The King Who Did Not Attend the Coronation

On June 2, 1953, former king Edward VIII, the Duke of Windsor since his abdication in 1936, sat chain smoking in a gilded chair as flashbulbs popped—far from Westminster Abbey, where the coronation of his niece Queen Elizabeth II was taking place. Rather, he was in Paris, at a party hosted by the American heiress Margaret Biddle, surrounded by members of continental café society and the United Press. 

In the darkened room, some eyes were on the TV, which broadcast a British coronation for the first time in history, but many more eyes were on Edward, who sat shoulder to shoulder with his wife, Wallis, Duchess of Windsor. 

Edward’s jovial tone turned reflective as the coronation ceremony reached its height. “The Duke of Windsor fought back tears and prayed silently today as his young niece became Queen Elizabeth II. The Duke bowed his head and folded his hands as Elizabeth mounted the throne he surrendered 16 years ago,” the United Press reported on June 2, 1953, in a piece syndicated in the LA Times the following day.

With the rest of his family across the Channel, he sought comfort in the woman for whom he had given it all up. “The Duchess leaned over to him. The Duke stirred and moved closer to her—their faces almost touching,” the UP reported. “The Duke took out a handkerchief and brushed a solemn face. He watched the crown being placed on Elizabeth’s head. Then he turned to his Duchess and pinched the flesh between his eyes—as though fighting back tears.”

It was not what Edward had hoped for. After the death of his younger brother King George VI on February 6, 1952, the duke had been naively hopeful that he would be welcomed at the coronation—along with his scandalous wife. As royal watchers speculated blindly that the Windsors would receive an invite, the Duchess of Windsor was equally in the dark. From their home in Paris, she wrote to her aunt, on October 3, 1952, about the upcoming ceremony. 

I will know more about that when the Duke returns as the reason for his trip [to England] was to review the entire situation. The family are certainly charming, aren’t they? We will also have to take a lot of Coronation cracks— and Winston [Churchill] though very friendly won’t interfere in what he calls a family matter. I wish the world and particularly the U.S. press would forget the Windsors. Such an old story.

The Duke of Windsor’s November trip to England to visit his ailing mother, Queen Mary, raised public chatter about the thorny issue to a fever pitch, with royal watchers looking for any sign of a truce between the Windsors and the royal family. “Usually, on these brief interludes in London, he seldom leaves Marlborough House, his mother’s home…. But on this trip to London the Duke is seeing a good deal of all members of the royal family,” read a piece in the Los Angeles Times. “Yesterday he went to Buckingham Palace for tea with his sister-in-law, the Queen Mother. Thursday he will return to the palace to have lunch with Queen Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, on their fifth wedding anniversary. Later in the week Windsor is to meet the royal children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne.”

The duke also visited his old friend Prime Minister Churchill, reportedly to sound out “the Prime Minister and top members of the royal family on whether he could bring his Duchess to Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.”

This public show of familial togetherness led many to believe that Edward’s royal invitation was a go. “To many Britons all the family activity added up to one thing—a reconciliation,” The New York Times reported. “According to rumors in court circles, it is odds on that both the Duke and his American-born Duchess…will get invitations for the Coronation.”