Wallis Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield; 19 June 1896 – 24 April 1986), was an American socialite whose third husband, Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom and the Dominions, abdicated his throne to marry her.

Wallis's father died shortly after her birth, and she and her widowed mother were partly supported by their wealthier relatives. Her first marriage, to U.S. naval officer Win Spencer, was punctuated with periods of separation and eventually ended in divorce. In 1934, during her second marriage, to Ernest Simpson, she allegedly became the mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales. Two years later, after Edward's accession as King, Wallis divorced her second husband and Edward proposed to her.

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Wallis Simpson , which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0