The Duke of Windsor had a love child with a Parisian seamstress and bought her silence with money that helped her become one of the French capital's top fashion designers, a new book claims.
In The Man Who Should Have Been King, François Graftieaux claims the Duke had an affair with his grandmother – Marie-Léonie Graftieaux – during one of his society trips to Paris in 1912.
The 70-year old Swiss Frenchman believes the pair met in their late teens at a famous Paris amusement park, Luna Park, which the Duke mentions in his memoirs and his grandmother refers to in her diary.
The Duke had been staying with the Marquis de Breteuil, a wealthy French aristocrat whose two sons were the British royal's age and took him on jaunts around Paris.
Shortly after the birth of her son in 1916, Ms Graftieaux, a working-class seamstress who had also modelled for a well known Parisian designer, suddenly had the means to open up her own fashion house and changed her name to Marcelle Dormoy.
She went on to design dresses for French actresses and celebrities, and had dozens of staff. She officially registered her son, Pierre-Edouard Graftieaux, more than a year after his birth, and the father does not appear on the certificate.
Mr Graftieaux said: "I believe that a secret contract was agreed in which she received money in exchange for her silence on the matter."
His grandmother remained tight-lipped over the father's identity. But when Mr Graftieaux was born, his mother received a mysterious gift – a Van Cleef & Arpels "cadenas" diamond bracelet designed by the Duke of Windsor.
The Duke created the platinum and diamond jewel with a discreetly hidden timepiece so that Wallis Simpson could tell the time at functions without appearing rude to guests.
One given by the Duchess of Windsor to the Condesa Vda de Romanones was sold at auction by Sotheby's in 2011 for £286,000. Mr Graftieaux's father did not have the means to offer his wife such a present.
Despite professional success, Mr Graftieaux said that all his life he had felt a malaise over his origins that psychoanalysis failed to dispel, and which prompted him to start looking into the family mystery.
Acting on a casual remark a friend had made decades that he resembled the Duke of Windsor, Mr Grafieaux found an old Paris Match cover of the Royal.
"I was in shock: he was the splitting image of my father," he said. So convinced is Mr Graftieaux that he has sent a letter to the Queen this month asking for a DNA test to prove his claims.
He said: "I'm not asking for their love nor their money, nor indeed any power. I just want to know if my origins, even illegitimate, are to be found here."
The eldest son of King George V and Queen Mary, the Duke of Windsor was among Britain's shortest reigning monarchs.
Under the name Edward VIII, he was King from January 20 1936 until December 11 the same year, when he abdicated to be with "the woman I love". A controversial figure due to his early admiration for Hitler, the Duke was a notorious womaniser.
In 1917, during the First World War, he began a love affair with Parisian courtesan Marguerite Alibert, who kept a collection of his indiscreet letters after he broke off the affair in 1918 to begin one with an English married woman, Freda Dudley Ward, a textile heiress.
Alan Lascelles, Edward's private secretary for eight years during this period, believed that "for some hereditary or physiological reason his normal mental development stopped dead when he reached adolescence".
During the Second World War he was sent to the Bahamas as governor and afterwards the Duke and Duchess lived in effective exile in Paris for the rest of their lives.
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