>in order to care about what happens to the characters in the
>film...

I don't need *exact* historical context. But they throw a lot of historical context in there (Hitler, Churchill, war looming, soldiers listening attentively to the speech, Edward's fiancee allegedly fucking Nazis) and then don't really make it work.

Why not, for instance, hew closer to the real story--future George VI got his stammer well under control in the late 20s, a decade before the beginning of WWII?

It seemed like the filmmakers really wanted to add all this context. I think it didn't work. And contrasting with all these grand happenings, the personal crisis just doesn't seem that consequential.

Again, this was a nice film with some nice performances. But it doesn't really rise above the genre for me.

I prefer, for instance, Frears's The Queen, which seemed to fuse the personal and public crisis much better. And was shot better to boot.