It is explained that the woman dressed as a nun, Princess Alice of Battenberg, is the mother of the Duke of Edinburgh. What is not explained is why she dressed that way: during the early 1930s, after going into exile and poverty with her family, she converted to Greek Orthodoxy, suffered a breakdown, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was institutionalized in a sanatorium. After her release she was separated or estranged from most of her family for many years. During World War II she hid a Jewish family from the Nazis (and was eventually posthumously named one of the 'Righteous Among the Nations' for her actions), and after the war she founded and joined an order of Greek Orthodox nuns, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary.
Peter and King George exchange dirty limericks. As explained in The King's Speech (2010), the use of profanity was part of the king's speech therapy for the stuttering that he dealt with his whole life.
For the operation scene, Stephen Daldry persuaded real transplant surgeons and nurses from Guy's Hospital, London, to act as their historic counterparts. One of them, Pankaj Chandak, a specialist registrar, stated that they soon got used to the period instruments, forgot the cameras and 'it felt like a normal day in the operating theatre'. He asked for one of the two prosthetic bodies to be donated to the Gordon Museum of Pathology at King's College, London, where it will be an educational prop.
The replica of Norman Hartnell's wedding dress reportedly took seven weeks to make and cost £30,000. The original took six months to complete and featured a design of embroidered flowers and ears of wheat, crystals and 10,000 seed pearls. The design was inspired by Botticelli's 'Primavera'.
The episode won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Period/Fantasy Costumes for a Series, Limited Series or Movie.