so I think she was drawn to someone who could provide certainly the financial security that she needed.
05:53And as a woman who'd always aspired to being accepted in English high society, Edward's attentions were hugely flattering.
06:01I think she enjoyed his company. He was fun. He was very well connected, and she was a social climber.
06:08He gave her lots of jewels. I mean, he was very generous to her.
06:11But even as they began to spend more time together at Edward's home at Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park, for Wallis, any thought of a long-term relationship was very definitely not on the cards.
06:25Initially, she just thought she was just another notch in his bedhead.
06:31So she just treated the whole affair very lightly.
06:35And, you know, when he would ring her, dripping with sentimentality and love, she would hold the telephone and let everybody listen in to the conversation.
06:44She just thought it was a hoot. After all, she was married.
06:47And that counted a lot.
06:51But in January 1936, the stakes for this unlikely royal romance were raised, when Edward's father, George V, died, and Edward inherited the throne.
07:03The King's affair with Wallis wasn't public knowledge.
07:06But behind palace walls, the new king's secret plan was to find a way to marry Wallis and make her his queen consort.
07:15And it was in the late summer of 1936 that things started coming to a head.
07:21Wallis's husband had begun an affair, and divorce proceedings were initiated.
07:26At the same time, she and Edward, accompanied by a group of friends, embarked on a cruise.
07:32Edward and Wallis are on a tour of the Adriatic on a boat called the Gnarlin.
07:38And one of the other guests there is a woman called Lady Diana Cooper, who was a well-known diarist.
07:43And so she provides this very contemporary record.
07:46Photos taken on the holiday appear to show a couple relaxed in each other's company.
07:52But perhaps surprisingly, we now know that Wallis was starting to have doubts about the relationship.
07:57There's a moment where she confides to Diana Cooper how bored she is with him.
08:02She doesn't want to go on a walk with him. Will Diana come along?
08:06So I think she had her concerns.
08:08Whilst the British press had kept the relationship quiet, in deference to the king,
08:13foreign newspapers began scrambling to publish stories about the monarch and his American girl.
08:18As Wallis read the increasingly negative press cuttings sent by American friends, her reservations only grew.
08:27Edward himself seemed increasingly gripped by the idea that he must marry her.
08:33Wallis, in the months before the abdication, was to distance herself.
08:36And she'd hoped that he would get over her. But he was a man obsessed.
08:41And he made the point that if she didn't marry him, he would cut his throat.
08:46On Thursday the 3rd of December 1936, the British press finally revealed the king's affair with the still married and already once divorced Mrs. Simpson.
08:56As monarch, Edward was also the supreme governor of the Church of England, which opposed remarriage after divorce.
09:02And so any prospect of his marrying Wallis and remaining sovereign seemed an impossibility.
09:08Once the story broke, there was a very divided opinion in the country.
09:12Some people felt, well, he should be able to marry the woman he loves.
09:15This is just palace pressure.
09:17And there's a more puritanical version, I suppose, for the archbishop and indeed the prime minister,
09:22who felt the best solution, the least awful solution, was for him to abdicate.
09:27No monarch in royal history had ever voluntarily abdicated the throne.
09:32Wallis, having initially had cold feet about the relationship, now found that with it going public,
09:38she was the focus of anger and even outright threats.
09:42Threats which potentially put her life in danger.
09:45Wallis very quickly became the most hated woman in Britain and she had stones thrown at her windows and she had hate mail.
09:57One man was threatening to track her down and shoot her.
10:02So she was in a terrible state and she got into a friend's motor car and they drove pell-mell through northern France and down to the south of France, where they stayed with friends of Wallis.
10:16As she was smuggled out of England, her future lay in the hands of a man whom she'd assumed would be just a summer fling, but who now seemed to be a monarch on the edge of giving up his throne for her.
10:29Coming up, the pioneering birth of Queen Elizabeth's first grandchild.
10:39This is for the first time the birth of a royal baby in hospital, which marks a radical shift.
10:46And Henry's reputation gets in the way of finding wife number four.
10:53A lot of the most desirable women just do not want to marry him.
10:57And their fathers also do not want to send their daughter to what they might believe is an inevitable death.
11:04At 11am, on November the 15th, 1977, guests and dignitaries were gathered at Buckingham Palace for one of the most important events of their lives, an investiture.
11:25The moment they would receive honours bestowed upon them by the Queen.
11:28The Queen would always treat these occasions very seriously. It was always very punctual because every investiture, there was hundreds of people there and it's a big deal and you've got to make it run on time.
11:40But on this cold winter's morning, something wasn't quite right.
11:45The Queen was late. Everyone thought, that's very unusual. The Queen's never late for anything. What on earth's going on?
11:50Unbeknownst to the waiting crowd, she'd been delayed by some very important news.
11:54Finally, she did tell, about 10 minutes late, and announced to the assembled throng at the start, I've just become a grandmother.
12:02At which point everyone brought huge applause, broke out and it must have been an investiture unlike any other.
12:09In fact, just half an hour before the Queen's late arrival, at 10.46am, Princess Anne had welcomed the Queen's first grandchild into the world.
12:19A seven pound, nine ounce baby boy, Peter Mark Andrew Phillips.
12:26And whilst his arrival was marked by a very traditional 41 gun salute, in other ways, this royal birth was anything but orthodox.
12:36Unusually for the royal family, Peter Phillips wasn't born in a palace and probably thank goodness for Princess Anne, a very modern woman.
12:44He was born in the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Paddington.
12:48Anne's decision to have her son in hospital might not seem radical, but she was going against centuries of royal precedent.
12:56By 1977, it was still quite rare for royals to even go to the hospital and not be treated at home and in palaces.
13:07Of course, all of the children of the late Queen Elizabeth II were born at home, but here was Princess Anne absolutely going forward with hospital births and of course that then became the norm thereafter.
13:21And the hospital she chose was the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Paddington.
13:25The Lindo Wing has gone on to acquire this sort of image of being this frightfully grand, almost like a sort of five star hotel next to a hospital because it's where Diana had her children, where Catherine had her children.
13:39It is a private wing of a very large, very famous London hospital. And it's not sensationally luxurious, but it offers a sort of degree of privacy that you wouldn't get on the normal ward.
13:52And being born in hospital wasn't the only precedent this new baby was setting.
13:56What was also groundbreaking was here was a grandchild of a sovereign who was going to be called Mr. There was not going to be any title.
14:05When Anne had married Captain Mark Phillips, the dashing Olympic champion equestrian and commoner, it was clear from the outset that for this down to earth princess, royal titles weren't her priority.
14:18In 1973, they decided that he wasn't going to have a title, so they saw no reason to give their children a sort of extra royal status or even aristocratic status.
14:31It was the first time in 500 years that a royal baby had been born to a commoner and despite being fifth in line to the throne and the grandson of a monarch, didn't have a royal title.
14:43And as this pioneering princess left the lindo to head home with her historic son, she inadvertently kick-started another iconic royal trend, waiting outside with the press.
14:54And as Anne made her way to the waiting car, the photographer sprang into action.
14:59And so the photo of Anne with her baby on the lindo wing steps, now synonymous with the debut appearances of countless royal children, hit the headlines for the first time.
15:10So there was the royal baby being presented before the media.
15:15Although, in this case, it being Princess Anne, she was striding on ahead with her husband and baby Peter was in the arms of a nurse.
15:23But I think it was more so that she could get in the car.
15:26I don't think the car seats were terribly advanced in 1977.
15:30I think she wanted to be in the car so she could then hold the baby on the way back to home.
15:35As they drove away, the moment marked a new informality in the relationship between royal mothers and the public.
15:42The way in which the royals were presenting themselves, less these kind of buttoned-up images, instead much more reflective of modern family, really.
15:54And that was partly because the royal family was younger, that there were new births.
16:00And so it did refresh, in a way, the image of the royal family as being something relatable.
16:06And as for his grandmother, royal title or not, it was clear baby Phillips was the apple of her royal highness's eye.
16:14The Queen was obviously thrilled to be a grandmother.
16:18Although the Queen Mother was still very much often quoted as being the nation's favourite granny,
16:23well, no, the Queen was a granny too.
16:25Looking for a new partner can be a fraught and stressful process.
16:38The perfect soulmate doesn't always come along at the perfect time.
16:42But for one Tudor king, who'd worked his way through three wives already,
16:46finding number four proved quite a challenge.
16:50In the summer of 1539, Henry VIII's court painter was dispatched on an urgent royal mission.
16:57He'd been sent to what is now Germany to paint two royal princesses
17:01Henry VIII was being encouraged to consider as potential brides.
17:06At Burgau Castle, in the Duchy of Cleves,
17:09sisters Anne and Amalia were awaiting their English visitor.
17:14The king sent Hans Holbein, who had been his official painter since 1535,
17:19to the court at Cleves to paint the portraits of Amalia and of Anne.
17:24This was a discreet way for the parties to inspect one another
17:29and see if they could bear the idea of marriage.
17:32Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, had died at Hampton Court nearly two years before,
17:37and now he was under pressure to marry again.
17:41After Jane's unexpected death, Henry is persuaded very grumpily to go diplomatic for his next wife.
17:53Henry actually preferred to choose his wives from women he'd already got to know at his own court.
18:01I mean, his first wife was a Spanish princess, but he knew her really well,
18:05because she'd married his brother, who then died.
18:08But there was a problem.
18:10At the age of 48, and with three wives already behind him,
18:14Henry was far from the most eligible bachelor.
18:17Henry ends up having this issue where a lot of the most desirable women
18:22just do not want to marry him,
18:24and their fathers also do not want to send their daughter
18:29to what they might believe is an inevitable death.
18:32The king had already been turned down by another European princess Holbein had painted for him,
18:38Christina of Denmark.
18:40So, as the painter worked on the portraits of the Cleves sisters,
18:44he was under considerable pressure.
18:46At a time when Europe is splitting in half between Protestant and Catholic,
18:51Henry has become a kind of Protestant, really a reformed Catholic,
18:57but definitely alienating the Roman Catholic Church.
19:01And the two great European superpowers, France and Spain,
19:05have not only turned against him, but partnered with each other.
19:09So, England's in serious danger.
19:11Henry's closest advisor, Thomas Cromwell,
19:14was convinced that a diplomatic marriage with one of the princesses of Cleves
19:18would be highly advantageous to a country that was increasingly isolated in Catholic Europe.
19:24The great thing about Cleves is that it's shaken off the Roman Catholic Church like Henry.
19:31It sits astride the lower river Rhine,
19:34so it's got a great strategic position if there's a war.
19:38So, with two marriageable daughters on the go,
19:43Cleves looked like the obvious place to aim.
19:46And when a portrait arrives showing that Anne is not bad-looking,
19:50it's game, set and match, except, of course, it isn't.
19:54During his time in Germany, Holbein had produced a painting of Anne
19:59and a sketch of her sister Amalia.
20:01What's remarkable is the family resemblance.
20:04These two sisters look incredibly alike.
20:06Amalia has slightly sharper features, maybe not as pleasing to Henry's eye.
20:11But Anne really captures his attention.
20:14She has quite a plain face, but Holbein compensates for this
20:20by giving her the most remarkable outfit of red and gold,
20:24really showing off the wealth that she might bring with her.
20:28Henry cannot resist it, he laps it up, he sees the portrait of her,
20:31and he decides that she's the one he wants to have.
20:34In the winter of 1539, Anne left Cleves to begin the journey
20:38to meet her royal husband-to-be.
20:41But when she and Henry finally met,
20:44it couldn't have been a more disastrous match.
20:47When Anne of Cleves does arrive at the English court,
20:50there's a 24-year age gap,
20:51she does not speak the same language as Henry,
20:53and most disappointingly of all for Henry
20:55is that she does not look like her portrait.
20:58Hans Holbein has embellished her beauty.
21:02Henry is completely distraught,
21:04and he actually fails to consummate the marriage.
21:07But in the end, for Anne,
21:09it was precisely her lack of desirability
21:12which proved to be her ultimate salvation.
21:15Because there's a lack of passion on Henry's part,
21:18she is sidelined almost immediately in the royal court.
21:23And this might be the thing that saves Anne.
21:27Anne of Cleves, I think, had by far the jolliest experience
21:30of any of the king's wives.
21:32The marriage was successfully annulled after six months.
21:35And Henry and Anne discovered that as friends,
21:38they got on remarkably well together, having quite a good time.
21:41and she was given the official role of the king's sister.
21:51Coming up, the extraordinary document
21:54that reveals the moment Edward signed away his royal title
21:57for the sake of his marriage to Mrs. Simpson.
22:00One can almost imagine the four brothers gathered together,
22:04signing away every certainty of the world in which they'd grown up.
22:08And the thoroughly undignified ending of a 15th-century queen.
22:13She was left exposed to all the visitors in Westminster Abbey
22:17for nearly 300 years.
22:20And it gets worse.
22:22They didn't just look at her.
22:23They touched her.
22:25And probably took away the odd tooth or bit of bone.
22:29But whilst these monarchs seem to have found their eternal peace,
22:30for one medieval sovereign, her death was just the beginning.
22:34In the first decade of the 16th century,
22:36a grisly spectacle of the royal king.
22:37In the shadows of Westminster Abbey
22:39lie the remains of 30 royal kings and queens.
22:43From Edward the Confessor in his magnificent shrine
22:46to Elizabeth I in her towering tomb.
22:51But whilst these monarchs seem to have found their eternal peace,
22:55for one medieval sovereign, her death was just the beginning.
22:59In the first decade of the 16th century,
23:02a grisly spectacle unfolded in Westminster Abbey.
23:06Workmen trying to create a new tomb for the king,
23:10Henry VII, smashed open the coffin of his grandmother,
23:14Catherine of Valois, and her corpse was revealed.
23:18Apparently she was recognizable.
23:21The skin was waxy and the clothes were there.
23:24Catherine had been a great queen.
23:29She was a French princess who was born in 1401,
23:32and at the age of 18 married Henry V,
23:36and gave birth to his son, the future Henry VI.
23:39When Henry V died, she was a very young widow,
23:44and she was forbidden by the court to remarry,
23:46because all these barons wanted to marry her and get power.
23:49But she fell in love with her steward, Owen Tudor,
23:53and married him.
23:54And they had two sons,
23:56and then she died at around the age of 37.
23:59Now, you'd think that Henry VII would say,
24:02OK, let's rebury my grandmother.
24:04She is the great queen.
24:05But he didn't.
24:06Instead, Henry left Catherine's coffin uncovered.
24:12It's a disgraceful way of treating a grandmother,
24:16a queen, French royalty.
24:19She was left exposed to all the visitors in Westminster Abbey
24:23for nearly 300 years.
24:26And it gets worse.
24:28They didn't just look at her.
24:29They touched her.
24:31And probably, while they were at it,
24:33took away the odd tooth or bit of bone.
24:36This grisly process was written about by Samuel Pepys, no less.
24:42He recorded in his diary in 1669
24:45that he went to Westminster Abbey on his birthday,
24:49and he treated himself by holding the upper body
24:53of Catherine of Valois and kissing her on the lips.
24:56He said,
24:57It was my birthday, and I kissed a queen.
25:01He then went to the pub.
25:03What a fun birthday excursion.
25:08It was not until Queen Victoria in the 19th century
25:12that this great queen, the grandmother of the Tudor dynasty,
25:16was given an appropriate burial.
25:19Queen Victoria put Catherine in a dignified tomb
25:22in Westminster Abbey with a slab that reads,
25:25under this slab, rest at last, after various vicissitudes,
25:30the bones of Catherine of Valois
25:32by the command of Queen Victoria.
25:35It took a queen to bury a queen with dignity.
25:40The compel of Edward VI
25:52On the 10th of December, 1936,
25:54King Edward VIII signed a document
25:56which changed not only the history of the monarchy
25:59but propelled him into a marriage
26:02marriage that dramatically altered the course of his own life and that of the woman he loved he
26:08abdicates on december the 10th because he's tried every which way to marry this twice divorced woman
26:14but it's been blocked by the british government and by the governments of the roms the dominions
26:20in an era when divorce isn't regarded as acceptable not least because he's the supreme
26:25governor of the church of england and i think there were lots of people that actually had
26:29doubts about edward viii suitability to be king the document he signed is known as the instrument
26:36of abdication and a replica of it is kept in the royal archives the papers of the royal family itself
26:44this is a copy of the document that edward signed and what's so fascinating about it is that despite
26:52the monumental nature of the event it's set in motion it's actually very simple
26:57it lists edward's many grand formal titles and makes it clear that his decision to give them up
27:05is irreversible so what's so striking is the finality of edward's decision edward writes i hereby declare
27:14my irrevocable determination to renounce the throne for myself and for my descendants so the king is not
27:21just giving up the crown for himself he's also denying royal descent to any children he might have
27:27through his marriage with wallace simpson the document was witnessed by his three younger brothers
27:33as well as edward's signature we can also see the signature of prince albert prince henry and prince george
27:41and one can almost imagine the four brothers gathered together in the fading light of that
27:47december afternoon signing away every certainty of the world in which they'd grown up
27:55these two short paragraphs set in motion a chain of events that would put a new king on the throne
28:01edward's younger brother albert king george vi
28:05and meant that mrs simpson whose name isn't mentioned but whose presence is felt in every line
28:10had spectacularly failed in what many believed had been her ambition to become queen following his
28:18abdication edward described himself as feeling like a swimmer surfacing from a great depth i left the room
28:26and stepped outside inhaling the fresh morning air but for wallace it wasn't such a relief
28:34in fact from her exile in france in the weeks leading up to the abdication wallace had done
28:41everything in her power to persuade the king not to give up his throne when they spoke most evenings at
28:50seven o'clock on a terrible international telephone line she would shout down the phone do not abdicate
28:57listen to your friends do not abdicate and we have that information because the french surety the undercover
29:04police were tapping their phones but her endless entreaties fell on deaf ears that episode really
29:13struck me because edward the eighth was making decisions about somebody else's life which was set in
29:19stone and you know he never really asked wallace do you really want to marry me i mean there was no ring
29:26she was faced with a fait accompli she was backed into a corner on a cold december night from a room
29:34in windsor that had been transformed into a makeshift studio edward finally prepared to reveal to the
29:40british people what he'd done the events of december of 1906 were very dramatic i mean he literally made
29:48a decision that he was going to abdicate this was pushed through parliament he then had dinner with his
29:54family just outside winter and then went to make his broadcast at windsor castle but it was all very
30:00last minute i think everyone was left reeling by how quickly the events had moved millions gathered
30:06around their wirelesses to hear the unprecedented royal announcement
30:09at long last i am able to say a few words of my own a few hours ago i discharged my last duty
30:23as king and emperor suddenly the king resigns and here he is speaking to them
30:30you all know the reasons which have have impelled me to renounce the throne but you must believe me
30:42when i tell you that i have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to
30:49discharge my duties as king as i would wish to do without the help and support of the woman i love
31:00as the king revealed his determination to step away from any royal future he also made it very clear
31:06that this was a decision mrs simpson had played no part in and i want you to know that the decision
31:14i have made has been mine and mine alone as the country reeled in disbelief for wallace listening over 900
31:24miles away in france rather than finding edward's words a comfort or a source of reassurance she was
31:31horrified wallace simpson listened to the abdication speech i think she was shocked she sort of covered
31:36her eyes and ran upstairs i mean you know she couldn't believe the enormity of what was happening to her
31:41even though edward didn't name her directly he did make wallace's position crystal clear
31:48the other person most nearly concerned has tried up to the last to persuade me to take a different course
32:01she put a blanket or a cushion over her head because she just knew that she was going to be
32:07the one who was blamed for his abdication which of course she duly was she was a great one for wise
32:14cracks but not this night as far as she was concerned she said the duke was a goddamn fool
32:21her life has been changed irrevocably without her having any say in it whatsoever once the broadcast
32:29was finished that same evening edward left the country he was born to lead leaving his brother
32:35and his children to pick up the pieces of his decision in modern times to have this much admired
32:42glamorous figure suddenly depart was a kind of real shock to the british nation and to the world
32:49it's a very strange and remarkable series of events that really shakes the monarchy as edward drove
32:55away from his royal destiny towards a future with the woman he'd chosen to spend the rest of his life
33:01with what many didn't know was that years before he'd even encountered wallace simpson this prince had
33:07given indications that he'd never even wanted to be king the prince of wales used to hate what he called
33:14princing that is to say going on public engagements and so on he didn't like all the pomp and circumstance
33:22and from a fairly young age he was talking about abdicating talking about not wanting to be king
33:29so that evidence is there as he made his way into exile the woman he presumed would marry him had given him
33:36an excuse to give up the throne he perhaps never really wanted and wallace herself was facing a future
33:44ostracized from the high society she'd spent her life trying to fit into there's a picture of the first
33:51double portrait of them and it shows you wallace is looking one way and edward is looking the other way
33:58they're not in harmony at all and i thought that was kind of a profound picture that's kind of summed up
34:04their relationship it is a sort of shakespearean tragedy really like so many of the royal stories
34:16coming up we reveal the turmoil that lay beneath the surface of edward and wallace's wedding day
34:22he was thrilled because he'd found the mother figure that he was searching for all his life
34:27but for her it was a sort of the nail in the coffin
34:31wallace confessed that herman rogers her rock was the only man that she'd ever truly loved
34:48in december 1936 edward the eighth gave up his throne to marry wallace simpson and fled to austria
34:55as they waited for her divorce to be finalized they were forced to spend six months apart but in may
35:011937 he finally joined her in france at the chateau where they were to be married
35:08and as the day of their wedding dawned rather than being the longed for society event wallace might have
35:14hoped for the full extent of the cost of their union became clear
35:18it's traditional for the wife of a duke to be made her royal highness but the view was taken that
35:28because he had renounced the throne uh and therefore his position as a royal highness there was no need
35:34to give her one and this course rankled with him for the rest of his life and that was sort of delivered
35:38literally on the morning of the wedding so it was not a great affair back in britain a month before the
35:46wedding edward's brother had been crowned king in a majestic ceremony attended by 8 000 guests
35:54and as george vi made his first appearance as monarch cheered on by the crowds the contrast
36:00couldn't have been more stark in france only 16 people attended edward's wedding and none of them
36:08were royal he's expecting possibly one of his brothers the duke of kent's and grandees to come
36:13to the wedding but it's perfectly clear that if mrs simpson isn't suitable to be queen isn't suitable to be
36:21a hrh it's thought inappropriate for senior members of the royal family to attend the wedding to mrs simpson
36:28but even without the support of his family edward still believed the decision he'd made was the
36:35right one for wallace it was less clear i mean he was thrilled because he'd found the mother figure
36:41that he was searching for all his life but for her it was a sort of the nail in the coffin i mean he'd
36:47given up everything for her and therefore she had to stick with him she clearly couldn't go through a
36:53third divorce and you know there was a sense of them of her certainly going to her doom with this
36:59wedding but there may have been another rather more shocking reason why wallace was a reluctant bride
37:06and it had everything to do with an unassuming figure who appears in the wedding photos beside her
37:13well there's a very interesting portrait of of various people on the balcony and you have a man called
37:17herman rogers who's a sort of not often not discussed in these stories it was with herman
37:22rogers that uh she had actually been staying when the abdication took place and it was whilst author
37:29andrew morton was writing a book about wallace simpson that he began to find clues revealing that her
37:35relationship with herman might have been rather more than a simple friendship the person who gave
37:41wallace away was an american called herman rogers and he and his wife katherine just traveled the world
37:48and whilst i was doing my research it struck me that wallace was very much enamored with this
37:56american gentleman when we see the scene to all intents and purposes it looks like a happy couple about
38:02to get married but when i was looking at the pictures i was thinking how far did wallace still
38:08love the duke of windsor and how much did she really love herman it was in peking now beijing
38:1812 years before that wallace had first encountered herman
38:23herman rogers was an american that she met when she was in china with her first husband who was a naval
38:29airman stationed there so he was very well connected very intelligent man spoke lots of languages
38:35and they became very close friends and despite the fact that she was married they almost immediately
38:41shared an intimacy that seemed to stretch beyond the platonic it was herman who would take her for
38:47long walks in the evening who would take her for weekends to study various temples they had a very
38:53close a very intimate relationship over the years their friendship had endured and when in december 1936
39:02wallace faced public vitriol over her relationship with the king it was to herman and catherine's house
39:08in france that she went to seek sanctuary herman rogers was a very decent man and he really took
39:16wallace under his wing and the rogers were the first port of call when she wants to get away from the
39:24maelstrom of of hate that she was facing
39:29and her man sifted through all the mail he consoled her he calmed her down during the tense weeks
39:36leading up to the wedding as wallace was hounded by the world's press it was herman who took the
39:42lead in making arrangements and shielding her from the media he provided both practical support
39:48and emotional support to her i mean he was her best friend when you know she was slightly cast adrift
39:55uh by the british establishment this was an old friend who kind of embraced her and protected her
40:02and his support of wallace even extended to being in close proximity at all times
40:08one of catherine rogers friends wrote to another friend saying that herman and catherine don't have
40:14sex anymore and this is at a time when herman was sleeping next door to wallace not just for days but for
40:22weeks during the whole abdication crisis and when she was up in the night he was up in the night
40:32and even when edward finally joined wallace and the rogers in france a month before the wedding
40:38it was herman not edward who slept next door
40:42so what's extraordinary is when the duke was there the duke slept in a separate bedroom downstairs
40:47and herman rogers had placed himself in the sort of anteroom in front of wallace's bedroom so there
40:54were there were some very strange shall we say sexual dynamics going on at this wedding
40:59and just weeks before the wedding extraordinary evidence now suggests there was a moment between
41:05the two that had herman agreed would have changed the course of history whilst i was researching i
41:12discovered in boston public library some undiscovered papers by a man called cleveland amory who for a
41:19time was her biographer and there was an occasion where edward and catherine rogers went to paris
41:27leaving wallace and herman back at the chateau whilst they were gone it seems wallace took the opportunity
41:34to make an astonishing proposal reading the notes he was suggested that she had offered to get pregnant
41:43by herman rogers have the baby and say it was the duke of windsor's now this was an extraordinary
41:51revelation and it struck me that he was really behaving like the man of the house he was organizing
41:59where they lived he was organizing the wedding and edward the duke of windsor was basically uh just
42:08hanging around i would love to say categorically that herman and and wallace were lovers but i can't
42:17but i can look at the presenting evidence to say that their relationship was a lot more intimate
42:23and they behaved more like man and wife than edward duke of windsor and wallace ever did in fact as
42:32wallace tied the knot with the eyes of the world transfixed on what they believed was the happy ending
42:37to a love story that had cost a king a throne it seems it wasn't the duke who this duchess was in love
42:44with but the man who was giving her away she did once say to someone that he'd been the love of her life
42:51and someone said that that's not going to please the duke he's just given up his throne and she's
42:57preferred herman in the first place at one point wallace confessed that herman rogers her rock was
43:06the only man that she'd ever truly loved and when you piece together the interactions over the years
43:14you can see that that was very much the case she'd always relied on him as the man who was mr fixit
43:22and edward the eighth duke of windsor was not mr fixit he was the man who brought problems into her
43:28life who changed her life who made her life absolutely miserable and you get a real sense that she very much
43:36resented being pushed into this corner of having to marry him when she didn't truly love him as we'll
43:47discover so many royal brides smile and laugh and you discover that's not quite the case
43:53for every generation of royals there has always been a conflict between fulfilling royal duty
44:08and bowing to the intensity of personal passion from a princess who bucked royal trends to ensure
44:14a normal childhood for her son to a king pressured to marry for the good of the country who couldn't
44:20stomach his new wife these personal decisions have dictated the future of the crown births marries
44:28and deaths these are the defining moments for every family and for the royals they have shaped its
44:34destiny for over a thousand years and royal births marriages and deaths returns earlier next saturday at
44:43five to seven visiting the places we love and exploring the ones we've yet to discover
44:49spain with michael portillo is brand new thursday at eight from hollywood stardom to becoming royalty she
44:55seemed to have it all so where did it go wrong megan part two is brand new next
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