“The Duchess” by Wendy Holden

Title: The Duchess
Author: Wendy Holden
Publisher:  Berkley
Year: 2021
Genre(s):  historical fiction; romance
Part of a Series: No

Rating: 

Why I read it: Once Upon an Advent Calendar gift

Summary: As the Duchess of Windsor prepares to bury her husband alongside the royal family and the Commonwealth, she recalls the story of when she was just Wallis Simpson and dreamed of living the life of the rich and famous. She manages to break into a world she had only glimpsed from the distance and her life changes when she gets an invite to the royal home of Edward, the future king of England. As she forms a friendship with David, as he is known, she has no clue that she will be part of history – or that her name will be linked with scandal and infamy for the rest of her life.

Review: I enjoyed this book and it’s up there with The Space Between as one of my favorites of the year.

Wallis Simpson joins a long line of women wrongly maligned by history and there one can’t help but find some parallels between her and the Duchess of Sussex (besides the fact that they both were divorced Americans). In fact there are some allusions to Meghan Markle, especially at the end when Wallis makes a comment about hoping the family never has to deal with a divorced American again. For decades, Wallis has been painted as a power-hungry woman who schemed to marry England’s Edward VIII and become queen only for him to abdicate, denying her the throne. They ultimately married but they spent the rest of their years fighting for acknowledgement from the royal family – namely for Wallis to be acknowledged as “Her Royal Highness.”

But historians are now working to change her reputation as it grows more apparent that Edward likely used her to escape the monarchy rather than her using him as her ticket to the throne.

And it is that idea this novel explores.

For a little while I hesitated to call this a romance because the relationship between Edward (or David as he was known by those closest to him) and Wallis was pretty toxic. He did come across as manipulative and it seemed that they were too enmeshed with each other very quickly. But I realized that some romances aren’t going to be healthy and those stories needed to be told as well.  It was easy to root for David and Wallis in the beginning but not so much by the end.

Wallis serves as our narrator and she is a captivating one. She feels like a real person who you could be friends with. She does yearn for a more glamorous life than the one she lives now and does do everything in her power to make it, even if it strains her family’s finances. But she is overall a kind and loving woman with some issues that probably would’ve been straightened out in therapy today but allow her to bond with David – and may have also made her more vulnerable to his manipulations.

Edward/David is something of an enigma throughout the novel, even once he and Wallis begin their affair. He appears to be a man of contradictions and by the end, you have to wonder if you or Wallis ever really got to know the real Edward at all. There are times he seems to be truly selfless but than is entirely selfish, especially when it comes to Wallis. He claims to love her but ignores her own wishes. As the relationship unfolded, it just did not come across as healthy at all.

(Edward’s Nazism is also glossed over. There’s a few mentions of Hitler but Edward’s feelings on him are never discussed. He’s painted as a socialist but historical records show that he was attracted to Nazism).

I do highly recommend this if you love history, the British royal family or are interested in reading about a romance that probably shouldn’t happen.

Bottom line: A good look at a woman wronged by history even if fiction.

Sex: Some mentions, nothing too graphic

Moonlight Musing

Why is history so unfair to women?