Editing Wallis Simpson (section)

==Legacy==
[[File:Simpson, Wallis & Edward VIII - RLWMV (5034878895).jpg|thumb|Wax figures of Wallis and Edward at the Royal London Wax Museum, [[Victoria, British Columbia]], Canada]]
Wallis was plagued by rumors of other lovers. The gay American [[Jimmy Donahue]], an heir to the [[F. W. Woolworth Company|Woolworth]] fortune, said he had a liaison with her in the 1950s, but Donahue was notorious for his inventive pranks and rumor-mongering.<ref>{{cite book |first=Christopher |last=Wilson |title=Dancing With the Devil: the Windsors and Jimmy Donahue |publisher=HarperCollins |location=London |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-00-653159-3}}; King, p. 442</ref>{{efn|[[Lady Pamela Hicks]] remembered the Duke being "in tears" with her father [[Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma|Earl Mountbatten of Burma]] because Wallis was with Donahue.<ref>{{citation |title=Royal In-Law: Princess Diana Favored "Disco-ing" to Married Life; Charles Has "Blossomed Again" With Camilla |url=http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2013/09/princess-diana-discoing-mountbatten-memoir |first=James |last=Reginato |accessdate=April 19, 2023 |work=[[Vanity Fair (magazine)|Vanity Fair]] |date=September 5, 2013 |language=en}}</ref>}} Wallis's memoir ''The Heart Has Its Reasons'' was published in 1956, and biographer [[Charles Higham (biographer)|Charles Higham]] said that "facts were remorselessly rearranged in what amounted to a self-performed face-lift". He describes Wallis as "charismatic, electric and compulsively ambitious".<ref>Higham, pp. 452–453</ref>

[[Cultural depictions of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson|Fictional depictions of the Duchess]] include the novel ''[[Famous Last Words (novel)|Famous Last Words]]'' (1981) by Canadian author [[Timothy Findley]], which portrays her as a manipulative conspirator,<ref>Sebba, pp. 280–281</ref> and [[Rose Tremain]]'s short story "The Darkness of Wallis Simpson" (2006), which depicts her more sympathetically in her final years of ill health.<ref>Sebba, p. 282</ref> Hearsay and conjecture have clouded assessment of Wallis's life, not helped by her own manipulation of the truth. But, in the opinion of her biographers, there is no document that proves directly that she was anything other than a victim of her own ambition, who lived out a great romance that became a great tragedy.<ref name=abc>Bloch, ''The Duchess of Windsor'', p. 231; See also {{cite news |last=Weintraub |first=Stanley |author-link=Stanley Weintraub |title=The Love Letters of the Duchess of Windsor |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |date=June 8, 1986 |page=X05}} for a similar view.</ref> In the words of one, "she experienced the ultimate fairy tale, becoming the adored favorite of the most glamorous bachelor of his time. The idyll went wrong when, ignoring her pleas, he threw up his position to spend the rest of his life with her."<ref name=abc/> Wallis herself is reported to have summed up her life in a sentence: "You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance."<ref>King, p. 388; Wilson, p. 179</ref>