She worked alongside someone who'd encountered the QM or Queen as was them and said that she was, and I quote, a 'bitch'. GM never swore, and was of the generation who showed massive deference to the Royal Family. She never believed the cuddly old Nations Grandmother bollocks.
She was absolutely right not to. Apparently she was a horrible woman, a rampant social climber who kicked down.
She was widely believed to have set her cap at the future Edward VIII when he was Prince of Wales and wasn’t very happy when he clearly wasn’t interested and she had to settle for the younger brother the Duke of York.
When the abdication happened the QM was widely known to be delighted to be Queen but in public she claimed it was a terrible burden she didn’t want which ruined her husband’s health and led to his early death from lung cancer not his 100 fags a day habit. Edward and Wallis weren’t perfect by any means but her behaviour was vengeful and plain nasty, particularly as she really relished the position.
She was notorious for favouring her descendants who were likely to be on the throne at the expense of the other ones who she largely ignored.
Virtually none of the famous wartime stories about her are true, eg Hitler saying she was the most dangerous woman in Europe, saying she could ‘look the East End in the face’ when Buckingham Palace was bombed, the refusal to evacuate the Princesses abroad because ‘the Princesses will not leave without me and I will not leave without the King and the King will never leave.’ All written by wartime propagandists. She ran up huge debts which the Queen had to pay off and she was incredibly nasty to friends who had difficult personal lives or fell on hard times.
She was hard as nails.