What Happened When Wallis Simpson Stayed With the Queen After Edward Died?

From a window of Buckingham Palace on 3 June 1972, her 35th wedding anniversary, the widowed Duchess of Windsor watched the Queen ride out to Trooping the Colour. Elizabeth II had invited her, and as far as any record shows, those three nights in June were the only ones she ever slept there. The road to that window runs through a tea table in the Bois de Boulogne on 18 May, two accounts of the night the Duke died, and Lord Mountbatten waiting when her plane landed. A lower-case "the" in the Court Circular, which Anna Pasternak noticed, and a dinner held in the Chinese Room show how she was received. Behind them sit Royal Lodge in 1936 and "Crawfie, who is she?", a curtsy at the London Clinic in March 1965, and the Frogmore grave agreed that year. On the funeral day, John Pardoe and Ian Paisley questioned a Commons message that left her out, and the House added her as "Her Grace". Wallis called the family cold; what the Queen did is set beside that, before Princess Anne's wedding and Wallis's own funeral in April 1986. 0:00 A widow at a Palace window, 3 June 1972 3:33 The Queen at her tea table, 18 May 1972 6:40 Two versions of 2:20 a.m., and RAF Benson 10:24 Mountbatten, the Mall suite, a lower-case t 14:02 Trooping the Colour on their anniversary 17:28 St James's Palace and "Crawfie, who is she?" 21:08 Lisbon, the Waldorf Towers and two bracelets 24:56 A curtsy at the London Clinic, 1965 28:48 5 June: Frogmore, then home the same day 30:59 Hansard and "Her Grace the Duchess of Windsor" 34:12 "Polite and kind… but cold" 37:05 Seventeen servants, then RAF Benson again Sources: Hansard, House of Commons and House of Lords, 5 June 1972; House of Commons, 7 June 1972 The New York Times (UPI), 3–4 June 1972 BBC On This Day, 18 May 1972 Court Circular, 2 June 1972, as read by Anna Pasternak, The American Duchess: The Real Wallis Simpson (2019) Letters Patent of 27 May 1937 (London Gazette, 28 May 1937) Greg King, The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson (1999) Philip Ziegler, King Edward VIII: The Official Biography (1990) Marion Crawford, The Little Princesses (1950) Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, The Heart Has Its Reasons (1956) Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo, The Voice of Silence (2002) Andrew Lownie, on a night nurse's account of the Duke's last weeks Time (1940, 1965, 1973); The New Yorker (1956); Associated Press, 29 April 1986 #DuchessOfWindsor #ElizabethII #BuckinghamPalace