257 Quiz Answer

Wallis Simpson, of Baltimore MD, married as her third husband the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, who abdicated his throne in 1936 to marry her.

(Also for Three Word Wednesday and ABC Wednesday: "E" is for "extreme")

I’ve always been interested in those folks of the historical record who might not have been important in themselves, but somehow they made a huge splash in history.  In the following scenelet they’re talking about a certain woman.  Who was she?

“She could almost have been Queen of England! Who could have imagined such a thing when she was a kid back in Baltimore.”

“Not much chance of that happening.”

“You mean because she was a foreigner?  England had foreign queens in the past, you know.”

“Not like her.  Trust me.”

“You mean because she was divorced, right?”

“She wasn’t divorced; she was twice divorced.”

“Yes, I can see that would put the kibosh on it.  But the King was crazy about her.  She could have been his Royal Consort, or some such thing.”

“Again, not a chance.  The entire royal establishment would frown on it.  Fact is, they couldn’t stand her.”

“Makes me wonder just what he found so wonderful about her.”

“It was like this.  She was always devious; she could be sort of venomous and yet also clever and funny, and she specialized in sarcastic quips and remarks, often made to the King about his family.  He had never heard anyone talk like that; it blew him away.”

“And he didn’t object?”

“He loved it.  She went to the extreme.  Her name for the Queen Mother was ‘Cake,’ because she felt that her fashion sense made her look like a wedding cake. And she called the Princess, who after all was to become queen, ‘Shirley,’ as in Shirley Temple.”

“A wonder they let her stay in the country.  Though come to think of it, they didn’t.”

“She had experienced the ultimate fairy tale: becoming the adored favorite of the most glamorous eligible bachelor of his time, and then – well, it all went wrong.”

“As fairy tales often do.”
 

"Wallis and Gromit"