European Royalty discussion

Feel free to discuss anything about Gone with the Windsors in this thread. If you (and others) are here, you (and they) have finished the book, so don't worry about posting spoilers. If you haven't finished the book, you may not want to read anything here yet!

Also, please let us know how you rated the book (3/5, 4 of 5, however you choose)!

Just finished this and gave it 3/5 stars. I enjoyed the style and loves the characters particularly Maybell & family. Some parts did feel like they dragged out too long and the ending felt a bit rushed. I felt really sad at the end to say goodbye to Maybell though. I was so fond of her. I'm really interested to find our more about HRH and Wally. Everhthing written about them is just so unflattering that I can't really appreciate the love story. I guess they're the only ones that know.

It's hard for me to believe that Wally loved him at all (besides the fact that he was royal), but considering she stayed with him after he abdicated, maybe she did love him in her own way. I agree with you that they are probably the only ones to really know and understand their relationship because it seemed pretty dysfunctional to me! Wally always seemed so annoyed with HRH, and I was constantly feeling bad for him.

I loved GWTWindsors too- and came to it after having just read the Viceroys Daughters see below - not about the Winsdors exactly, but completely contemperaneous and moving in the same circles . It's non fiction and seems very well researched. The Windsors don't come off as good people there . Quite apart from their appalling politics, they seem to have been, frankly, monstrously selfish and shallow in the extreme

He barely seemed to realise the that he could not give up being the king and still retain the amusing parts of the job ( giving monarchical advice, having LOTS of State money , entree to anywhere he wanted anywhere etc etc) . And she, I think, simply would not/could not believe that it was all going to come apart and that she would be the Duchess of Nowhere and not the Queen after all. Not even an HRH for which the pair never forgave George and Elizabeth. I think Wallis seriously believed for th longest time, that the British people and government could be made to accept her.
Probably they really did love each other - certainly they suited each other and Heaven knows they could hardly have found better matches ....



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Viceroys-Daug...

That book sounds interesting Barbara! I'm going to add to my to-read list!

Also, you're right HRH seemed very oblivious to everything. I wonder if they just let him do what he wanted his whole life or what the story was there. I'm so curious to find out more.

Yes, it seemed to me that Edward and Bertie/George was perhaps the last two monarchs where it really mattered what their personalities were like . I mean these day, it's hardly relevant for government is it, just so much fodder for the press etc , (though I do think Eliz 2 is a wonderful icon)

As you know, Edward and Bertie/George had a quintessentially royal /aristocratic upbringing , virtually no parents really , just a nanny , who seemed actually mad and certainly was sadistic to Bertie. But Edward seems to have come out of it as a total arse where Bertie aquired the genuine sense of noblesse oblige. Helped enormously , it seems, by his wife, to whom the Windsors were so cruel and scathing. It almost seems as if Bertie andElizabeth opted for , when WW2 war was won anyway, a sort of bourgeois homelife , insofar as they could manage that. You can't imagine the awful Edward and even awfuller Wallis on the palace lawn with the corgis and kids can you !
And you can't see the W's giving a damn about the ordianary people and their lives where Bertie and Elizabeth really seemed to to. I bet the W's would have fled to the US anyway when the bombs started coming down on London .
Oh dear, I do seem to have got a bit anti......

I read this a few weeks ago and thought the same thing I thought when I read a bio of Wallis back in the late 80s-- she was an annoying, selfish, manipulative cow. Plus I couldn't get out of my head the allusion in the book I read about David liking to be diapered. That being said, I enjoyed Gone with the Windsors very much and Maybell was very entertaining.

Diapers...only he'd have called them nappies , I assume . Oh God, did he ......?

Barbara wrote: "Diapers...only he'd have called them nappies , I assume . Oh God, did he ......?"

Dunno, and don't want to know!! 

LOL!