Thanks for the book recommendation Distelfink

and great post Fairy

I've just spent the past week absorbed in a book about Wallis by Greg King. It is a sympathetic view and now that I am finished I am going to do what I always do with biographies of controversial figures - go and read a hatchet job to counterbalance it. That way, I can weigh up a dual presentation of the character.
My opinion, on a purely superficial level,

is that Wallis was so elegant that I wish she had become queen just for the photos of her robes etc. instead of that fat, frilly, frou-frou, pastel hued Queen Mother who comes across both in the Wallis story and in Diana's subsequent words as someone more steely and unlikeable than her public image.
How she must have seethed knowing that Wallis would be reading newspaper stories of her own darling daughter Margaret going for a divorced man, albeit one she dropped. Then of course becoming a divorcee herself. And I bet she was glad Wallis wasn't around to view the Mark II behaviour of her beloved grandson Charles when he cavorted with and then married divorcee Camilla. How they hurt, used and humiliated Diana is much worse than anything the Windsors did. The chickens came home to roost for that judgemental, sanctimonious old Cookie.
And as for Edward, he was probably not the weak loser that they portray - the Establishment had to back the replacement King and so inversely diminish his "rival" in people's minds. It took strength to stick to his guns as he did and in many ways it was his popularity with the masses when he had been King that the Establishment wanted to quash - much as they later shuddered at Diana's charisma. The monarch is better if he/ she doesn't rock the boat and has a pleasant but dull persona and never has a personality which becomes bigger than their role. They are tools of the state - "The King is dead. Long live the king" ie expendable - the role, not the individual, is what counts. Boring Kate - good, Diana - unmanageable. Boring Bertie good, Edward- unmanageable. And smoke and mirrors will be used to maintain the status quo.