Cultural Depictions of Edward VIII of The United Kingdom - Literature

Literature

• Robertson Davies's The Deptford Trilogy has Edward's profound effect on his public as a key element. One of the characters, Boy Staunton, is a great admirer of Edward VIII, having met him in person once and styled himself after him. His discontent upon being appointed as Lieutenant Governor of Ontario mirrors Edward's decision to choose love over his title and position.
• Guy Walters's The Leader – a fictional alternative history of World War II wherein Edward VIII does not abdicate but reigns as king with Wallis Simpson as queen. They rule a fascist England after World War II and are allied with a victorious Adolf Hitler, but are opposed by the hero of the book, Captain James Armstrong.
• Robert Harris's alternative history novel Fatherland also depicts Edward VIII as the ruler of England alongside Wallis Simpson as part of a pro-German puppet government in Britain. Like the rest of western Europe, Great Britain, although unoccupied, is forced to sign up to an E.U. (except Switzerland) which shows their loyalty to the Greater German Reich. However The British Empire still controls its territories in Africa and Asia, Germany allows this to spread their influence around the world, where as Canada, Australia and New Zealand are U.S allies recognizing Elizabeth as the Queen of the Commonwealth realms and the United Kingdom.
• In the timeline of Robert Heinlein's first novel "For Us, the Living" (1939) - then a future history which can now be considered as a retroactive alternative history - Edward returns to England at the outbreak of war and distinguishes himself in wartime service. After the war - which ends in 1944 due to Germany's economic collapse - a European Federation is formed and Edward is made into a Constitutional Emperor of Europe, a task which he fulfills with great success. However, he dies without issue in 1970 (two years earlier than in actual history) and in the aftermath Europe is torn up in forty years of highly destructive war and is largely depopulated.
• I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, written under the pseudonym Hannah Green, a mental patient believes she is the secret first wife of Edward VIII.
• Famous Last Words, a novel by Timothy Findley, is a fictional recreation of the relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. In it, the couple conspire with Joachim von Ribbentrop to overthrow Hitler, with the intention of assuming control of the Nazi party and taking over Europe.
• Royce Ryton's play Crown Matrimonial, telling the abdication story from Queen Mary's viewpoint, opened at the Haymarket Theatre in 1972, with Peter Barkworth as Edward, and Wendy Hiller as Queen Mary. In a televised version in 1974, Barkworth reprised his role, but Queen Mary was played by Greer Garson.
• Snoo Wilson's 1994 play HRH dealt with the Duke's life in Bahamas and examined his possible role in a suggested cover-up following the murder of multi-millionaire Harry Oakes in 1943. This subject also features prominently in William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart.
• In the detective novel Thrones, Dominations- completed by Jill Paton Walsh from notes left by Dorothy L. Sayers- Lord Peter Wimsey is charged with recovering secret documents which King Edward treated carelessly. Wimsey has an outspokenly negative opinion on Edward, whom he considers an irresponsible person unfit to be a King. Moreover, Wimsey discovers evidence of King Edward meeting secretly in France with high-level Nazi emissaries. Wimsey's report of this to the Foreign Office cannot be published, but it increases the pressure on the King to abdicate.
• In the Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel Players, the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown visit England in 1936 to investigate the interference of the Doctor's time-manipulating enemies, the Players. During their time in the present, they discover that the Players have been manipulating various Nazi sympathisers in Britain to push Edward into deciding to dismiss the government and establish a new one sympathetic to Hitler's policies out of respect for his 'friendship' with Hitler, in response to the government's refusal to allow him to marry Wallis Simpson, but the Doctor and Peri- aided by Winston Churchill and his various contacts- instead have his government dismissal recorded as evidence and blackmail him into abdicating or be charged with high treason while the Nazi sympathisers are kept under observation.