Even the greatest nitwit can be steered, guided, directed, assisted, helped. King Edward VIII has shown, as Prince of Wales, to be able to communicate with the public, to have great charisma, to have impatience with rigid court protocol. In that sense he was very much alike the previous Princess of Wales (Lady Diana Spencer).
Nobody said he wasn't charismatic. Hell, that was the whole problem! He believed his own press. His own father, the King couldn't get him to toe the line. Do you think a a little grey, green or purple man could have managed him better? A better question is why?
The rumours of King Edward VIII with a care-free attitude to "The Red Boxes": when these are true then it is the duty of "the grey men" to find a way to ensure that the King is enforced to do his royal duty and no whine about it. Queen Victoria urged that the bureaux of her, the constitutional head of state, and her husband should be attached to each other and in reality it was her German husband who read all contents of "The Red Boxes"... In that sense possible ring marks from drinks are innocent puberal problems.
You can witter as you may but it wasn't just that he shared with Wallis, he just plain left things lying around. He was arrogant, indisceet and pretty hard to handle. Arguments involving your own discussion parameters render Queen Victoria and her huband situation irrelevant.
It is just that the outcome of the "Edward & Wallis"-crisis meant that the former King and especially his spouse had to be portrayed as black as possible, as a sort of "justification" for the Government to enforce abdication because it did not agree with the choice of his love.
They didn't have to be protrayed as black at all. If you intend to put things in their correct 'time and place' then you would know that there was no way in hell that the government would have allowed him to marry his twice married and soon to be twice divorced Mistress. Come on, old school tie, chin chin, one doesn't take one's mistress to his mother's home, It's just not done old boy. Rightly or wrongly, a divorced woman was a pariah in those times, except within the sort of circles Edward moved. High society may have accepted her but the common man and woman never, ever would . . . and they were the people that voted. A secondary and interesting point would have been where would the Church of England stood. There is no way in God's green earth that the Coronation wouldn't have run into a very large and immoveable obstacle.
Until the day of today we have to believe that Edward was a Nazi and that Wallis was a sort of Mata Hari having the King in her spell. I say: to much James Bond. It is interesting too to note that the glorious and powerful Prime Minister Winston Churchill for sure was more convinced of the supremacy of the Aryan race and Western civilization than the King, the powerless puppet in the theatre of state, ever was. These ideas were pretty widespread amongst the upper class and the aristocracy by the way. Everything must be placed in the framework of that time and be regarded in that light. Not taken out-of-context and be judged with today's knowledge about the horrendous crimes of the Nazis and copy-and-pasted to a situation in 1936, the same year where the British proudly participated in the "Nazi Games", the Berlin Olympics.
Good heavens, religeous and racial bigotry flourished in that time, along with the psuedo science of eugenics. And those in high society, aristocracy and royalty were all embued with a liberal dose of entitlement and superior snobbery. Hitler merely took it a step further, and it is that step that overshadows Edward and Wallis.
But apart from his much reported 1937 visit to Nazi Germany, which led people to look back and wonder, he was privvy to things such as the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 and further ordinances thereafter, courtesy of the Red Boxes. Still, against government advice, they visited Germany as a Monarch without a throne lauded and feted where ever they went. It is lucky the real "dirt" wasn't declassified for 50 years and sometimes even later and it wouldn't surprise me if there were still stuff in hiding.
Does looking back with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight make what happened any less real? Of course it doesn't but it sure puts a whole new spin on those involved. Your contention that Edward and Wallis were demonised is interesting but I am sure there is pretty strong evidence to support the theory that, had the Nazis had taken the UK, Edward would have been back on the throne with Wallis at his side.