NML and CL, hello to you both. You are both right!! Oedipus complex and mother/lover in one "strange" woman. Your observations on QM are quite correct, there was little of the architypal mother in her, nonetheless her first born may well have felt that he stood a better chance of pleasing her if his father was out of the way. Mary was one of lifes withholders - Freud would have called her anally retentive. Wallis too slots easily into this catagory. It was her lack of anything remotely like maternal feeling that reminded him of his mother thus making a "grownup" relationship possible.......but here we find a questionmark. Wallis affirmed to Baba Metcalfe, wife of Fruity, on her wedding morning that she had not had sexual intercourse with either of her previous husbands. If this was true we must wonder why. Perhaps to give lie to the speculation about her sexual history or to render herself "pure" Either way, it is an unexpected, not to mention odd assertation from a twice married woman. As to David, Ziegler, who is my main reference has him as being "underdeveloped", whilst Thelma Furness has him as sexually undeveloped and has Wallis as "releasing him from his inhibitions". However, long before Wallis a female companion claims to have had with him "a night in paradise!! Well now, who of us would have said he was no good!!! Handsome POWs are always wonderful lovers, aren' t they? We could speculate at length on their physical relationship, but when I think of the pathetic soul I experience him as being I feel glad that whatever it was he craved she was willing to provide.