Our bejeweled recaps of Netflix’s The Crown continues with the sixth episode of season two, “Vergangenheit.” With a German language title that simply means “the past,” you’ve probably correctly guessed that there’s a whole lot of historical information in this episode. (If you need to catch up on any of our previous recaps, head over here!)

We begin in Germany in 1945. American soldiers, with the help of a translator who worked for Hitler, have discovered a trove of important documents buried in the forest. They’re taken to Marburg Castle in Hesse.

As the government processes the documents, one translator notices that some of the files reference the Duke of Windsor. He heads straight for his supervisor…

…and the documents very quickly make it to the very top of the information chain. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth are horrified by what they’ve read.

Churchill and Tommy Lascelles agree that the files should be kept secret from the British people because their contents are so potentially damaging.

The King can’t quite believe that his brother has betrayed him so thoroughly. Queen Elizabeth’s sapphire and diamond engagement ring, a symbol of their stable and long marriage, is front and center in this scene, emphasizing the reason that Bertie and Elizabeth were so much better suited for the roles than David was.

And we’re back in the “present,” though the timeline in this episode suffers from significant tampering in the interest of fictional narrative. The Queen and the Queen Mother are watching the American evangelist Billy Graham on television. He’s in the United Kingdom on one of his “crusade” tours. (The tour in question took place in the spring of 1955.)

Both royal women are wearing their everyday pearl uniform. The Queen Mum isn’t too impressed with Graham, but Elizabeth finds him very interesting.

Meanwhile, in Paris, the Windsors are up to their usual vapid hijinks. They throw a birthday party for their pug, Trooper…

…and they go to a shooting party, where Wallis wears these fabulous mint-colored button earrings…

…and they play cards, with Wallis wearing a particularly spectacular floral necklace, which appears to be made of something like lucite.

They also play dress up, choosing costumes for an upcoming party. They veto the pirate look. (Also, this necklace on Wallis seems to be a cousin to Queen Maxima’s lobster necklace, no?)

They also veto the undersea-royalty look, though Wallis quips that wearing this pearl and shell crown is the closest she’ll ever be to being queen. (You are correct, lady.)

In the end, they ditch the elaborate costumes in favor of something simpler — and more sinister.

Wallis clutches her own coronet as she sits in the garden, sipping champagne.

Note that she’s chosen the actual jewelry wardrobe of the Queen and the Queen Mother — pearls and more pearls — to masquerade as royalty. As she sits, unable to place even a costume crown atop her head, David complains about his life of leisure, wishing he could have a real job in Britain again.

Back in the UK, the real Queen plays with her pearls as she works.

Adeane arrives to tell her that Uncle David is requesting permission to come to Britain, intending to work on a book. (Mm-hm.) Over Philip’s objections, she allows it. She also tells Adeane that she wants to meet with Billy Graham. He agrees to schedule him to preach privately at Windsor, followed by a luncheon with the royal family.

At the Captured German War Documents Publication Unit, a staffer accidentally unearths the suppressed Marburg files, and historians push to have them published. They remind their supervisor that the Americans have a duplicate of the files, and if the Brits won’t publish them, they will. This plot places us in 1957; the files were released in July.

The subject of said files is merrily chugging along on his journey back to England. He’s staying with the Metcalfes in Sussex. (David went back and forth between Paris and the UK fairly often. He did make a prominent visit at the end of 1957, when he attended a memorial for Fruity Metcalfe, performed his first public royal engagement since the abdication, and had a publicly announced visit with the Queen at Buckingham Palace.)

Edward Dudley Metcalfe, who went by the rather vivid nickname “Fruity,” was one of David’s former equerries and served as best man at his wedding in 1937. He’s been helping behind the scenes to try to lay the groundwork for David to get a new job in the UK. (The real Fruity Metcalfe died in November 1957.)

Also present (and wearing pearls), is Fruity’s wife, Lady Alexandra (aka “Baba”). She was the third daughter of Lord Curzon, a viceroy of India, and his American heiress wife, Mary Leiter. Baba had numerous affairs; her lovers included her sister’s husband, Oswald Mosley, as well as Walter Monckton (whom we’ll meet later in the episode). Her appearance makes the historical timeline of the episode even more confusing, because Fruity and Baba divorced in 1955.

At Windsor, Billy Graham is preaching about what makes a person a Christian. (This took place on May 22, 1955. Graham told the Associated Press, “I can only say it was a great privilege to be at Windsor today and that the Queen was very charming and gracious to us.”)

Philip is visibly annoyed, and the Queen Mother (brooch and all) is polite but disinterested, but the Queen herself is intrigued by Graham’s sermon.

After lunch, she has a private conversation with Graham about what it means to be both a Christian and the leader (and face) of a religious organization. (I’m not sure whether this completely private moment did happen — but if it did, it certainly violated the famous “Billy Graham rule.” Maybe it doesn’t count if the woman in question is the Queen?)

David is the guest of honor at a dinner hosted by Sir Walter Monckton, who became Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in 1957.

Monckton was a lawyer and one of the Duke of Windsor’s advisors during the abdication crisis of 1936. (Relevant to this episode: he was also reportedly the person who convinced David to reject a German plan to make him a puppet monarch in 1940 and to go to the Bahamas as planned instead.) Royal watchers might recognize the Monckton surname for other reasons: one of Walter Monckton’s granddaughters is Rosa Monckton, close friend of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

Various prominent Britons are also present at the dinner, including Lord Salisbury (the infamous “Bobbety,” whom you’ll remember from season one), Lord Beaverbrook (owner of the Daily Express), and Selwyn Lloyd (who was Foreign Secretary from 1955 until 1960). The woman portrayed wearing the bright red jewelry here is much more interesting than her brief appearance suggests; she’s Vita Sackville-West, the British writer who was famous for both her publications and her affairs. (Her lovers included Virginia Woolf and Violet Keppel, daughter of Alice Keppel and, therefore, great-aunt of the Duchess of Cornwall.)

Monckton has several job proposals for David, who smokes with his two rings, signet and wedding, visible to the audience. (The show sometimes seems to use these a visual reminder of the central conflict in David’s life, between the crown and Wallis.) He dismisses several of these prospects, but he’s especially interested in a diplomatic post.

But he doesn’t know that the Marburg files are circulating quickly; they’ve reached Harold Macmillan, who has been warned that the Americans will publish them if the Brits won’t.

The PM has an audience with the Queen and tells her about the wartime files.

Elizabeth is wary but displeased.

Adeane and the Queen Mother arrive to fill in the blanks for Elizabeth regarding Uncle David and the controversial papers.

The pearl-clad Queen Mum, who played a role in deciding to hide the documents from public view, is irritated by the entire enterprise, but says she knew they’d never be able to suppress the files.

Elizabeth, in pearls and a pearl-studded brooch, reads the confidential file for herself.

Back in Paris, Wallis does some happier reading: David has written from Paris, and he tells her that the Foreign Secretary has greenlit a new job. All that’s left is to get approval from HM.

(With all the emphasis on storytelling and biographical pasts in this episode, I would have loved some discussion of the memoir that Wallis published in 1956.)

Uncle David arrives for an official audience at the palace, his first time back in “the room.” He tells Elizabeth that he’s ready for a job. Wearing pearls and another of the production-invented brooches, she basically tells him to hold his horses.

After the meeting, Elizabeth talks to Philip about forgiveness, wondering if it’s her Christian duty to forgive her uncle, even after reading the files. It clearly pains him to say it, but Philip suggests that it’s time to talk to the man who was private secretary to King Edward VIII: Tommy Lascelles.

Elizabeth surprises Tommy at home, where he’s waging the Napoleonic Wars in miniature.

Tommy sits her down and tells her everything.

He talks about David’s carelessness with state papers, which he often shared with Wallis…

…who then passed them off to Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador and future Nazi Foreign Minister, who also happened to be one of her lovers.

And then there’s the description of Uncle David’s “semi-state” visit to Germany after the abdication, where he was treated like a once and future king.

But Elizabeth, wearing the production’s ribbon brooch, is most visibly disturbed by news that Uncle David reportedly advised the Germans to continue bombing the Brits during the Blitz, believing that continued attacks would make them give up and achieve “peace.” She takes some time to process what Tommy has told her.

He returns to the palace for her final decision on the job, and she tells him where he can shove it. She wonders how he can ever forgive himself for what he did to his country — and to his brother.

He insults her, and then storms out. But Elizabeth maintains steely determination throughout the encounter.

But she feels guilty afterward, and she talks again to Billy Graham, who advises her that, when you can’t forgive someone, all you can do is pray for them.

She’s in the middle of prayers when she’s interrupted by Philip, who is tipsy and jubilant following a celebratory drink with the Queen Mum and Tommy. They’re all proud of how she handled Uncle David. And he’s very interested in celebrating with a spontaneous drunken canoodle.

The atmosphere back in Paris is mournful. The Duke of Windsor is officially alone again with his duchess. (This isn’t exactly what happened. After the papers were published in 1957, David was still welcomed back into the royal fold from time to time, even participating in official functions.)

This show loves a soapy look in the mirror to remind us that a character is both literally and figuratively reflecting, and that’s precisely what David does at the end of the episode. But the show doesn’t let him off the hook that easily — the installment draws to a close with pictures of the real Duke and Duchess consorting with Nazis during the war. The past will always come back to haunt you.

“Marionettes,” episode five of the second season of Netflix’s The Crown, is light on both plot and jewels, unfortunately. But we’ve still got a few interesting things to discuss jewel-wise — and history-wise! (If you need to catch up on previous recaps, they’re all over here!)

We begin in August 1957. The 2nd Baron Altrincham, a writer and journalist who is also an aristocrat, has published a pointed editorial criticizing both the way the palace is run and the Queen herself. He picks on her personality and even her voice (in real life, he actually said that she sounded like “a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team, a prefect and a recent candidate for Confirmation”), and the press in Britain are selling copies like hotcakes.

The portrait of Elizabeth here features her wearing several pieces of replica jewelry: Queen Mary’s Fringe Tiara (which was then owned by the Queen Mother), the emerald earrings from the Delhi Durbar Parure, and the Godman Necklace (which is a continuity error — the episode takes place in 1957, and the Queen was not given the necklace until 1965).

People can’t stop talking about Altrincham’s “attack” on the Queen, and one man in particular is very upset about it.

He waits outside the ITN television studios, where Altrincham is recording an interview, and gleefully punches him in the face.

(This is real! The man in question, Philip Kinghorn Burbidge, was a member of a far-right organization. He was fined 20 shillings for his crime. According to contemporary news reports, the real Lord Altrincham simply replied, “That was a rather silly thing to do.”)

At Balmoral, Michael Adeane tells Elizabeth and the Queen Mother that Altrinchman has been popped in the face — and that he’s going to be on television later that night. Everyone watches nervously.

And then, we head back in time to one month earlier, as Adeane is putting the final touches on a speech that the Queen is due to give at a Jaguar factory. One staffer is worried that the language and tone sound too out of touch, and he goes to Martin Charteris with his concerns.

Bertie Pelham — er, Charteris — goes to Adeane to talk about the speech, but when he gets there, the embodiment of tradition himself, Tommy Lascelles, is already in the office. Martin tells them that he thinks the speech is too paternalistic, but they dismiss his concerns. So we’ve got a clear-cut conflict: half of the courtiers are married to tradition, and half are interested in change.

The Queen, though, trusts Adeane and has accepted his version of the speech without question. While everyone else argues, she’s in the middle of the most entertaining scene of the episode. Her hairdresser attends to the Royal Coif while “Zadok the Priest” plays triumphantly in the background. It’s hilarious.

The stylist goes for a slightly different ‘do for HM, and this is Philip’s face when he sees it on the way to the Jaguar visit. He bluntly tells her that if she really does want more children, the hair isn’t helping.

Elizabeth reads Adeane’s speech, and it’s not good. It’s dismissive of working people, calling their lives “average” and “dreary.” And she’s not even wearing a brooch!

Lord Altrincham hears the speech and brainstorms a response. He’d been looking for content for his magazine, and this critique of the Queen and the institution seems like just the thing.

Following the Jaguar visit, the royals decamp to Balmoral for their summer holiday.

We see the Queen stag hunting, and we find out that she’s a very good shot. Peter Morgan, creator of The Crown and writer of this episode, was also the writer of The Queen. He’s super into narratives that combine public and press criticism, the Queen, and bloodsport, apparently.

Altrincham’s magazine comes out, with the same portrait of the Queen featured at the top of the episode. The editorial was published at the beginning of August 1957.

Elizabeth, wearing pearls, hears about Altrincham’s critique from Adeane.

She discusses it with the Queen Mother, who reminds her that it’s August, the time when people publish all sorts of royal nonsense. (My friend Patricia Treble calls it the “silly season” for the press.) The Queen Mother had every right to be miffed at the real Lord Altrincham’s criticism, too; he wrote, “Like her mother, [the Queen] appears to be unable to string even a few sentences together without a written text — a defect which is particularly regrettable when she can be seen by her audience.”

Notably, Altrincham critiqued several members of the royal family — but wrote absolutely nothing about Prince Philip. Hm.

Altrincham’s comments have gained so much attention that he’s invited on Impact to speak with Robin Day. He claims that he’s just trying to help the monarchy by critiquing it.

The Queens Elizabeth react like this.

The Macmillans don’t seem super thrilled, either.

And neither do the Charterises.

And Tommy and his Irish wolfhounds are having NONE of it.

After the program, Adeane tells the Queen that they’ve learned more about the man who punched Altrincham — that he’s a right-wing extremist who believes in white supremacist causes and wants to defend imperialism. Elizabeth is rightfully disturbed. But she also blames Adeane for the entire mess in the first place — after all, it was his speech, and she trusted him to strike the right tone.

The situation blows up to the point that Macmillan comes to Balmoral for an audience with the pearl- and kilt-clad Queen. He wants her to put out this fire once and for all.

So the palace summons Altrincham for a meeting with Martin Charteris to discuss his ideas for improving things within the monarchy.

But it’s not Martin Charteris that he meets — it’s the Queen herself, wearing the production’s “bird” brooch. (Altrincham really did meet with Charteris, but this bit about the Queen seems to be an invented moment.) She defensive in the face of his personal critique, but she hears him out, letting him make suggestions that include ending the presentation of debutantes (which was indeed ended in 1958), allowing divorced people to circulate in the royal world, and getting rid of courtiers who resist change.

When the meeting is over, the Queen seems to vanish from the room, almost like a magic trick. Charteris arrives and continues the interaction, warning Altrincham not to tell anyone that he met with HM herself.

One of Altrincham’s suggestions is quickly implemented: televising the annual Christmas message. (This seems to have been in the works before Altrincham ever published his critique.) Elizabeth is not happy about it. She doesn’t like to perform; she feels like “a common little showgirl.” Lots to be said about the intersection of monarchy and performance, for sure.

But she carries on and does it anyway. Her costuming here is a fairly careful reproduction of her actual attire for the 1957 Christmas broadcast.

We get a good look here at the pearl button earrings she’s wearing, plus one of her three-stranded pearl necklaces.

In the wings, the Queen Mother (wearing pearl drop earrings and a pearl necklace) sits with Philip to watch the broadcast. Everyone else seems to want change in this episode, but she’s still clinging hard to tradition.

A second suggestion from Altrincham is also implemented: he wanted to see more working people spending time with the royals, and we see the family welcoming guests for a reception at the palace.

Margaret, all clad in her fancy ’50s gold jewelry, watches the arrivals with Prince Philip. He remarks positively on the changes to her hair — all thanks to Tony, of course. (There’s also a weird Vidal Sassoon joke here that falls pretty flat.)

The Queen Mother, in the same pearl earrings and a three-stranded pearl necklace, is downcast as they wait to greet their guests. She feels the old way of doing things completely slipping away.

Elizabeth, also in pearls, isn’t totally happy either, but she seems to understand that change is necessary for survival.

And so they go out to greet their guests. The show follows up with lavish praise for Altrincham, who later disclaimed his peerage and was hailed by some as a savior of the monarchy. Perhaps a little more credit could be given to the woman who actually made it happen, too?

We’ve got a little more replica bling on hand — and a lot more tempestuous romance — in “Beryl,” the fourth episode of this season of The Crown. Settle in for a look at lots of jewelry and lots of historical clarification (and if you need a quick catch-up on previous recaps, head over here!)…

We begin with Princess Margaret snarling at a society wedding. One of Margaret’s close friends, Colin Tennant, is marrying Lady Anne Coke, who served as a maid of honor at the Queen’s coronation in 1953 (and was also one of Margaret’s ladies-in-waiting). Margaret feels — well, you can see for yourself. I believe the production’s put her in their version of the Lady Mount Stephen Necklace here, a diamond riviere bequeathed to Margaret by Queen Mary (and sold at Christie’s in 2006).

As the guests leave the church, Margaret turns her snarl on the photographer who has arrived on a motorcycle and begun taking strange, artistic photos of the guests, paparazzi-style.

You guessed it: it’s Anthony Armstrong-Jones, snapping away. (He did really take photographs at this wedding.)

More traditional wedding photos are taken by Cecil Beaton, of course. This wedding actually took place on April 21, 1956 (the Queen’s 30th birthday), on the estate owned by the bride’s father in Norfolk. Princess Margaret really did attend the wedding with the Queen Mother. Here, the production’s versions of Colin and Anne are pictured with their aristocratic parents; he was the eldest son of the 2nd Baron Glenconner, and she was a daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester. Anne’s diamond necklace at her wedding garnered major press attention; one American paper described it as “an exquisite diamond necklace with pear shaped pendants.”

At the reception, Margaret sulks with one of her only unmarried friends, Billy Wallace. He was described by Margaret’s biographer, Theo Aronson, as “the most chinless-looking of the ‘chinless wonders’ surrounding” Margaret in the post-Townsend era. His father was a Conservative politician who had served as Minister of Transport, and his maternal grandfather was the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

They’re basically the only single people left in their circle, so Billy proposes marriage, which is apparently something he really did periodically over the course of his friendship with Margaret. She’s so desperate and down that she basically accepts. (This really did happen in 1956.)

Back in London, Elizabeth and Philip are reading in bed. (Nothing like a book called Bloodstock Breeding to help put you in a romantic mood.) Elizabeth says she’s heard that lots of marriages hit troubled patches ten years in. (That means it’s the autumn of 1957 in this episode, not April 1956.) She thinks they ought to have an anniversary party.

The conversation is interrupted by a phone call from Margaret, who breaks the news about the engagement. Elizabeth’s happy about the news, and she suggests that Margaret should announce it at the upcoming anniversary dinner.

We get a more precise time signature in this scene: Elizabeth and Philip are with the Macmillans, watching the Sputnik launch, which happened on October 4, 1957.

We meet Lady Dorothy Macmillan, the prime minister’s wife. She was from circles that Elizabeth was very familiar with: her father was the 9th Duke of Devonshire. She wears pearls here and glances warily over at her husband, who keeps interrupting and talking over the Queen. (Oops.)

Elizabeth’s made a slight concession to jewelry fashion here, wearing a gold necklace studded with pearls. She’s also not thrilled with Macmillan’s conversational tactics.

Later, we see the Macmillans together in a car, with Dorothy wearing a ’50s-style brooch. She references ending a relationship; she’s talking about her longterm affair with another Conservative politician, Robert Boothby. (Spoiler: not ending it anytime soon.)

Engaged and smiling for Cecil Beaton’s camera, Margaret has a portrait taken to mark her birthday. (The timeline is really screwed up in this episode. Margaret’s birthday was in August, months before the Sputnik scene. And the real Beaton portrait that this scene is based on was taken in 1950!)

But we’ve got real jewels replicated here, to varying levels of success. The Cartier Halo Tiara is almost comically oversized. The five-stranded pearl necklace was Queen Mary’s birthday gift to Margaret in 1948. (It was later sold at Christie’s in 2006.)

We get a flash of pearls and a brooch from the Queen Mother here, who is fixated on continuing to present her younger daughter as a fantasy fairytale princess.

Margaret’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, offers her own opinion on the portrait setting — she thinks a birthday portrait should reflect the sitter’s reality. “No one wants reality!” the Queen Mum barks.

(Lady Elizabeth is a really fascinating figure — she was one of Margaret’s ladies-in-waiting from the 1940s until the princess’s death in 2002. Elizabeth, who is only a few days younger than the Queen, is still alive today. She also happens to have been a niece of Harold and Dorothy Macmillan, just to emphasize how stiflingly small this social world was.)

While Margaret poses like a fairy princess, Billy Wallace is at a party hosted by Lord Blandford at Blenheim Palace, relishing the newfound female attention brought to him by his unofficial royal engagement. All the ladies love a royal fiancee, apparently!

Another houseguest, Colin Tennant, is less than thrilled with Billy’s womanizing. So, as one does when one is an eccentric aristocrat, he borrows Blandford’s pistols and challenges Billy to a duel, and he shoots him!

The next day, Margaret is getting ready for Elizabeth and Philip’s anniversary dinner — and her big engagement announcement — when she gets a message that Billy is indisposed. She barges in on his bloody drunk self and hears the whole story.

So the engagement’s over, then. Margaret, in the gigantic Halo Tiara and production-invented diamonds, can’t believe that even chinless Billy has screwed her over.

(Okay: the real story. After Billy and Margaret got unofficially engaged, he went on a trip to the Bahamas. While he was there, he had a fling with another woman. He confessed to Margaret, she was livid, and she didn’t speak to him for almost a decade. To the best of my knowledge, there were no pistols involved.)

Meanwhile, at Buckingham Palace, everyone notices that Margaret’s not at dinner.

She finally shows up alone — no Billy in tow — and everyone is wary.

Phil and the Queen Mum are visibly annoyed/nervous.

But Philip stands up to make a speech about marriage anyway.

Dorothy Macmillan, wearing teeeeeny-tiny jewelry, sends meaningful glances across the table to her husband.

The Queen has varied reactions to the speech, which discusses the difficulties of marriage. I was too distracted by the replica kokoshnik in this scene, which basically looks like a rake. (Those are production-invented diamonds paired with it.)

When Philip raises a toast to his wife, Margaret is crying. Her mother, who is wearing the same jewels that she wore last episode (the Greville Tiara replica, the Alexandra Wedding Necklace replica, and the invented earrings), is concerned.

Without waiting for the applause to finish, Margaret leaves the room entirely.

(This small anniversary celebration really did take place on November 20, 1957, at the palace. Margaret snubbed her sister mightily by not attending the dinner at all. Instead, she went with friends to see a musical, and then had dinner at the Savoy. She didn’t show up for the dancing portion of the party until close to midnight. People talked.)

Margaret goes Full Meltdown in her bedroom, with her tiara sitting beside her on her dressing table. Ella Fitzgerald’s “Angel Eyes” plays in the background, which provides a good moody soundtrack for Margaret’s background — but also links to Margaret’s genuine love for music, especially jazz.

Also having a bad time: Macmillan, who hears Dorothy on the phone with her lover.

After two failed engagements, Margaret is pretty much done.

The Queen Mother brings in the proofs from the birthday portrait session and tries to cheer Margaret up by offering other suitable marriage prospects, including Prince Moritz of Hesse and Prince Christian of Hanover, who was a brother of Queen Friederike of Greece. Pretty strange to hear a character who denounced Philip’s family as “huns” in the first season suggesting German princes for her daughter to marry, no?

Margaret’s not having any of it. Instead, she goes to a dinner party hosted by Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, who is wearing an extremely interesting necklace of pearls.

Margaret’s gone for gold jewelry here, including a rather attractive ’50s-style necklace.

Guess who Margaret encounters again at the party? Yep, it’s Tony. He smokes, needles her, and points out other interesting figures at the gathering. Lady Elizabeth has assembled quite the dinner party. There’s Jeremy and Camilla Fry; he’s the heir to a chocolate fortune. (Tony knew them both very well, as he alludes to in this scene. He was the biological father of Jeremy and Camilla’s daughter, Polly.)

There’s Ken Russell, the famous film director. There’s “Baroness Frankenstein” — Valerie Hobson, the actress who later married the politician John Profumo. He’s there, too, several years before his relationship with Christine Keeler caused a sensational scandal. And then there’s the poet John Betjeman, who had a long-term relationship with Lady Elizabeth Cavendish. (In the episode, Margaret asks if it’s “really true he has two wives” — since one of the women in question was her lady-in-waiting, you’d think she’d know!) They recite some of Betjeman’s poetry together, and Margaret’s clearly hooked.

They go look at some of Tony’s photographs, which are on display in the stairwell. Margaret asks if he’ll photograph her.

So, did this party really happen? According to Theo Aronson, it did. The couple met on February 20, 1958, “at a small dinner party given by Lady Elizabeth Cavendish in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.” Cavendish knew Armstrong-Jones because he’d done some photography work with a revue she’d worked with. Snowdon’s biographer, Anne de Courcy, adds that a few months later, Margaret and Tony met again when she sat for a portrait taken by him.

The next day, Elizabeth is firmly in her Home Queen uniform of pearls-no-brooch for lunch with her sister. She’s paging casually through Tatler when Margaret tells her about Tony.

Margaret, wearing another set of ’50s gold jewelry, is clearly besotted.

And soon, she’s at his studio, having her picture taken. The show, which has played visually with light, frames, and lenses for its entire run, is clearly having a lot of fun with a photographer character.

In her biography of Snowdon, Anne de Courcy describes Margaret’s first sitting with Tony in 1958, and it’s clear that the show used it as a model for this scene: “Tony took charge of the sitting in his usual way. With the utmost politeness, he made her change her clothes, her jewelry, and her pose as if she were any other sitter, at the same time chatting away with his mixture of jokes, gossip about mutual friends, and stories of the theatrical luminaries he had photographed.” He also makes her wait alone in the studio for long minutes, just to unsettle her.

As he gets her into the pose and attitude he’s looking for, he casually tells her that she doesn’t know who she is.

(Okay, a qualm: this is a show that is very focused on characters self-reflecting — hence all of the scenes of various characters looking into mirrors and other reflective surfaces. The thing that bothers me here? Margaret’s been looking ponderously at her own reflection for more than a season now, but the show is asserting that it takes a male character to really show a woman where her true self lies. I don’t love that at all. Anyway.)

Speaking of reflective surfaces, Tony’s got a mirror in his studio that he has visitors sign with a diamond-tipped pen. (This is true.) People use nicknames, and he invents one for Margaret to use as she signs: “Beryl.” He says it’s because the name rhymes with peril, but of course I think it’s interesting that he’d give her a gemstone name. (Lots of familiar gems are actually varities of beryl. Green beryls are emeralds; blue ones are aquamarines; and light pink ones are morganites.)

And then there are some moody darkroom shots as he develops her photograph — literally producing her image.

He caps off the date with a motorcycle ride through London, evading her protection officers and nearly causing a catastrophic traffic accident in the process.

Meanwhile, at the palace, Elizabeth and Philip are on diplomatic duty. (I’d try to tell you which diplomatic people they’re hosting, but the timeline in this episode is so wacky that I have literally no idea what month or year it’s supposed to be.)

They’re bored out of their gourds. (This show is such a soap. It really, really loves passion and drama over duty. So much of the lives of royals is repetitive and boring — they can’t all go zipping around London on motorcycles with fascinating weird photographers. Who would meet with the ambassadors then???)

Margaret, on the other hand, is absolutely exuberant after returning from her date.

She puts “I Only Have Eyes For You” on the record player and boogies in her gold jewelry.

Philip and Elizabeth are united in their boredom, but the show is keen to remind us that they are still having Marital Difficulties.

We get a good look at the Lover’s Knot Tiara, the Gloucester Earrings, and the Golden Jubilee Necklace as Elizabeth is undressed for the evening. (I think the necklace is perhaps the most successful royal jewel replica presented on the show — it’s just about right.)

Down to just her engagement and wedding rings, Elizabeth continues her routine, washing her face before bed.

All the while, Tony develops Margaret’s pictures. She’s given him strict instructions on where to send at least one of the images.

Morning dawns, and everyone’s focused on the newspapers. In Paris, the Duke of Windsor giddily hands over a copy to Wallis.

These two love a scandal, especially when it’s about other people, so they’re very intrigued by the contents of the news. (Note to the Queen: look, Wallis wears brooches on her sweaters!)

“God,” Tommy Lascelles thinks, chewing on his spectacles, “will none of these idiotic Windsors just behave properly?”

The Queen Mum gets the paper along with breakfast in bed. (Note the Gloriana portrait popping up again on the beside table here, placed beside literal religious iconography on the walls.)

At Buckingham Palace, Elizabeth (wearing a lovely, production-invented flower brooch) makes this face when Philip hands her the paper.

Because, of course, Tony and Margaret have colluded to start a scandal by having the very non-fairytale portrait printed in the papers. (This picture is almost certainly based on this portrait of Margaret taken by Snowdon, and I’m so disappointed that they left off the earring.)