He was forced to abdicate because he wanted to marry a woman named Wallace Sampson, who was an American socialite who had been previously divorced twice, and that was not allowed. Nope. Because as the king, Edward was the monarch, and that is the official head of the Church of England. At the time, the Church of England had a policy that divorced people can't get remarried unless their ex-spouse was dead. So it would have been bigamy if the two of them would have been married in the church's eyes. So everyone was against it. The Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin told Edward that if he... We went against the public's wishes and married Wallace anyway. Much of the government would resign in protest. So on December 10th, 1936, Edward abdicated the throne formally.