The romance between Wallis Simpson (1896-1986) and the Duke of Windsor caused one of the biggest scandals in the history of the British monarchy. She was a twice-divorced American, and "David," as she called the man who briefly reigned as King Edward VIII, was forced to abdicate his throne in order to marry her.

Simpson was born Bessie-Wallis Warfield on June 19, 1896, in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania, a spa town where her parents had gone to help cure her father's tuberculosis. It was a futile attempt, for Teackle Wallis Warfield died just a few months later, leaving Alice Montague Warfield an impoverished widow. Both families hailed from the Old South, but the Montagues of Virginia had lost their fortune after the Civil War. Ironically, Wallis Warfield Simpson's genealogy gave her technically more English blood than members of the British royal family, who later shunned her. Until World War I...