The British History To Know Before Watching The Crown Season 2

It’s time to plaster on your most agreeable smile, as the return of The Crown is hours away. The beautiful Netflix drama, which follows the early years of Queen Elizabeth’s (Claire Foy) rule, will premiere its second season on Friday, December 8. As with the period piece’s freshman year, The Crown 2.0 will give us a lush look at Elizabeth’s younger years, albeit through a made-for-TV lens. After all, someone as willfully private as the real-life Elizabeth isn’t going to spill her marital problems and familial tensions to us plebs.

Still, we can expect to see many based-on-true-events moments in the upcoming season of the British series. The trailer alone promises we’ll see John F. Kennedy (Michael C. Hall) and Jacqueline Kennedy (Jodi Balfour) visit Buckingham Palace, and Elizabeth’s husband Philip (Matt Smith) venture out into the world. On top of all that, there’s clearly mounting political tension overcoming England.

These points are bound to have viewers asking, “Wait, did this really happen… or is it all for TV?” To help keep you from taking your eyes off the screen to answer your biggest truth-or-fiction questions, we laid out the real historical facts hiding beneath the theatrics of The Crown. And, wow, is there a lot of drama in there.