If Edward VIII had not abdicated, who would be the current British Monarch? Assume all births, deaths and marriages would not change. And assume Edward would not have to give up the throne.
Unless I’m mistaken . . . Edward would remain King until his death in 1972. Since he and Wallis Simpson never had kids, Elizabeth would be heir to the throne. So nothing would have changed, except that Elizabeth would not become queen until 1972. Right?
Right. The only way Elizabeth wouldn’t have succeeded is if:
Edward had had a legitimate child (either male or female) who survived Edward’s death, or,
Elizabeth’s father, George the Duke of York, had had a son born after Elizabeth who survived until Edward’s death.
Since you’ve excluded those two options in your OP, Elizabeth would have succeeded on the death of her uncle.
There is a “what if” aspect to this - Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, attributed George VI’s death to the strain of being king during WWII, which contributed to the bitterness of the Royal Family’s feud with Edward and Wallis. (I believe the Queen Mother referred to Wallis as the “woman who killed my husband”). If that’s accurate (and personally I’m doubtful, since George died of lung cancer, being a heavy smoker), then it’s possible that George might have outlived Edward, if spared the strain of the Crown during WWII, and then succeeded in 1972. Even so, Elizabeth would then have succeeded her father when he eventually did die.
What if Elizabeth had had a brother born, and that brother had sired a son/daughter, then predeceased Edward?
Then the Princess Elizabeth’s nephew or niece would have succeeded to the throne. Her younger brother, and his descendants, would have taken priority over her. However, since the hypothetical king or queen would have been very young, there would have needed to be a regency.
Would any hypothetical children Edward VIII fathered with Wallis Simpson have been in line to the throne?
Similarly, the strain of being king during WWII might have killed Edward that much earlier.
How much harm could Edward have done in WWII if he had stayed on the throne? Would he have made a difference in anything other than public morale? Did George VI play a significant diplomatic role, for instance?
Yes, if they had been married, unless there had been special conditions attached to the marriage by the UK Parliament and by the dominion parliaments. King Edward VIII proposed to the prime minister Stanley Baldwin that it be a morganatic marriage, under which her children would not succeed, but Baldwin rejected that proposal on behalf of the UK government and of the dominion governments (with which he had consulted).
Quite a bit, as Edward hhad a bad habit of intruding politically where the sovereign shouldn’t and he and his wife were strongly suspected of harboring pro-Nazi sympathies. This is the reason they were shipped to the Bahamas - it was reasoned they couldn’t do much damage there.
Only a minor diplomatic role, but he and Queen Elizabeth (later styled the Queen Mother) actually did quite a lot for homefront morale during the war, in a way that Edward wouldn’t have been up to.
My WAG is that Edward would’ve heavily pushed for an armistice after the Fall of France. I suspect that if really started stepping far outside his constitutional role and actively moved against his government he’d quickly suffer a fatal accident.
No. Under the Act of the UK Parliament that gave effect to the abdication of Edward VIII, His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, any future issue of Edward VIII - by Wallis Simpson or any other future wife - were explicitly excluded from the succession:
I’m not an expert of royal politics but my understanding is that Edward saw the role of monarch as actively participating in British politics. This was not an opinion that was popular with Parliament. If Edward had stayed King there probably would have been a clash during his reign over the issue of who was ultimately in charge. And such a clash would have been a major crisis if it occurred in the middle of a world war.
So when Edward got married to Wallis it opened up a relatively easy solution. The marriage might have been regarded as unsuitable but British monarchs had gotten away with worse in the past. But making the marriage into an issue allowed Parliament to pressure Edward off the throne without raising the political questions which were the real issue.
Hitler is said to have referred to her as “the most dangerous woman in Europe.”
Right - I should have included the possibilities of additional issue in my response, in the interests of completeness.
That was right after she led a commando raid that blew up a ball bearing factory in Magdeburg.
The King did personally conduct his government’s diplomacy with FDR during his 1939 tour of North America, laying the foundations of the destroyers-for-bases agreement in 1940. This was done under the guise of a personal visit to FDR’s Hyde Park home - a diplomat or minister could not be sent for danger of alerting the isolationists to what was going on.
That was my first thought also.
From what I have read, Hitler was very much a fan of Edward VIII, and he hoped that Britain could be persuaded to side with Germany and install Edward as the King. I think that Hitler and the Nazis actually felt a real kinship with England because they believed the English to be ultimately of the same blood as the Germans - Saxons and Anglo-Saxons. And also keep in mind that the German and English royal families were VERY close. I mean, England had several kings (the first two Georges) who spoke German as their first language, and I think I recall reading somewhere that George I didn’t even know how to speak ANY English. The royal family name was changed from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor during World War I, unsurprisingly.
So Hitler hoped that England and Germany would join forces in World War II, initially. (I have heard that he did not feel the same way about the Irish and the Scots, being that they were of supposedly inferior Celtic blood.)
Also, George III was married to Charlotte of Mecklenburg. Hence the city and its main county.
Yes, it seems he communicated with Robert Walpole in Latin.
Mind you, by George II (who hated his father) the royal family had gone ‘native’
Actually, George knew enough English to hold a conversation, but was not confident enough to speak it much in public. He certainly didn’t know enough to chair meetings of the Cabinet (hence the rise of Sir Robert Walpole, generally considered the first Prime Minister - the king, who trusted Walpole, spoke to him in Latin and delegated much of his authority to him), but he was not as ignorant of English as is sometimes claimed.