The True Story Behind Netflix’s ‘Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’

Netflix’s new Bridgerton prequel, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, opens with a note from one Lady Whistledown (Julie Andrews). The grand gossip of the ‘ton tells the audience that this show “is not a history lesson” but rather “fiction inspired by fact.” It’s a great disclaimer for history nuts prepared to clutch their proverbial pearls over the show’s many inaccuracies, but it begs the question…what about Queen Charlotte is based on a true story and what is total fantasy courtesy of Shonda Rhimes and Shondaland?

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story splits its storytelling between the late Regency era of Bridgerton (1810s) and the early Georgian period (1760s). In the Regency timeline, Queen Charlotte (Golda Rosheuvel) is awoken late at night to the horrible news that her granddaughter Princess Charlotte has died in childbirth. Besides being a tragedy, this puts the future of the British monarchy in danger. Although Queen Charlotte and her King George (James Fleet) produced a wild number of heirs, their adult children only had illegitimate children. Princess Charlotte was literally the only royal grandchild who had survived to adulthood and she died in the attempt to secure the next generation.

While this happens in the background, the bulk of the show follows a spirited 17-year-old German princess named Charlotte (India Amarteifio) as she is shipped to England to marry a young King George III (Corey Mylchreest). The two form an unlikely attachment that threatens to fall apart almost as soon as it is sparked. Meanwhile, upon realizing that England’s new queen is Black, the king’s mother Princess Augusta (Michelle Fairley) decides to welcome non-white aristocrats into society for the first time ever. The success of this “Great Experiment” depends on Charlotte’s success as a bride.

So what’s real and what’s fiction in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story? Here’s everything you need to know about the true story that inspired the Netflix romance…

Was Queen Charlotte Really Black? Did Queen Charlotte Change Racial Politics in Georgian England?

Queen Charlotte was probably not mixed race. The theory that she was began in a 1940 book called Sex and Race: Volume I, in which writer J. A. Rogers decided that because she is depicted as having “broad nostrils and heavy lips” in a portrait — a feature confirmed by contemporaries like Horace Walpole and Baron Stockmar — she must have had some African heritage. However, short of the Royal Family welcoming Dr. Henry Louis Gates and his Finding Your Roots research team to basically 23 & Me them, we have to look to the overwhelming sources that don’t suggest this. So, the real Queen Charlotte was probably white.

Even if the real Queen Charlotte was mixed race, her marriage to King George III did precious little to ease racial discrimination in 18th century England. While Black and mixed race people existed in all parts of British life at this time, it wouldn’t have been a Bridgerton post-racial fantasy land. The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, but slaves weren’t fully free in the colonies until 1838. Racism certainly still existed as it is still an evil that society wrestles with to this day.

Did Queen Charlotte Really Love the King?

Who can truly know the heart of a woman who was married to a foreigner for politics over 250 years ago? But all evidence points to the fact that Queen Charlotte and King George III had a uniquely loving marriage. Historians believe that the king never took a mistress and, later in life, Charlotte reportedly sank into her own depression as George’s own mental state became more and more unstable. Not to mention the fact that we know the couple had no problems in, uh, the bedroom…

How Many Babies Did Queen Charlotte Have?

Are you early in your Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story binge and worried Charlotte and George will never get it on? Don’t despair! History tells us they were quite prolific in the bedchamber.

All told, the real Queen Charlotte and King George had fifteen children over the course of their marriage. Thirteen lived to adulthood:

• George IV (who ruled from 1820-1830)
• Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany
• William IV (who ruled from 1830-1837)
• Charlotte, Princess Royal
• Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn (aka Queen Victoria’s father – which we’ll get to)
• Princess Augusta Sophia
• Princess Elizabeth
• Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover
• Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex
• Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge
• Princess Mary
• Princess Sophia
• Prince Octavius
• Prince Alfred
• Princess Amelia

Two of the youngest children, Prince Octavius and Prince Alfred, tragically died in childhood. While Charlotte seems to shrug her granddaughter’s death off in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, in real life the royals were devastated by these losses. In fact, it’s thought that grief over the loss of his children pushed the king into a later mental health crisis that history sometimes dubs “the Madness of King George.” (In PBS’s Lucy Worsley Investigates, the historian actually looks into the truth of George’s mental illness, if that’s something you want to know more about!)

Was There Really a Royal Succession Crisis in Regency England like in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story?

There was indeed! We’ll do our best to avoid spoilers for Queen Charlotte, but at the time that their granddaughter Princess Charlotte died in childbirth, she was the only legitimate royal grandchild the real George and Charlotte had. The king and queen’s older sons were notorious for fathering bastards with their beloved lowborn mistresses, but all thirteen children who survived to adulthood struggled to produce legitimate heirs that survived to adulthood.

After Princess Charlotte’s death in 1817, her still unwed uncles swiftly wed royal ladies in a sprint to provide at least one heir for their family’s line. Eventually, two uncles did provide heirs. Ernest Augustus and his wife (whom he had already married in 185) had a son in 1818 who would later become King George V of Hanover. However, this George would not, in fact, become King of England because one of Ernest Augustus’s older brothers’s 1818 wives provided an heir in 1819. Prince Edward’s infant daughter was therefore ahead in line to the throne thanks to her father’s place ahead of Ernest Augustus’s in the line of succession. That baby girl’s name was Victoria.

Yup, eventually Charlotte’s efforts to produce a legitimate grandchild would culminate in the succession of Queen Victoria to the English throne. (If you’ve seen either PBS’s Victoria or the Emily Blunt film The Young Victoria, you’ll remember Victoria’s mother was extremely overprotective and this is why! It was miraculous she survived!)