The Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s secret plot

King George VI led the nation through the Second World War with his winsome wife, Queen Elizabeth, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. But as the war drew to a close, the king’s health began to fail. The formerly uninterested Duke of Windsor decided that he and his wife, Wallis, would take advantage of his brother’s illness and return to Britain to reign in his stead.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Wilson, an acknowledged expert on the Royal family, has studied copies of the 1946 correspondence between Windsor friend Kenneth de Courcy and the Duke and Duchess. The plan formulated by de Courcy amounted to treason – the Duke would return from exile to reign in King George’s place, even though the Duke had already officially abdicated kingship a decade earlier. He would supplant the king’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the rightful heir.

To de Courcy, the ill George VI was similar to King George III during his years of madness – still technically king in name, but increasingly unable to reign. Shunting Princess Elizabeth aside could be explained away as merely keeping Lord Mountbatten from the throne. One letter explained it thus:

“I do not think it too much to say that if the Regency should be one primarily influenced by the Mountbattens [ie Lord Mountbatten and Prince Philip], the consequences for the [Windsor] Dynasty might be fatal… the Mountbattens, thoroughly well-informed of the situation, will do everything in their power to increase their influence…”

It was a plan for the Duke to become King Edward VIII once again, only this time it would be on his terms. Thankfully, such a scenario never occurred. Princess Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II upon the death of George VI on February 6, 1952. The Queen will celebrate 60 years on the throne in 2012.