The steamy secret affair of Edward before he met Wallis Simpson

Twenty years before abdicating the throne for Wallis Simpson, Prince Edward VIII was caught up in an explosive scandal.

In the middle of a violent thunder storm, just before midnight on September 10, 1923, the night porter at London’s Savoy hotel heard three gunshots.

Rushing up to the 4th floor, he found Princess Marguerite Fahmy holding a pistol.

At her feet, her husband Egyptian prince Fahmy, lay dead.

Two bullets in the back, one bullet in the head.

As police arrived to take the princess away it wasn’t long before her identity was revealed. The beautiful woman who’d just shot her husband was also known as Marguerite Alibert, a French high-class prostitute who became the first lover of Edward, the Prince of Wales — heir to the British throne.

And so began a race to stop a scandal that would have greatly damaged the reputation of the future King.

Alibert and Prince Edward had had a passionate affair that eventually exploded in a cocktail of royal infatuation, blackmail, sex, murder and a secret stash of hidden letters.

It was 96 years ago this month that Alibert appeared at Old Bailey for the murder of her husband. It’s an incredible story about a woman who rose from poverty to a life of extravagance, rubbing shoulders with the Parisian elite before being pursued and loved by a future King.