His letters and diaries from the 1920s are full of adolescent self-pity and dismal self-disparagement. Never close to his mother and father, he leaned heavily for 16 years on his first long-term mistress, Freda Dudley Ward, the petite and pretty wife of a Liberal MP.
‘I just don’t feel I can even exist let alone try to live much longer without you, my precious darling beloved little mummie!!’ he groaned.
Sensibly, Freda paid no attention, knowing full well that the nation and the Royal Family would never accept a divorcee as queen.
Was his behaviour normal? The psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has described how such dependence on a mother figure, as well as some of the prince’s other quirks, are typical characteristics of autism or Asperger’s Syndrome.
Other signs are Edward’s refusal to eat adequately, his liking for violent exercise, his obsessive concern about weight and the thinness of his legs, the way he arranged his clothes in serried rows, his social insensitivity and various nervous tics — such as constantly fiddling with his cuffs.
Flirtatious female: In the early days, Wallis would say to Edward, 'You're just a heartbreak to any woman because you can never marry her'
But during Edward’s lifetime, several of those who worked with him closely went much further: they actually believed the Prince of Wales was mad.
After a conversation with the prince, Wigram was once heard to exclaim: ‘He’s mad — he’s mad! We shall have to lock him up. We shall have to lock him up.’ And later he proposed passing a Regency Bill ‘so that if necessary he could be certified’.
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury considered that Edward was ‘definitely abnormal psychologically if not mentally or physically.’
More crucially, Lord Dawson of Penn, the Royal Family’s doctor, was ‘convinced that [Edward’s] moral development had for some reason been arrested in his adolescence.’
True, some of this opprobrium may be linked to the fact that he failed to take his official duties seriously and was often up all hours at nightclubs, drinking and womanising. But the weight of the evidence suggests that there was more to it than that.
'He's mad! We shall have to lock him up'
Indeed, his extreme fixation with Wallis may have owed more to his mental condition than to true love.
Whatever the case, she was clearly playing with fire. Yet even when she accepted an invitation to stay at the Belvedere Fort for a week without Ernest, she still believed she could string both men along.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2023590/The-truth-Mrs-Simpson-Why-Wallis-wanted-marry-king.html#ixzz1UWZ3iAl3
Childlike Edward was obsessed with his weight Writing to her up to three times a day in an invented baby language (‘pleath’ for please and ‘vewy’ for very) , he swore he was going to marry her, fantasised about dying with her and even talked of ‘resigning’.
‘I just don’t feel I can even exist let alone try to live much longer without you, my precious darling beloved little mummie!!’ he groaned.
Sensibly, Freda paid no attention, knowing full well that the nation and the Royal Family would never accept a divorcee as queen.
Was his behaviour normal? The psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen has described how such dependence on a mother figure, as well as some of the prince’s other quirks, are typical characteristics of autism or Asperger’s Syndrome.
Other signs are Edward’s refusal to eat adequately, his liking for violent exercise, his obsessive concern about weight and the thinness of his legs, the way he arranged his clothes in serried rows, his social insensitivity and various nervous tics — such as constantly fiddling with his cuffs.
Flirtatious female: In the early days, Wallis would say to Edward, 'You're just a heartbreak to any woman because you can never marry her'
But during Edward’s lifetime, several of those who worked with him closely went much further: they actually believed the Prince of Wales was mad.
Certainly, the Edward . Lord Wigram, a long-serving courtier, also thought he wasn’t ‘normal and might any day develop into a George III’ — his mad ancestor.
After a conversation with the prince, Wigram was once heard to exclaim: ‘He’s mad — he’s mad! We shall have to lock him up. We shall have to lock him up.’ And later he proposed passing a Regency Bill ‘so that if necessary he could be certified’.
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury considered that Edward was ‘definitely abnormal psychologically if not mentally or physically.’
More crucially, Lord Dawson of Penn, the Royal Family’s doctor, was ‘convinced that [Edward’s] moral development had for some reason been arrested in his adolescence.’
True, some of this opprobrium may be linked to the fact that he failed to take his official duties seriously and was often up all hours at nightclubs, drinking and womanising. But the weight of the evidence suggests that there was more to it than that.
'He's mad! We shall have to lock him up'
Indeed, his extreme fixation with Wallis may have owed more to his mental condition than to true love.
Whatever the case, she was clearly playing with fire. Yet even when she accepted an invitation to stay at the Belvedere Fort for a week without Ernest, she still believed she could string both men along.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2023590/The-truth-Mrs-Simpson-Why-Wallis-wanted-marry-king.html#ixzz1UWZ3iAl3
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