Well, I took a bit of a break there, but I'm really glad to come back to you all with this book here! You may or may not know, but I am a huge history freak. I love English and British history (there's a difference), and I'm definitely a monarchist. My undergraduate thesis, which I want to rewrite because I know that I can do better, was about the power of Queen Elizabeth's ladies in waiting and my master's thesis on American women who married into the British aristocracy and how that changed the makeup of England's upper class. So I like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable about the subject.
However, I've never found Wallis Simpson or Diana, Princess of Wales to be incredibly sympathetic characters. That's not to say I don't feel for either of them and their struggles, but, especially in Diana's case, I feel like there's a cult that's risen up around them where we can't say anything bad. Gill Paul's book,
Another Woman's Husband, made me more sympathetic and more interested in learning the full extent of their stories.
I was five years old when Princess Diana was killed in a car accident in Paris. I remember it,
actually, the news coverage constantly playing on the TV in my grandmother's kitchen, and maybe that is when I formed my opinions of Diana, because my Gran thought she was a spoiled child who couldn't buck up. I understand more now. But it is the fateful night of August 31, 1997 that is the opening event of the book. Rachel and Alex are newly engaged. Alex is a news reporter and Rachel owns a boutique store with authentic period pieces from the 1920s and 30s back home in England. They are driving through Paris when their taxi pulls over. There's been a car accident in the Alma Tunnel just in front of them. Rachel is disgusted by the paparazzi taking pictures and videos of the event as Alex rushes forward to help how he can, even if it's just to translate. This is how they learn that the car contained Princess Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, with their driver and Diana's bodyguard. Alex finds a bracelet at the scene with a heart locket, engraved on one side with a "J" and a "17" on the other. As the weeks unfurl, Alex is determined to make a video documentary about the crash, the many conspiracy theories, and who he thinks is responsible. Rachel is less enthusiastic because she was disgusted with the lack of humanity as a woman lay dying. Reporters were taking photos rather than trying to help her. She's dealing with a break in at her shop too, where a good amount of her difficult to replace stock was stolen. As she's replacing her stock, she is confronted with the mystery of the bracelet, which it seems Diana found or was given at Villa Windsor, the Paris home of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor--The former King, Edward VII and Wallis Simpson. As Rachel goes about replacing her stock, planning her wedding, and trying to figure out the mystery of the bracelet, she finds more and more pieces of Wallis' life.
Rachel and Alex's story is not the only story in the book. Juxtaposed against them is Mary Kirk, who was once a good friend, if not the best friend, of Wallis from when she was still Bessiewallis Warfield (Wallis is pictured to the left and Mary to the right). They met at a summer camp for girls,and went to the same finishing school, but Mary reveals a Wallis who, although she acted confident, was not. Mary's Wallis constantly felt the need to marry someone with more money or more standing so that she could feel secure. Wallis' first marriage was to Earl Spencer, a Navy Airman who was a drunk. The book also implies that he was abusive, which would make the already-flighty Wallis nervous. They divorced in 1927. Mary was married during the period of Wallis' first marriage, to a man named Jacques Raffray, a French airman. It was through Mary and Jacques that Wallis met her second husband, Ernest Simpson, a British shipping magnate. Mary is jealous of their relationship, for she had come to find a bosom companion in Ernest. Mary's first marriage proved to be as sad as Wallis' for Jacques was also a drinker, likely due to what he saw as a French airman in World War I. They eventually separated, at which point Mary and Ernest began a relationship in London, ruining Mary's friendship with Wallis
Ernest was put under great pressure not to divorce Wallis during the abdication crisis, but he eventually did. He gave her the grounds of adultery by taking Mary to a hotel publicly and staying the night with her. Ernest and Mary married six months after his divorce was finalized, but only three weeks after hers was. They went on to have one child, a little boy. Mary never lived to see an October 4, 1941, letter written by Wallis. Rachel found the letter in an outfit that Wallis had worn, saying that she wanted to bury the hatchet and be friends again, but Mary had died two days before the letter was dated of breast cancer.
Love is a very strong central theme in this books, but not only the love between couples. Every romantic relationship in this book is strained or breaks at some point, but the bond between friends and family remains strong. Although Mary and Wallis, for instance, fight and don't speak for the last part of Mary's life, it doesn't mean that they didn't love each other and perhaps, with more time and after the war, they may have reconciled, as people who have been friends and surrogate siblings to each other often do. I also loved the attention to historical detail, and I learned a lot of small details through this book. There are clothing designers, as an example, who keep detailed records of all of their clients wardrobe choices and measurements. I know for someone as internationally important as Wallis Simpson, this may have been to preserve the history, but it seems more like something they did for all of their clients.
I really enjoyed this book, and I'm about to start a reread so that I can catch anything I might have missed. It's opened my eyes a bit more to two figures--Wallis and Diana, even though we only know Diana through her death and the aftermath--that I had previously dismissed. It's also a great story, full of drama that will keep you turning to the next page.
I also got caught up in the title, although I didn't realize it for the longest time! It's actually
Another Woman's Husband, which makes perfect sense with Mary's relationship with Ernest (And the fact that Ernest was married to another woman before Wallis, and divorced her to be with Wallis), but my brain was thinking in term's of Wallis, and the idea of her constantly being another man's wife! Either way, I loved the title, and it fit so perfectly with the book.
#readabook #queenvicsbookshelf #wallissimpson #princessdi #monarchy #England #France #divorce #historicalfiction #anotherwomanshusband
Skaife's day starts by feeding, watering, caring for and releasing the Ravens, of which their are seven. In the book, he introduces us to Munin, Merlina, Erin, Rocky, Jubilee II, Gripp II, and Harris, but not included in the book is Raven Poppy, who joined the Tower in May 2018 as a six week old bird. It makes sense that the book does not include Poppy--it was published in October of this year and therefore would have been at the publishers before Poppy's introduction. 
