Edward viii’s murderous mistress

Marguerite Marie Alibert

b.1890-d.1971

Maggie was a high-class French courtesan who entranced a number of men, including Prince Edward. After their relationship ended, she married twice and shot dead her last husband, an Egyptian prince. She was found innocent.

In the early hours of 10 July 1923, three gunshots echoed through London’s Savoy Hotel. Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey was on the floor, blood trickling from his head. His beautiful wife, Maggie, stood behind him, a gun in her hand. About three kilometres away, her former lover, Edward, Prince of Wales, was at a dinner party in Mayfair. Little did he know that he was about to enter a race against time to save himself and the monarchy from one of the most sensational scandals of the 20th century.

Although remembered for his abdication in 1936 in order to marry the woman he loved, Edward’s head had been turned by a number of women before Wallis Simpson. Nevertheless, it was one woman in particular who opened him up to the world of lustful promiscuity – his first mistress, Marguerite Marie Alibert, known to her suitors as the elusive ‘Maggie Meller’.

When Edward met Maggie, he was a young, sexually inexperienced Prince of Wales while she was a high-class French courtesan. He was 22 years old and Maggie, at 27, was five years his senior. A relentless gold digger and social climber, Maggie had worked her way up from the gutters of Paris to its luxury brothels, where she entertained the most influential men in France.

Her desire to seek wealth and comfort wasn’t surprising considering she lived on the streets after giving birth to her only child, Raymonde, at the tender age of 16. Unable to care for her daughter, Maggie placed her into care and didn’t see her again for a number of years.

Turning to prostitution was the only way Maggie could survive and she evolved into a sexy, charismatic woman who knew how to play with the temptations of men and entice them into her world. Maggie’s connection to aristocratic, wealthy men gave her the opportunity to enter some of the most influential circles in society – and opened the door to meet Edward.

She first met the prince through a friend at a restaurant in Paris in April 1917 and he was already fond of French women, having developed a taste for them after a liaison with a prostitute the year before. Maggie, alluring, charming and catastrophically beautiful, blew the prince away, and he was instantly besotted with her. Over the next few months, Edward spent as much of his time with Maggie as possible and lavished her with gifts, while her offerings of erotic literature unveiled a sexual side to the prince that he never knew existed.

Edward