[2] A summer resort close to the Maryland–Pennsylvania border, Blue Ridge Summit was popular with Baltimoreans escaping the season's heat, and Monterey Inn, which had a central building, as well as individual wooden cottages, was the town's largest hotel.

[11] For her first few years, Wallis and her mother were dependent upon the charity of her father's wealthy bachelor brother Solomon Davies Warfield, postmaster of Baltimore and later president of the Continental Trust Company and the Seaboard Air Line Railway.

[17] A later biographer wrote of her, "Though Wallis's jaw was too heavy for her to be counted beautiful, her fine violet-blue eyes and petite figure, quick wits, vitality, and capacity for total concentration on her interlocutor ensured that she had many admirers.

"[18] In April 1916, Wallis met Earl Winfield Spencer Jr., a US Navy aviator, in Pensacola, Florida, while visiting her cousin Corinne Mustin.

[21] After the United States entered the First World War in 1917, Spencer was posted to San Diego as the first commanding officer of a training base in Coronado, known as Naval Air Station North Island; they remained there until 1921.

They soon separated again, and in 1922, when Spencer was posted to the Far East as commander of the USS Pampanga, Wallis remained behind, continuing an affair with an Argentine diplomat, Felipe de Espil.

[18] In January 1924, she visited Paris with her recently widowed cousin Corinne Mustin,[24] before sailing to the Far East aboard a troop carrier, USS Chaumont.

[26] According to the wife of one of Win's fellow officers, Mrs. Milton E. Miles,[27] in Beijing Wallis met Count Galeazzo Ciano, later Mussolini's son-in-law and foreign minister, had an affair with him, and became pregnant, leading to a botched abortion that left her infertile.

[34] By the time her marriage to Spencer was dissolved, Wallis had become involved with Ernest Aldrich Simpson, an Anglo-American shipping executive and former officer in the Coldstream Guards.

[38] In 1929, Wallis sailed back to the United States to visit her sick mother, who had married legal clerk Charles Gordon Allen after the death of Rasin.

[45] By the end of 1934, Edward was irretrievably besotted with Wallis, finding her domineering manner and abrasive irreverence toward his position appealing; in the words of his official biographer, he became "slavishly dependent" on her.

[46] At an evening party in Buckingham Palace, he introduced her to his mother; his father was outraged,[47] primarily on account of her marital history, as divorced people were generally excluded from court.

[56] Edward's behaviour and his relationship with Wallis made him unpopular with the Conservative-led British government, as well as distressing his mother and his brother the Duke of York.

[65] Wallis had already filed for divorce from her second husband on the grounds that he had committed adultery with her childhood friend Mary Kirk and the decree nisi was granted on October 27, 1936.

Edward suggested a morganatic marriage, where he would remain king but Wallis would not be queen, but this was rejected by Baldwin and the prime ministers of Australia, Canada, and the Union of South Africa.

[68] For the next three months, she was under siege by the media at the Villa Lou Viei, near Cannes, the home of her close friends Herman and Katherine Rogers,[69] whom she later thanked effusively in her ghost-written memoirs.

John Theodore Goddard, Wallis's solicitor, stated: "[his] client was ready to do anything to ease the situation but the other end of the wicket [Edward VIII] was determined."

On December 11, Edward said in a radio broadcast, "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility, and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do, without the help and support of the woman I love.

However, letters patent, issued by the new king and unanimously supported by the Dominion governments,[82] prevented Wallis, now Duchess of Windsor, from sharing her husband's style of "Royal Highness".

Some biographers have suggested that Wallis's sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth remained bitter towards her for her role in bringing George VI to the throne (which she may have seen as a factor in his early death)[84] and for prematurely behaving as Edward's consort when she was his mistress.

[85] These claims were denied by Elizabeth's close friends, such as the Duke of Grafton, who wrote that she "never said anything nasty about the Duchess of Windsor, except to say she really hadn't got a clue what she was dealing with.

[92] The visit tended to corroborate the strong suspicions of many in government and society that Wallis was a German agent,[18] a claim that she ridiculed in her letters to Edward.

They stayed in Cascais, at Casa de Santa Maria, the home of Ricardo do Espírito Santo e Silva, a banker who was suspected of being a German agent.

[100] Wallis performed her role as the governor's consort competently for five years; she worked actively for the Red Cross and in the improvement of infant welfare,[101] as well as overseeing renovations of Government House.

[106] Another of their acquaintances, Charles Bedaux, who had hosted their wedding, was arrested on charges of treason in 1943 but committed suicide in jail in Miami before the case was brought to trial.

[107] The British establishment distrusted Wallis; Sir Alexander Hardinge wrote that her suspected anti-British activities were motivated by a desire for revenge against a country that rejected her as its queen.

They bought a second house in the country, Moulin de la Tuilerie or "The Mill" in Gif-sur-Yvette, where they soon became close friends with their neighbors, Oswald and Diana Mosley.

[119] She became increasingly frail and eventually succumbed to dementia, living the final years of her life as a recluse, supported by both her husband's estate and an allowance from Elizabeth II.

[132] In recognition of the help France gave to the Windsors in providing them with a home, and in lieu of death duties, Wallis's collection of Louis XVI style furniture, some porcelain, and paintings were made over to the French state.

[134] In a Sotheby's auction in Geneva, in April 1987, Wallis's jewelry collection raised $45 million for the institute, approximately seven times its pre-sale estimate.