The jewellery Wallis Simpson got for Costing A King his throne

Two hundred and fourteen pieces — eighty-seven by Cartier alone — went under the hammer in a tent beside Lake Geneva over two days in April of 1987. Elizabeth Taylor bought the Prince of Wales brooch. Calvin Klein bought a pearl necklace formerly belonging to Queen Mary. The 1948 Cartier Panther brooch — the design that became Cartier's most iconic motif of the twentieth century — was sold and later reacquired by Cartier itself. Her name was Wallis Simpson. Edward the Eighth gave up the British throne to marry her in 1936, then spent the next thirty-six years buying her jewellery from the tax-free allowance the British royal family granted him in exchange for staying out of the country. When she died, the entire collection went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris. This is the story of the most personal jewellery collection in royal history.