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Edward VIII (1894-1972), king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and emperor of India (January 20-December 11, 1936), later known as the duke of Windsor. Edward was born Jun e 23, 1894, in White Lodge, Richmond Park, and was educated at the naval preparatory college at Osborne; the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth; and Magdalen College, University of Oxford.

During World War I he served with the Grenadier Guards in France, Italy, Flanders, and Egypt. In 1919 he undertook the first of many official goodwill tours to Canada and other countries. In the 1920s and 1930s he supported slum-clearance projects, aid to the unemployed, and improvement of the working conditions of British miners.

On the death of his father, King George V, in January 1936, Edward was proclaimed King Edward VIII. Before long, rumours circulated about his alleged romance with an American, Mrs. Wallis Warfield Simpson, then married to her second husband, a London shipping broker. On October 20, 1936, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin counselled Edward, as king and head of the Church of England, to remove all cause for the rumours. A week later Mrs. Simpson was granted a divorce, to become final in six months. In November the king confided to Baldwin that he intended to marry Mrs. Simpson even if it meant his abdication. A morganatic marriage was proposed, but the cabinet was unwilling to accept this compromise. On December 11, 1936, therefore, the king abdicated in favour of his brother, the duke of York, who became King George VI. Edward received the title duke of Windsor and married Mrs. Simpson in June 1937. Because his wife was not accorded the privileges of a royal duchess in England, the duke of Windsor resided abroad.

In 1937 he observed social and housing conditions in Germany and visited Adolf Hitler. During World War II he served as a major general in the British Expeditionary Force, and he was governor of the Bahamas from 1940 to 1945. After the war he lived as a private British citizen, chiefly in the United States and France. At the funeral of George VI in February 1952, he took part in a British royal ceremony for the first time since his abdication. The duke wrote A King's Story (1951) which was made into a film in 1967, and Windsor Revisited (1960). He died May 28, 1972, in Paris.