American socialite Wallis Simpson, previously Wallis Spencer, was born Bessie Wallis Warfield on June 19, 1896, in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, a summer resort near the Maryland border. Wallis's father died shortly after her birth and she and her widowed mother were partly supported by their wealthier relatives. Her first marriage, to U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, was punctuated with periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1934, during her second marriage, to Ernest Simpson, she allegedly became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. Two years later, after Edward's accession as King, Wallis divorced her second husband and Edward proposed to her. The King's desire to marry a woman with two living ex-husbands threatened to cause a constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom and the Dominions. This prospect ultimately led to the King's abdication in December 1936 to marry Simpson. After the abdication, the former king was named Duke of Windsor by his brother King George VI. Edward married Wallis six months later, after which she was formally known as the Duchess of Windsor, without the style "Her Royal Highness". Before, during and after World War II, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were suspected by many in government and society of being Nazi sympathizers. In the 1950s and 1960s, she and the Duke shuttled between Europe and the United States, living a life of leisure as society celebrities. After the Duke's death in 1972, the Duchess lived in seclusion and was rarely seen in public. She died in Paris in 1986. Her private life has been a source of much speculation, and she remains a controversial figure in British history.
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