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The first king to speak in "The King's Speech" is George V (Michael Gambon), advising his tongue-tangled No. 2 Son, Bertie (Colin Firth), to make friends with the BBC microphone looming menacingly before them.

"This devilish device will change everything if you don't," prophesizes the old boy sternly — and accurately. "In the past, all a king had to do was look respectable in uniform and not fall off his horse. Now we must invade people's homes and speak, ingratiate ourselves with them. This family is reduced to those lowest, basest of all creatures. We've become . . . actors!"

The film that beautifully articulates the internal storm raging inside the new king is currently contending for more Academy Awards (12) than any other 2010 release; the nominations include Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director and three nods for its key performances.

At the time, George VI's quiet agony was hardly noticed, lost in the shuffle, upstaged by the sort of sacrificial love-above-all story that the world loves (particularly "colonists," since the lady who snared the king was a twice-divorced American named Wallis Simpson). The two would spend the next 35 years as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, jet-setting hither and yon as society celebrities on one big glamour bender.

This fairy-tale romance is the stuff of which miniseries and made-for-TV movies are made and remade — with Faye Dunaway and Richard Chamberlain (1972's "The Woman I Love"), Cynthia Harris and Edward Fox (1978's "Edward & Mrs. Simpson"), Jane Seymour and Anthony Andrews (1988's "The Woman He Loved"), Joely Richardson and Steven Campbell Moore (2005's "Wallis & Edward") and Gillian Anderson and Tom Hollander (2010's "Any Human Heart").

Soon, their story will finally reach the big screen as "W.E." (code for Wallis Edward), starring Andrea Riseborough and James D'Arcy. The director — proving there's apparently some honor among Material Girls — is Madonna.

But what of the forgotten man in all this flurry of rose petals — the poor bloke left holding the bag called Britain? Bertie could only haltingly form sentences, yet he had to rally his country to war and make himself heard over the histrionic rants of Hitler.

"I think it's interesting to follow what history might pronounce as the minor characters offstage and see where they go," says Firth, whose sensitive portrayal of the anguished monarch keeps coming in first in 2010's Best Actor competitions.

	Director Tom Hooper
	photo by Laurie Sparham/ The Weinstein Company

"It reminds me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Our director, Tom Hooper, would call Wallis and Edward VIII the 'A plot' of history, and ours would be the 'B plot.' We're turning an ostensibly minor character into the protagonist, realizing he's not that minor at all. He's just a different version of hero."

Consequently, while the decidedly unking-sized Bertie takes up the family coat of arms and soldiers on, Guy Pearce's Edward VIII sinks to a supporting slot, skipping off to his selfish happy-ending with this woman he loves. And sheis held to four or five lines of dialogue — one of them placing a drink order with her then-king fiancé! — but, despite that limitation, Eve Best succeeds in impressing.

"David was, I guess, the loose cannon," offers Firth. "He was charming. He was Prince Charming to a lot of people. He was very popular in this country. Bertie was in the shadows and was considered the dull one, the one without any charisma. He was misjudged because he was so debilitated by his stammer. What I think is so painful about him — and a lot of characters I've taken on who find communication difficult — is that they are people with a kind of lucidity inside. It wouldn't be a tragic case if he really was dull-witted, but, if you read his letters or his quotes or hear anything he has to say, this man had an elegance of thought and wit and language. There's no question about it. He was fiercely intelligent. He did not speak banalities. He had a sense of paradox. There's a really fine and subtle mind at work there, and for that not to be able to come out is immensely painful. His mind was on fire."

At exactly the same time George VI was desperately trying to find his voice via an unorthodox and eccentric speech therapist named Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), in another part of London was born David Seidler, the Anglo-American who came up with the original (now Oscar-nominated) screenplay for "The King's Speech." "I even have a coronation mug made for Bertie's coronation," he says with conspicuous pride. "Also: two big flags that were printed in England and sent to the colonies to be waved at the coronation of Edward VIII — the coronation that never took place.

"I didn't find this story as much as it found me," Seidler admits. "I was a profound stutterer as a child, so Bertie was always a childhood hero of mine. During the later stages of the war when I listened to his broadcast speeches, my parents told me his stutter had vastly improved. 'If he can do that at this stage of his life, there's hope for you,' they said, so he became a symbol of hope for me. When I finally got rid of my stutter at 16, I knew I wanted to do something about Bertie. I had no idea what."

	Geoffrey Rush
	photo by The Weinstein Company

His thank-you note took the form of a stirring screenplay, which, detailing an individual's triumph over a seemingly impossible handicap, strikes basically the same emotional chords that William Gibson did with The Miracle Worker. But Seidler really had to dig for them. John W. Wheeler-Bennet's official bio of George VI and other dry historical chronicles note the stammer only fleetingly.

"Lionel Logue is just an occasional blip on the radar screen. The royal family does not like to talk about the royal stutter. It's swept under the carpet. But I could smell a story here so I asked a London friend to do a little detective work — which mainly consisted of looking in the telephone directory — and he located a surviving son of Logue's, Valentine. In the movie, he's the young boy who's always reading books. By the time I made contact with him, he was an elderly gentleman — an eminent surgeon retired from Harley Street and very gracious. He said, 'Yes, would you like to come to London to talk with me?' He had all the notebooks his father kept while treating the king — I thought this is the mother lode! — but there was a caveat on this letter: 'I'll lend them to you, Mr. Seidler, but you must get permission from the Queen Mother.'

"This is where my American friends realized I am really half-English and carry two passports. The British part of me said, 'You've got to do this.' So I wrote to the Queen Mum, and in due course I got a note from her, saying, 'Dear Mr. Seidler, Thank you for your letter. Please, not in my lifetime. The memory of these events are still too painful.' An American would have said, 'Dammit, Queen Mum. Who cares? I'm going to do it anyway.' But, as a Brit, when the Queen Mum says 'Wait,' you wait."