The Real Queen Charlotte Behind 'Bridgerton's Monarch collider.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from collider.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
<p><strong>Stuart Jeffries: </strong>Queen Charlotte was the wife of George III and, like him, of German descent. But did she also have African ancestry?</p>
Bridgerton
Liam Daniel / Netflix
Bridgerton has proved one of the runaway hits of the New Year, quickly soaring to success after its Christmas Day debut. Masterminded by US producer Shonda Rhimes, the Netflix period drama series has won praise for its gripping plot, lavish aesthetic and the refreshing racial diversity of its talented cast. Yet while most of those in the
Bridgerton world are fictional, taken from Julia Quinn’s historical romance novels, Queen Charlotte was a real-life figure (and in fact doesn’t feature in the
Bridgerton books).
Born on 19 May 1744, Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was the youngest daughter of Duke Charles Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg, styled as the Prince of Mirow, and Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. The family ruled over Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a small north-German duchy situated in what was then the Holy Roman Empire. And while the ubiquity of varied racial representation in
By Ryan Shepard
The release of Shonda Rhimes latest series, Bridgerton, has some viewers investigating
Queen Charlotte s ancestry. Questions regarding Queen Charlotte s ancestry began to arise when the series portrayed the royal leaders of the time as both Black and white.
“A Black character stops to explain, grandly, how and why this society came to be integrated. (Answer: because the queen is a person of color.) Not only does it not make much sense, but it seems like an unnecessary wrench thrown into a completely sensible and revisionary romp: People of color are here because they should have been here all along, television critic