Edward VIII

Edward VIII, later known as the Duke of Windsor, was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication in December of the same year. He was born during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later George V and Queen Mary, and as Prince of Wales he gained popularity for his charm and fashion sense, though his conduct after the First World War, including a series of affairs, worried his father and the government. On becoming king in 1936 he showed impatience with court protocol, and within months caused a constitutional crisis with his proposal to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson, which the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed as incompatible with his role as head of the Church of England; unable to marry her and remain king, he abdicated after a reign of 326 days, one of the shortest of any British monarch, and was succeeded by his younger brother George VI. He was created Duke of Windsor, married Simpson in France in 1937, and later served as Governor of the Bahamas during the Second World War before living in France until his death in 1972.