Netflix’s Bridgerton universe has never been shy about rewriting history for spectacle. But one of its stars has now revived a claim historians have repeatedly dismissed: that Queen Charlotte, the wife of King George III, was actually a Black woman.
Actor Adjoa Andoh, who plays Lady Danbury in Bridgerton, recently insisted the show was not engaging in creative casting at all. “Queen Charlotte wasn’t fictionalised as a woman of colour, she was a woman of colour,” Andoh said, urging audiences to “do your historical research.” The problem is that historians already have.
Adjoa Andoh said of the royal, played by fellow black actress Golda Rosheuvel: ‘Queen Charlotte wasn’t fictionalised as a woman of colour, she was a woman of colour. You just have to do your historical research.’ The actress – who in 2023 said the Buckingham Palace line-up after King Charles’ coronation was ‘terribly white’ – said the Netflix series gave viewers ‘a more realistic version of history’.
Daily Mail
The Myth of the “Black Queen Charlotte”
The idea that Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz had African ancestry is not new. It has circulated for years, largely based on speculation that she descended from a Portuguese noblewoman who may have had distant Moorish heritage. But the timeline tells a very different story.
That supposed ancestor lived roughly 15 generations before Charlotte, around 500 years earlier. By the time Charlotte was born in 1744 in what is now Germany, any genetic link would have been so diluted that historians consider it essentially irrelevant.
Genealogists have repeatedly traced Charlotte’s lineage through European aristocratic families. None of the credible historical evidence suggests she would have been perceived as Black or even mixed-race during her lifetime.
In fact, contemporary portraits and written descriptions from the 18th century consistently describe her as European.
In other words, the “Black Queen Charlotte” theory rests on a genealogical footnote stretched far beyond its historical limits.
Embed from Getty ImagesFiction, Fantasy and the Bridgerton Effect
None of this means Bridgerton itself is doing anything wrong. The Netflix series was designed from the start as an alternate-history fantasy where race barriers within the aristocracy are largely erased.
The show’s producers have been clear about that. Queen Charlotte’s casting, played by Golda Rosheuvel, functions as part of the series’ imaginative world-building rather than a literal historical claim. The confusion arises when actors or promotional commentary begin presenting that creative choice as historical fact.
Because if Bridgerton were truly a realistic depiction of the period, it would also confront the reality that Britain’s wealth and power during the Georgian era were deeply tied to the transatlantic slave trade and colonial expansion.
That is not the story the show is trying to tell.
Why the Real History Matters
There is another irony in the debate. The Georgian and Regency periods contain many documented Black figures in Britain, including artists, writers, servants, soldiers and even members of the minor aristocracy. Those are real stories worth telling.
Turning Queen Charlotte into a symbolic “Black queen,” however, risks erasing those actual historical figures in favour of a myth built on centuries-old genealogy speculation.
It also creates an awkward contradiction. The son of George III and Charlotte, King William IV, was publicly hostile to abolitionists and defended Britain’s colonial slave economy for years.
Hardly the progressive racial turning point the Bridgerton narrative sometimes implies.
Related Stories
A Television Fantasy, Not a Historical Discovery
The success of Bridgerton proves audiences are perfectly happy to embrace fantasy casting in period dramas. In many ways, the show’s colourful reimagining of Regency society is part of its appeal.
But presenting that creative decision as historical truth is where the argument begins to collapse.
Queen Charlotte was an interesting historical figure in her own right: a German princess who became Queen of Great Britain and navigated a turbulent era of war, politics and royal scandal.
That story is compelling enough on its own. It doesn’t need a genealogical myth to make it interesting.
Discover more from Feminegra
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
This story has fingerprints all over it that seem to be those of Prince William and his flunkies.
As with all recipients of honorifics Adjoa Andoh is now owned by the monarchy who use such awards to reward sycophancy and manipulate obedience. Prince Willy Nilly, he of the ‘no we are definitely not a racist family, yet whose father and wife were concerned Meghan’s offspring would, heaven forbid, have coloured skin, will be delighted that a woman of colour herself claims that an earlier King of England chose to marry a coloured woman.
Queen Charlotte may have had a very distant ancestor of African or mixed heritage. Scholars are divided and the evidence is not strong enough to say she was and would hardly have allowed her husband King George 111 and their son to play such an important part in the evil slave trade had she considered her heritage as African.
Adjoa Andoh would have been seen as courageous by her own people had she declined her OBE but instead has chosen to fawn and bend the knee to her now royal masters who benefited hugely from the great suffering of her forebears. With 90% of the Commonwealth being people of colour she can be assured she has made no friends and greatly diminished herself in the eyes of her people.