Sussex 'Comeback Campaign' Lost Cause: King Edward VIII Secret Letter Alerts of Similar Royal Fate Awaiting Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
Although Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly wanted to renounce royal life unlike the former King Edward VIII, there has been talk of a "comeback campaign," in which the Duke seeks a reconciliation with senior royals.
However, one royal author feels the opposite could be true thanks to a recently unearthed letter by the late ex-king turned Duke of Windsor.
"The problem with renouncing crown and country for your own personal happiness is that you have to constantly convince yourself and others that it has not all been for naught," royal scribe Anna Pasternak wrote in The Independent.
"The Duke turned Wallis into the most hated woman in the world, then he couldn’t get what he promised her: the HRH title, or his family to accept her, royal historian, Hugo Vickers, told me," the author continued. "So he must have spent his whole life feeling guilty. I saw him once at Princess Marina’s funeral and I have never seen a man with sadder eyes."
On December 10, 1936, Edward bowed to the inevitable fact that he could not keep both the throne and his beloved and signed a declaration of abdication. His younger brother became King George VI the following day, immediately upon Edward giving royal assent to the Act of Parliament finalizing his abdication.
Harry and Meghan already had their styles and titles when they launched "Megxit" in early 2020, and unlike George VI after he came to the throne, King Charles III, and neither did Queen Elizabeth II, feel the need to issue a special Letters Patent to remove any regal addresses from the Sussex duo. Despite the change in directives decades later, Harry could very well feel much like his great-great uncle once felt.
"Recently, I was given a fascinating letter from a private collection that has never been seen in public or published before," Pasternak observed. "It was written on behalf of the Duke of Windsor to a woman who had clearly sent Edward an encouraging missive after his wedding to Wallis in June 1937."
The Duke's response was written on September 7, 1937, and stated, "Dear Mrs Boraston, I am desired by the Duke of Windsor to acknowledge your letter of August 30th. His Royal Highness thanks you for the poem and your kind wishes but asks me at the same time to assure you that the information that His Royal Highness is homesick is entirely without foundation. His Royal Highness wishes me to add that quite apart from rumours in the press, it is not very likely that he would be missing his country which in every possible way, tried to humiliate and misrepresent both himself and the Duchess of Windsor."