The Govt. did want Edward gone and so did Queen Mary, she absolutely hated Wallis Simpson.
Overall twittiness? please explain.
The abdication was in 1936, the war started in 1939 and I don’t think many people thought, in '36, that a war was about to start.
The fact that neither Edward or Wallis made it back into the good books of the royals merely serves to illustrate just how insular the royals were/ are.
As for Edward being dumb, you have me 
What I’ve heard was that the marriage was a useful excuse for Parliament to push out a King they wanted to get rid of for political reasons. Edward did not see his role as symbolic - he wanted to have a role in making political decisions. Parliament obviously did not want to hand over part of its power back to the monarch. Under other circumstances this might have ended up like 1649 or 1688. But this was 1936; the United Kingdom didn’t need to go through a major domestic crisis while Hitler was getting ready to go to war. So Edward was pressured into abdicating for personal reasons rather than political ones. (And if you want to be conspiracy minded, the British government may have considered other methods of removing Edward. There’s some evidence that government figures were aware of a possible assassination plot against Edward and chose to look the other way.)
Divorce was a big no-no at that time in the royal family. In the 1950’s, Queen Elizabeth II’s sister, Princess Margaret Rose wanted to marry a divorced man by the name of Peter Townsend. The Queen gave it a lot of thought. She could have granted permission to marry. But she didn’t.
Speaking as the younger sister from a set of two, I doubt that Margaret ever quite let the matter be at peace between them.
Margaret went on to marry someone else and they divorced. And three of the Queen’s own children divorced. I don’t think anyone has ever doubted the Queen’s devotion to her duty, however.
Somewhere in a box marked “Victoria’s Secrets,” I have photos of a pretty bride on her wedding day. She was Princess Elizabeth then. I’ve kept those photos since I was four – stored first one place and then another.
I return you to Wallis Simpson. The only thing that I liked about her was her taste in music. She did love Cole Porter. After she was in a coma, someone tried playing “I Get A Kick Out of You” in her room to try to revive her. It was her favorite song.
I think the British social mores of the time were expressed as ‘people should know their place’.
Working-class people doffed their caps to the ‘toffs’ and worked long hours for little money(1).
Middle-class people were much more important than those scruffy ‘working-class’. A bank manager, a bishop or a headmaster had authority(2).
Upper class people were the envy of all. These people didn’t need to work and had servants to wipe their bottoms(3) (so to speak).
Above all were Royalty (4). These people were to be ‘worshipped’ (the Monarch was automatically the head of the Church of England).
So having a Monarch who wanted to marry a divorcee (and a foreigner to boot :eek: ) was simply not acceptable to the Establishment.
(1) e.g. coal miners
(2) You called these people Sir and did not question their decisions
(3) In 1960 there was an obscenity trial of a book about a posh woman having an affair with a member of the working classes. The prosecution asked the jury “Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?”
(4) Even today, Prince Charles has a valet to run his bath and occasionally put toothpaste on his toothbrush
Lady Chatterley’s Lover. A member of the House of Peers, hearing of the question, remarked that he wasn’t perturbed over the prospect of his wife or servants reading it, but he certainly wouldn’t want it falling into the hands of his gamekeeper. 
since the Lover in question is the Chatterley gamekeeper - the implication being that His Lordship didn’t want the 'keeper getting any untoward ideas.
This is somewhat the romantic version. As ever, money talked, and if you were rich and reasonably polite, your class didn’t matter, especially when it came to your children. And the upper classes most certainly had to work. Those with large estates had to manage them. Plus, of course, there were exceedingly few with huge estates, especially since Inheritance Tax had come in. Further, the clergy was a dumping ground for junior sons. Ditto the military: some rose, many were killed (cf Wellington & Churchill for the former, many a public school chapel for the latter).
glee is spot on about the issue of authority.
There was no problem with the “foreigner” bit. It was usual for the monarch-to-be to marry a foreigner. The consorts of George V, Edward VIII and Victoria were respectively German, Danish and German. George VI married a Scot, but he had no idea at the time that he would ever be king. Had this been expected at the time a royal, and therefore non-British, bride would have been sought. Even Edinburgh is Greek. When Charles accedes, he will be the first king to have an English-born consort since I can’t think who.
Sure a wealthy person could buy a Peerage and become Upper Class. It’s always been a combination of wealth and ‘breeding’.
But a hard working middle class chap stood no chance of moving class.
We’re talking the 1930s - what problem did the rich face with Inheritance Tax back then?
‘Inheritance Tax as we know it was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1986 and can be identified by a Thatcherite policy by the neat way in which it allows so many people to avoid paying at least part of the tax – The Conservative Party was a party of low taxation in death as in life, something which met with opposition from left wingers who felt that the wealth of the rich was unduly protected by the Conservatives, whilst the poor were excluded from that wealth.’
Plus many families use Trusts to avoid paying the tax.
‘Trusts are amongst the most important tools in the fight against Inheritance Tax. As has been explained, they allow an individual to give up the legal title to their assets, but retain some benefit. In this way, assets placed in trust are not treated as part of the estate of the individual in question.’
Maybe I should have put ‘non-Royal’ then. Mrs. Simpson (in the eyes of the establishment) simply wasn’t ‘suitable’.
The Royal families of Europe were expected to marry amongst each other.
Not true. Solicitors and barristers made it up the tree to Judges. One branch of my family made pots of money as ships’ chandlers (alas, I’m from the poorer side). Insurance was another way in: clerks made it to the top of Lloyds. And so on.
It was called Death Duties - introduced to break up the big estates. And it was levied at up to 8%, a swingeing rate back then.
This isn’t correct with respect to the consort of George V, Princess Mary of Teck, who was born in the United Kingdom, in Kensington Palace, and thus a British subject.
Although her father was German, her mother, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, was a granddaughter of King George III, via the Duke of Cambridge, George III’s youngest son, and thus was Queen Victoria’s first cousin.
One of the reasons Mary was eligible to marry the heir to the throne was Queen Victoria’s desire to have a royal, British-born wife for the future King:
Yes, but in 1936 Queen Victoria was no longer around – though her influence was carried on through Queen Mary, then Queen Mother – and attitudes to marriage between royals and commoners had changed. In fact, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon was thought of as a good match for “Bertie” (then Duke of York, later King George VI) – and that proved right, as she succeeded in her roles as Queen Consort and as Queen Mother. She was the daughter of a Scottish earl, without royal connections, and thay was fine.
Given that the US has no nobility, the next best thing, i.e., a young woman born into a family with strong political or commercial power, would have been quite acceptable – someone like Jennie Jerome (the mother of Sir Winston Churchill) for example.
That’s not actually correct. Firstly there were considerable social connections between her family and that of one of the ladies-in-waiting to Queen Mary (I forget the name); this is detailed in the book published to mark her 100th birthday. Secondly, she was descended from Scottish royalty; at my aunt’s house there’s a document published at the time of the wedding showing this.
If my quick online search is correct, the last royal consort to be born in England of two English-born parents was Anne Hyde, the future wife of James II.
I think that’s right.
With the exception of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon. Both her parents were born in London, as was she.
Nor, as I noted above, to vaste swathes of the middle and working classes.
Aren’t we all?
Y’know, a great deal of it may’ve gone on behind the scenes, based on claims that Mrs Simpson was a hermaphrodite. The crown had stood through folks at the top who were adulterers or gay, but having a (what’s the name–First Lady?) whom most certainly could NEVER, by any means, even today, bear an heir, it would stop folks cold. Especially her “man parts” parts.
But damn, Eddie was a clothes horse. Just an awful, awful, king.
I’m not! And the best my wife claims is a relationship to Robert Millikan. Yet another way I don’t let what she says interfere with a successful marriage is that, after I complained that, by tossing out results that did not agree with his hypothesis, Millikan cooked his data, she said that the key to a Nobel Prize is to know what data was obviously measured wrong and being brave enough too dismiss it.
Frankly, I’d rather she continue her claim to be a Boston (one-D) Adams. At least photos of John Quincy Adams, and paintings of his mom, show a nose shared with my MIL and SIL. But thankfiully, not with my wife.
Good God, JQA and my MIL could be twins. Well, him crossed with Terry Jones in drag.