Edward VIII wore the British crown for less than a year before giving it up in 1936, choosing the American divorcee Wallis Simpson over the throne. The film traces what came after that headline-making abdication: a couple stripped of royal duties and shuffled off to exile, watched by an establishment that never forgave them and a public fascinated by the scandal. Archival photographs and newsreel footage follow the Duke and Duchess of Windsor through Europe and the Bahamas, where Edward was posted as governor during the Second World War, a placement widely read as a way to keep him far from London and away from any political influence. The film lays out the family rift the marriage caused, the constitutional crisis it triggered, and the questions that dogged Edward about his sympathies toward Nazi Germany. It is a portrait of a king who chose a private life and spent the rest of his years discovering what that choice actually cost him.