Director Mika Kaurismäki said this film was very difficult to produce. First off, he had to find the right balance for the screenplay, which was very complicated. Also, coming from a small country, he didn't have access to a lot of funds to produce these kinds of films so he had to go out and look for the money, which wasn't easy. He said if the film had been about a male king, it might have been easier to find the money, but a female lead in this kind of role made it more difficult.
When director Mika Kaurismäki went to Stockholm to meet star Malin Busia, he had doubts that she knew anything about Kristina, the character she would be playing. But it turned out that Buska's mother and grandmother were big Kristina fans, so she had grown up hearing stories about her and knew the part well.
The most prominent movie version of the story of Kristina prior to this film was the movie Queen Christina (1933) starring Swedish actress Greta Garbo. Kristina wasn't depicted as a lesbian, though the script did briefly allude to an attraction to another woman. Instead, the story fabricates a romance with a Spanish noble man since Kristina being gay wouldn't have been allowed by censors or accepted by audiences at the time.
Throught queen Kristina's eventual homosexuality has become a popular theory in the 20th and 21th century, the evidence of her actual sexuality are very vague. Kristina having an amorous relationship with is mostly based on her having written letters expressing her love for her. However, it was a very common practice for women to write such letters in the time and not substantial evidence for her sexuality. It should also be noted that Ebba seems to have been the only close female friend of the queen and that Kristina in her later life had a similar and much more scandalous relationship with the cardinal Decio Azzolino and the letters Kristina wrote to him do clearly express desire for the man.