Vulgar History - Was the Real Queen Charlotte Black？ (Revisited)

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00:00:15.240 Hi everyone. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to let you know that I'm currently having

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00:00:55.500 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast.

00:01:01.400 My name is Anne Foster. This season, we're talking about the Regency era,

00:01:05.420 which is really about England in the early 1800s. Today, we're going to be talking about

00:01:09.980 Queen Charlotte, who was the queen at this time. Now, you may be familiar with Queen Charlotte as

00:01:15.880 a character on the TV show, Bridgerton, on Netflix. Yes, she was a real person,

00:01:22.140 even if the other characters on that show are mostly made up. And a lot about her story in

00:01:27.640 the show does match up with real history. She liked to host balls. She was married to King 0.95

00:01:32.480 George III, who lived with mental health problems. The whole reason why this is called the Regency

00:01:37.820 Era, why that period is known as that, is because her husband George eventually became so ill that

00:01:42.980 he couldn't do his king stuff anymore. And so their oldest son took over the king duties,

00:01:48.340 but not as king he became the regent hence it's called the regency era and that's why on the show

00:01:54.160 queen charlotte is there but the king is not around so bridgerton on netflix is a historical

00:02:01.640 fantasy series based on the books by julia quinn and when i say historical fantasy series i mean

00:02:08.660 like it's an all showing an alternate history so the intent of the series is not to accurately

00:02:13.240 portray life in England at this time. And that's all baked into the premise of the show,

00:02:18.980 which presents Queen Charlotte as a Black woman. So the show is sort of a sliding doors moment of

00:02:25.040 what if Queen Charlotte, the real queen in the Regency era, what if she was Black and everyone 0.63

00:02:31.440 was okay with that? How might that have changed society and what opportunities would that mean 0.88

00:02:36.160 for other people of color? There have long been rumors that Queen Charlotte was secretly Black 1.00

00:02:40.960 based on her ancestry and how she appears in some portraits. And that is what we're going to talk

00:02:46.480 about today. So this podcast has two interviews because honestly, I recorded these in 2023 when

00:02:54.900 the Queen Charlotte prequel season was coming out. And there was a lot of discussion about

00:02:59.140 Queen Charlotte and her race and the TV show versus real life. And so I wanted to learn more

00:03:03.920 about it. So this is really me on a fact finding investigation to try and learn more about this.

00:03:10.160 So this is why I have two incredible experts. And I'm going to be sharing these interviews again with you that were first recorded in 2023. So the first interview is going to be about Queen Charlotte's ancestors and their racial identity. The second interview is about Queen Charlotte herself and how she was perceived during her lifetime.

00:03:28.380 so i i just figured you know we recorded this in the first place in 2023 when queen charlotte

00:03:35.740 the bridgerton story was coming out and we've just wrapped up yet another season of bridgerton

00:03:39.840 and so i thought it would be interesting to revisit these discussions because it seems like

00:03:44.060 every time a new season bridgerton comes out this question goes up again was queen charlotte black

00:03:49.360 and the answer is it's complicated and but we're going to explain why it's complicated in these

00:03:55.820 interviews. So to begin, I spoke with Stacey Murrell, who is currently a postdoctoral fellow

00:04:01.980 and visiting assistant professor of history at Amherst University. Actually, in 2023, when I

00:04:07.180 interviewed her for the first time, she was a PhD candidate. She is now has her PhD. Congratulations,

00:04:12.840 Stacey. Amazing. I love to have, I love to hear people moving up in academia like this.

00:04:18.960 Her research interests revolve primarily around gender, sexuality, race, and power.

00:04:24.160 So Stacey Murrell joined me to discuss Queen Charlotte's possible Black ancestry in this

00:04:29.440 interview you're about to hear recorded in 2023.

00:04:40.220 Okay, I'm joined by Stacey Murrell, who I'm so excited to talk to you about what we're

00:04:46.220 going to talk about.

00:04:47.100 I don't even know how to describe it.

00:04:48.460 But can you just tell me before we started recording about how you kind of got into

00:04:53.160 interested in the topic of madragana this like when is it 13th century iberian concubine yeah

00:05:01.080 like how did you how did you land there um well so i my professional study my dissertation if you

00:05:07.420 will is about concubinage more generally in the mediterranean so i have this like broad interest

00:05:13.000 in concubines because i find them to be really interesting in the sense that they exist outside

00:05:17.820 of these structures of marriage in a way that still is empowering for some of them so there's

00:05:23.540 this like tension between sometimes coercion sometimes violence uh and at the same time

00:05:29.720 there's also these possibilities so that is like a general interest in concubines but

00:05:33.260 madragana in particular is interesting to me because of course i had seen richardton already

00:05:38.940 and i already knew of this connection and that was when my uh yeah when my my dad who's a teacher

00:05:45.140 was like hearing all these questions from his colleagues who were like your daughter must be

00:05:49.520 a historian who can give us all of the answers and so i want to try to talk about it because

00:05:54.040 there's a lot tangled up in madragana and her relationship to charlotte so in terms of

00:06:02.140 genealogies there's like a pretty straightforward connection that we can trace through various

00:06:06.800 records both in portugal but also in germany where she where her descendant went but there's

00:06:13.620 a lot more like bound up in madragana herself than just is she genetically related to charlotte

00:06:20.760 of mecklenburg charlotte so there's not just uh a dearth of sources because there are not a lot

00:06:27.920 of sources let me tell you i have looked for them far and wide but there's also in some ways like a

00:06:34.540 misunderstanding or a disconnect between how race works now and how race works in the middle ages

00:06:41.340 and that difficulty also finds its way into the sources because people you know mostly chroniclers

00:06:48.280 and royal genealogists have come back to her again and again and again and again for you know 700

00:06:53.740 years and each time they slightly change how they write about her how they present her and because

00:06:59.700 of that she's come into the historical record with a lot of baggage and so each of the terms

00:07:04.480 she comes with have these tangles they're super interesting to me as a historian um and so yeah

00:07:10.680 that's how I got to Madragana and why she is, I think, really illuminating for like how race

00:07:16.000 works over time, how it changes and the ways that it can appear in the sources by following one

00:07:21.040 individual. And you're saying this before we started recording that you were in Spain as well.

00:07:27.160 Yeah, I was living in Spain on a Fulbright during the like tail end of the pandemic. So I went there

00:07:32.580 at the beginning of 2021. And well, so the reason that she is really interesting to me is because

00:07:40.360 she has a counterpart in Spain whose name is Saida. And what has to be kept in mind about

00:07:47.040 both Madragana and about Saida is that the name that they possess is not in fact their names. So

00:07:54.860 no one really knows Madragana's name. She never gets a name in the sources. And so Madragana is

00:08:01.660 a much later creation of historiography. She's sometimes also called Urwana and sometimes she's

00:08:07.580 also called mayor which is supposedly the name she took after converting to christianity

00:08:11.880 and in the case of saida saida in spanish is just the romance version of saida which is a title in 0.92

00:08:19.860 arabic and so basically these women have been very very uncomfortable they make people uncomfortable

00:08:29.500 because it's proximity of a particular type of group to kingship to monarchy and so because the 0.67

00:08:36.320 reason that Spanish people are still like taken with these ideas is because if you call someone

00:08:42.500 a Muslim, that's one thing, but many of them have tried to refer to both of them as either

00:08:50.880 moriscas or as moserebs. And mosereb is really, really bound up in Spanish nationalism,

00:08:57.500 Portuguese nationalism. And so because of that, I was like really interested in why concubanage

00:09:03.800 would be connected to something like nationalism or ideas about who belongs in the medieval past

00:09:09.100 and who doesn't and i think that that's quite true about how people understand the middle ages in the

00:09:15.020 u.s which is that the middle ages are the super white very masculine time period and there's not

00:09:21.820 really much space for anybody else or that like christianity is always always throughout the

00:09:27.360 middle ages paramount that it's like dominating the entire sphere of what would be considered

00:09:32.320 the Western world. And that's just like not true. And so I was like, let's use this concubine to

00:09:39.100 turn ideas about like belonging on its head, because she does show that, you know, one,

00:09:45.940 identities are unstable, as they're understood historically, but also that the past matters,

00:09:51.740 that there's like a fundamental connection between past and present, and that it has power.

00:09:57.780 And that's one of the questions that I wanted to learn what you have to say about. So the

00:10:02.180 just the term she's described in some sources as a more and that can mean lots of different things

00:10:08.580 can you explain all the different things that could mean and what you think it means in her

00:10:13.300 instance yeah absolutely so more is a really complicated term so anytime you ask a historian

00:10:20.260 something their answer will be it's complicated and that's yeah that's totally true because

00:10:25.380 more changes also over time so the origins of the word more are connected to the conquest of

00:10:33.200 the iberian peninsula by muslims of a very large and diverse group in the seventh like late the

00:10:41.480 end of the beginning of the eighth century basically so there's this movement across

00:10:46.380 north africa from the arabian peninsula into iberia and so the word more comes out of that

00:10:53.980 encounter. There is an earlier usage. It comes from like a Latin word, which is modus, and it

00:11:00.520 refers to those from Mauritania or North Africa, so Roman Mauritania. And so most historians will

00:11:08.260 tell you that more just means very basically Muslim. And then there are historians, primarily

00:11:16.360 historians of England, who call it Blackamore, very specifically giving it a racial connotation.

00:11:22.860 And in the Iberian Peninsula, from my research, what my research has basically shown is that more refers to a specific group of Muslims rather than just Muslimness very generally.

00:11:37.720 And so it means Muslims from North Africa.

00:11:40.960 Now, the problem for many moderns is that North Africa, the residents of North Africa in the present do not necessarily bear strong historical resemblance to those who occupied North Africa in the past.

00:11:55.020 And so there's sort of a naturalization of people who colonized North Africa as sort of being the indigenous group because they themselves were also colonized by Europeans later in the early modern period.

00:12:06.040 So more, some people will tell you more means Berber.

00:12:10.580 Now, Berber is also a super complicated word because it was invented just out of nowhere in the 7th century, in the 8th century.

00:12:19.540 So the very end of the 8th century into the beginning of the 8th century.

00:12:24.140 And it means those people, so the Arabs used it to refer to the people in North Africa who are not Roman, who are not Byzantine, and who are not Arab. 0.94

00:12:34.420 That leaves Africans, right? 0.61

00:12:36.580 It's the continent of Africa. 0.88

00:12:37.920 But if it's not being used to describe those who are Europeans who have come or Arabs who are also coming in as conquerors, that leaves Africans.

00:12:45.580 And so when this conquering forest goes into the Iberian Peninsula, that word is picked up into various vernaculars. 0.63

00:12:52.660 So you might see it as Moro in Castilian, or you might see it as Mauro, which is what becomes Portuguese.

00:13:00.280 And so that is often how Madragana is described.

00:13:04.200 Now, and later, this is the 8th century, right?

00:13:06.780 This is really when it comes together as the 8th century.

00:13:09.720 But its usage changes, of course.

00:13:11.460 So by the time of, let's say, 15th century, when the Catholic kings conquered the last

00:13:18.440 emirate of Granada in 1492, the majority of the people who are living as Muslims in

00:13:24.900 Iberia aren't North Africans.

00:13:27.000 There was like plenty of replenishments of North African Muslims coming to the peninsula

00:13:30.480 before that, particularly, you know, reaching its peak in the 12th, 13th centuries.

00:13:35.560 but later, not so much. And so because of that, later when sources say Moro, it does in fact mean

00:13:43.180 just Muslim, because then they add the color word Negro. So a Moro Negro is a Muslim who is 0.63

00:13:49.440 dark-skinned. A Moro is just a Moro who's a Muslim. So that's a really big answer and a lot 1.00

00:13:56.400 to take in. But that means that the very first appearances of Madhragana, which are from the

00:14:01.560 13th century. That's when she would have lived. She was supposedly the concubine of Alfonso III,

00:14:07.080 who's ruling at the end of the 13th century. At that time, Mora would have carried the

00:14:12.680 connotation of North African Muslim. And that is really telling because a lot of North African 0.99

00:14:19.780 Muslims and Muslims in general who appear in Christian sources, many of them are enslaved

00:14:25.260 because it is super legal to have Muslims as slaves in the Iberian Peninsula if you are a 0.75

00:14:31.160 christian it's also listed um for jews and vice versa so muslims can take those of the other

00:14:36.520 communities as slaves if they wish although you know it obviously is not as large scale in some 0.59

00:14:43.700 in some circumstances so yeah she most likely because of this this first appearance right and

00:14:51.740 she's not named she's just described as like um what up and she's the mother of possibly two

00:14:58.560 children. And so that's her first, that's how we know her from the beginning. Amura without a name

00:15:03.840 from the 13th century. And why did her descendants, how do you get from her, you don't need to get

00:15:11.360 the whole family tree of it all, but like, why did her descendants, like, how do we trace it back to

00:15:16.440 her? Like who, what was a notable person who was one of her descendants that the like German royals

00:15:22.740 came from? So she is, I'm going to just, I'm not a German historian, so I had to make this

00:15:29.780 genealogy. So I'm going to pull it up really quickly because there's one particular person

00:15:34.220 that I want us to be able to think about. The connection between them, right, is through

00:15:40.000 Madrigana's son, Martim Alfonso Chichurro. He is the son of a king. And even though he's not

00:15:47.440 the son of the queen, he's entitled to certain status, right? To a degree of mobility. So he

00:15:56.620 himself ends up contracting marriage with a relatively well-off noble woman from Portugal.

00:16:05.320 Now, not until four generations later, so we're already in the 1440s. So a descendant whose name

00:16:13.580 is margarita she marries this random german guy joan so joan of like neuf chateau and this is at

00:16:23.160 a time this is the 15th century so there's quite a bit of looking to the continent by iberians

00:16:29.600 and because they have this connection to the royal house descended through martin alfonso

00:16:37.260 there's this sort of like okay you're noble but you have this connection so yeah you we're going

00:16:42.460 send margarita away she's going to marry this guy joe now i don't know very much about margarita 0.95

00:16:49.480 she was given a decent dowry because the portuguese are very very the way that they do

00:16:56.600 dowries in noble marriages is very regulated there's like a pretty consistent practice

00:17:01.200 and usually they'd be allowed to like administer their own properties their own goods stuff like 0.86

00:17:04.780 that so that follows her to to like the holy roman empire which becomes germany and then

00:17:11.700 several, several generations later,

00:17:14.160 Charlotte of Mefimburg-Felz is born.

00:17:15.820 So there's not a ton of like

00:17:18.220 close connection with Portugal after that.

00:17:22.260 The descendants of Margarita are, 1.00

00:17:24.180 they're all married into like

00:17:25.520 princely families of the empire.

00:17:27.880 And that's really the sort of like end,

00:17:30.060 I guess you could say,

00:17:30.980 of like the connection to her place of origin,

00:17:33.580 to Margarita's place of origin.

00:17:35.140 And is it through Margarita

00:17:37.340 that we know about the connection to Madragana?

00:17:40.500 i think i saw that somewhere like how who was the first person to to look at this family tree

00:17:45.920 and to figure out this connection um so in my research the first person that has like pointed

00:17:51.240 it out is a historian in the 90s whose name is mario de valdez y coco and he was just sort of

00:17:59.700 interested because there's some art from the 16th century that's about like margarita's entourage

00:18:09.200 so who comes with her into germany into the empire and there are depictions of

00:18:17.480 what looks to be black africans and so then there's this connection of like well who is

00:18:23.320 margarita then is she connected to them like how does she know these people so basically is it like

00:18:30.880 are these slaves that are being taken recently are they descendants of some sort of like noble

00:18:35.520 family and therefore in a position of not slavery but servitude sort of like ladies-in-waiting who

00:18:40.480 have not a lot of standing but some or are they actually just like slaves who've been taken

00:18:45.400 because Portugal is a huge slave training center in the 1500s and so that was the question that

00:18:51.220 sort of arose and then following back like who is Margarita like who is she herself and then it

00:18:56.340 comes to this connection now I couldn't actually tell you I mean there's just historians so I'm not

00:19:01.440 sure who the first historian to coin Madragana as her name is. But that's just how historians

00:19:07.100 refer to her. And so then they just followed it up to this guy, Martin, and the sources at that

00:19:12.740 time say he's the son of Amora. So can you tell more about what we know about Madragana and how

00:19:19.660 she wound up in the roles becoming the coffee vine to the king? I wish I could. I really do.

00:19:26.860 So I study coffee vines generally in the Middle Ages in the Nigerian Peninsula, right? And

00:19:31.240 almost never is there clear evidence of how it began so there are a couple of cases actually i

00:19:38.140 saw that you did a podcast about inez de castro which is really interesting to me because she is

00:19:43.100 a fun story but in her case of course she followed an entourage of another person and then ends up 1.00

00:19:49.640 becoming a concubine in that way but most other concubines there's a reason that they become a 0.61

00:19:54.800 concubine which is that they might have membership in a strategic family line and therefore they're

00:20:00.420 going to leverage that vis-a-vis the king and assure some sort of relationship between the crown

00:20:05.100 and their family, but also act as like the extension of willpower. That's for noble women. 1.00

00:20:11.080 Madragana, it's difficult because there's two descriptions of who she is. Is she just a slave? 1.00

00:20:19.260 So some of the sources from the 18th century, which are genealogies by royal genealogists, 0.81

00:20:25.100 say basically she's like a slave she's just like a mora who was enslaved but then later

00:20:32.260 there's people who are like no she's noble she's the she's the daughter of this al-qaeda which is

00:20:38.600 like the governor of a place called fado which is like very very very southern portugal now if she

00:20:44.240 is in fact so it's unclear if she is the daughter of that of that person because the first source

00:20:49.860 she appears in does not describe her that way it's a little bit later the giving of nobility

00:20:55.540 so if that's the case that could be connected to the like moriska thing because if they're saying

00:21:01.920 she's a moriska that implies she converted to christianity whether that's like her herself or

00:21:06.900 her like her ancestors converted from islam to christianity so if she is the daughter of this guy

00:21:14.820 it makes sense in some ways as forming an alliance between the king and the al-Qaeda

00:21:21.140 to have this intimate relationship between the al-Qaeda and his daughter with the king.

00:21:26.560 So if that's true, that's probably some of the logic behind it.

00:21:30.660 So part of what I have to do in this case is rely on examples,

00:21:36.080 similar examples that I have slightly more information about.

00:21:38.980 So in Spain, Saida, who's also a Muslim, who becomes the concubine of the king,

00:21:44.820 she is fleeing war essentially there's like a quite a bit of infighting going on between various

00:21:52.380 city-states in the southern part of spain and then some conquerors who are coming from below

00:21:57.560 the straits so like from north africa and she flees she leaves the city that she's born in and

00:22:03.520 she ends up in you know in the city where the king is and she ends up becoming his concubine

00:22:08.060 now did she initiate it did he initiate it did she consent who knows who really knows it's a

00:22:14.860 really really tangled up question but what something has to be kept in mind is that these

00:22:20.220 women who are muslims are coming from a culture where concubinage works super differently than it

00:22:26.600 does among christians and so concubinage is not necessarily like illicit it's not like

00:22:33.200 it's not hidden it's not i mean even in the middle ages concubinage of kings is not you know it's not

00:22:40.180 on the side it's not like oh my god like we have to hide from everybody else no one wants to know

00:22:44.340 that i'm a concubine it's pretty straightforward like this isn't we're at the core this is my 0.63

00:22:48.400 concubine this is what it is these are our children so for these women to come from a

00:22:52.880 context where men have lots of concubines and concubinage is the number one form of social

00:22:58.180 mobility so in the islamic world that is the number one form of social mobility for women

00:23:02.860 specifically. And so how she comes to be the concubine of Afonso III, did she think about

00:23:10.620 sort of like how to leverage herself if she's from a slightly lower status, if she's not the

00:23:15.120 daughter of the Al-Qaeda and sees this opportunity? That's absolutely possible because

00:23:21.180 so Afonso had eight other concubines aside from Madhagana. And many of them are noble Christian

00:23:27.740 women. And so that obviously is functioning differently just for various, for, you know,

00:23:32.380 lots of reasons that i could talk about because this is my thing i love concubines as my students

00:23:36.160 and literally anyone who's been in graduate school with me will tell you but so for me i think what's

00:23:41.920 really important is that we have to also see madragana and alfonso as it's a interfaith

00:23:47.380 cross-cultural encounter and race can function in ways that resemble biology in the middle ages

00:23:54.940 but it doesn't have to it's not biological race in the 12th 13th centuries it's functioning along

00:24:01.060 faith lines so if you think about race as sort of like a a structural relationship on the

00:24:07.700 structuralist i'm sorry i have to have to admit to that but if you think about race like this as like

00:24:12.920 creating these sort of differences to create a point about hierarchy then it functions really

00:24:19.680 intensely along religious lines in the middle ages so you see christians thinking about muslims

00:24:25.040 in a way that we would call race thinking that's sort of like how to treat them in a specific way

00:24:29.440 based on these characteristics that have been assigned to them as a group.

00:24:34.320 And so we have to see it as two people negotiating a sexual relationship

00:24:39.800 from their own cultural perspectives.

00:24:43.380 And so, yeah, I wish I could be like,

00:24:46.080 here's this contract that they both signed,

00:24:48.680 but there's only one contract of concubinage from the Middle Ages,

00:24:52.400 one from Iberia, and it's not this one, sadly.

00:24:56.060 so i mean with that being said what on earth are you using as sources to figure out any of this

00:25:04.460 a great question a great question really all we have is chronicles and genealogies so the first

00:25:13.360 appearance that she makes in historical record is a chronicle written by an observer but also

00:25:20.420 someone who is very critical of a font of the third so he's just writing a chronicle and from

00:25:27.040 there it's just sort of he's talking about she appears in a section where this uh his name is

00:25:34.120 and i can i will totally send you a list by the way of like portuguese names because they

00:25:39.900 they don't sound how they look um so this guy joao drew is writing a list of like okay here's

00:25:46.580 all the concubines of afonso the third he does it with other monarchs so he does all the christian

00:25:51.400 noble women and then he's sort of like there's these other people and then there's like he sort

00:25:57.180 of makes this claim that afonso is so he's like hypersexual he's like licentious he's lush like 0.97

00:26:05.240 all of these things he's like yo this guy is the worst and he had sex with people who are from 0.98

00:26:11.580 different faith communities so he says that afonso had a jewish concubine and this muslim 0.98

00:26:16.020 concubine and that is her first appearance so it's just a chronicle like here's what's happening

00:26:19.920 here's who he knows here's who he's sleeping with and then he moves on he's like she's the mother of

00:26:25.160 these of these kids and then it's just ready to sort of like move to the next and then yeah

00:26:30.640 chronicles over time you have a question you have a question no no i'm just trying to picture so

00:26:36.300 you're finding like do you do you read medieval portuguese handwriting oh well so yes paleography

00:26:48.400 is the like practice of reading medieval manuscripts and it is hard because if you ever

00:26:55.040 went to the doctor and you saw your prescription and it was like what the hell does this say

00:26:59.520 that's what reading medieval manuscripts is like they're very very difficult because they have a

00:27:04.480 lot of abbreviations so it'll be like one word that has you know let's say the word mora it

00:27:11.720 might be written m-r-a and o-u has been omitted because it's too long for the like monks to write

00:27:18.480 or for the copyists to write so they just put a bar and they're like keep it moving and then they

00:27:24.280 also of course in addition to the abbreviations there's just the survival of the manuscript so

00:27:29.080 some of them we don't have the original copies of so the work by joie ju we don't have there is

00:27:36.460 like a 13th century copy but there's also a bunch of other copies from the early modern period so

00:27:41.540 people who are like oh yeah we love this chronicle let's make it let's make sure everybody can read

00:27:45.180 it let's make a bunch more copies all handwritten of course and then there are printed versions from

00:27:50.860 like the 18th century so then you're like oh great i can check my transcription against this

00:27:55.620 18th century version of a 13th century manuscript i've looked i of course i'm a medievalist i have

00:28:01.720 to read latin many of my sources are in latin and then of course i have to read old castilian

00:28:06.940 which is you know old spanish so the documents leave something to be desired and i think that

00:28:14.920 that's true anytime you're studying someone so i obviously i study lots of kinds of concubines

00:28:20.580 from various social statuses but there's just always the sort of desire for a better source

00:28:27.120 that's i'm i'm so appreciative of of you and people like you who do this work so the people

00:28:32.860 like me can read an article or a book and i don't have to do the decoding myself wow i wanted to ask

00:28:41.440 you like in terms of just this whole conversation about having the discussion like what i think you

00:28:46.180 your father had asked you about this in the first place like the discussion of like what do you see

00:28:51.340 the significance of like you trace this family tree you kind of you found what can be found

00:28:56.660 about Madrigana but the significance of that in terms of Queen Charlotte like what do you think

00:29:02.360 about that as a discussion yeah I think I think two things and one of them is specifically about

00:29:08.640 Queen Charlotte and Bridgerton so like I'm going to separate Queen Charlotte and Bridgerton and

00:29:12.540 then like queen charlotte as queen charlotte so the reason that i think that it's interesting

00:29:17.140 is people's reactions to madrigano whether that's scholars whether that's the real family whoever it

00:29:24.040 is it tells you a lot about how they think about the proper or ideal relationship between blackness

00:29:32.080 muslimness and monarchy and there's this idea that's sort of like well monarchy is a white

00:29:40.060 thing monarchy is a christian thing and so you can sort of see these fault lines in institutions

00:29:49.180 where there's sort of these assumptions about who gets to be there and who doesn't get to be there

00:29:53.720 and i think that that's super true for history like who gets to be in these grand narratives

00:29:59.540 that we spin that people treat as sort of like foundational to who they are if you have a black

00:30:05.120 queen of the british empire in the regency period that's gonna throw into a lot of questions like 0.91

00:30:12.380 okay but they're a slave trading empire they're super colonial what are they doing with their

00:30:17.860 subjects and so this is when i found this out i was so excited i have to tell you it was probably

00:30:24.100 one of my favorite days as a historian because one of my other concubines that i study who i

00:30:29.320 mentioned, Saida, is supposedly related to Queen Elizabeth II, according to this like apologia

00:30:36.600 written by these British guys right after her accession in the 50s. And they were like, because

00:30:43.220 she's descended from this woman, Saida, she is descended from the Prophet Muhammad. And therefore

00:30:51.180 she can rule over any Muslims in the Commonwealth. And I was like, it's what's called Blood Royal is 0.77

00:30:57.640 the name of this apologia and it's wild to me to think that that so that's an even greater

00:31:03.460 genealogical connection so it's 19 generations between elizabeth ii and saida then you know

00:31:10.640 madrigana and charlotte are only 15 generations separate so there was all of this sort of

00:31:16.120 like justifications for why a white british woman can rule over muslims oh it's because 0.90

00:31:22.840 she's a genealogical connection to this concubine but they were always like so this particular 0.76

00:31:29.000 concubine did convert to christianity and took a new name and you know married a king and like

00:31:35.960 they had a child who died they had a daughter so whatever that's like a whole thing but the point 0.56

00:31:41.280 is is that if it's this super distant connection that can be put in like whiteness like in a safe 0.52

00:31:48.920 white body it's totally okay muslimness as long as it's like transformed by christianity and

00:31:57.120 whiteness it's totally okay no problem elizabeth ii you're great you have this connection and we 0.78

00:32:01.780 love it but charlotte it's like okay there's a connection to blackness in addition to a

00:32:07.560 connection to muslimness and that's not okay and that is really interesting to me because

00:32:12.340 that tells you a lot about the ways in which these like patterns of race thinking of who gets to be

00:32:19.560 where who gets to say what who gets to have what power it tells you a lot about it like it tells

00:32:25.640 you a lot about what people think and so like the british public are like yeah of course elizabeth

00:32:30.320 can rule the commonwealth and then you have people when megan markle is like getting married to harry

00:32:36.760 and they're like no way black people in the monarchy we don't like that and then it's like

00:32:41.440 wait there's charlotte we don't like that either and so i got really excited i got so loud people 0.60

00:32:46.660 who know me know my voice is like normally really loud because they get excited but so i think that

00:32:51.500 that's why it's an interesting thing to think about because these two they're very similar 1.00

00:32:56.440 connections and they're both you know these concubines who have connections to the muslim

00:33:00.920 world and then they have these connections to these queens now my second answer i'm a historian

00:33:06.840 So I talk a lot. I'm very sorry about that.

00:33:10.000 No, no, no. This is like, I have a podcast because I have so much to say.

00:33:15.860 So I'm happy to talk to someone who also has lots to say. Yeah.

00:33:19.260 But what I do think about Queen Charlotte and Bridgerton, and I have a lot of opinions generally about Bridgerton.

00:33:25.040 And, you know, there are flaws in all shows.

00:33:26.980 But one thing that I think that's really important that they do is to insist upon the presence of Black people in the past, in these grand narratives that have been constructed as part of these national identities, national myths.

00:33:44.220 And so I really like that they insist upon that presence and also the proximity of Blackness to power, because that is a historical truth.

00:33:51.760 and so i'm very here for that even though you know in the first episode in the first season 0.81

00:33:57.480 very few black characters speak or they're sort of like in the background so although i think that

00:34:04.740 there's like room to do more i do part of my work as a historian is to sort of excavate

00:34:11.540 these histories of people who have been you know removed from the historical record or

00:34:16.740 treated as sort of like meaningless to these like ideas of progress or whatever and so I understand

00:34:23.380 the sort of like impetus behind the show and I'm yeah I'm here for it so when you were inspired in

00:34:30.280 the first place by partially by your your family and people asking you for questions knowing your

00:34:36.260 specialty and talk about Queen Charlotte what how do you explain this to non-historian people if

00:34:41.940 they're like oh my god was she really black like what would you say I've been asked especially

00:34:45.800 before so what i usually say is it's complicated but probably and i say probably because you know

00:34:55.580 i'm only working on certain kinds of sources and those certain kinds of sources are written by

00:35:01.140 people who have this close connection to the crown are they always being truthful are they

00:35:07.880 always telling me everything that i want to know for sure no they're presenting a particular

00:35:12.580 understanding of their lives and the people that they're writing about, whether that's

00:35:16.640 contemporaries or people in the past. So this guy Zhuang Zhu in the 13th century, like, was he

00:35:22.220 lying? Was he telling me everything? Who knows? Who knows? But that's why I say, like, it's

00:35:28.300 complicated to sort of signal that there's these really, really tangled up histories that are sort

00:35:35.680 of attend or accompany that question. But at the same time, on the basis of the sources that I do

00:35:40.640 have probably because you know if she's a mora she's being described as a north african muslim

00:35:48.140 and you know north african muslims are black and black comes in a range of hues and phenotypes

00:35:54.320 then you know the middle ages as now so yeah usually and then people are always like what

00:36:00.960 do you mean it's complicated and then i try to like not the way that i did it here because i

00:36:05.920 got really excited it got in depth but usually i try to give that like streamlined version of like

00:36:10.740 well this is what it means because so many people have like baggage of terms that apply to the

00:36:18.000 pre-modern period so they sort of like walk around with them like they'll say the reconquest

00:36:22.240 about spanish history and like that word was never used in middle ages and so it's like super bound

00:36:28.220 up in like nationalism but they don't know that because they have just this sort of like pop

00:36:34.140 culture understanding and that i think is like one says people are super interested in the past

00:36:40.760 like for them to carry those things through even though so many people are like i hated high school

00:36:45.000 history it's just a bunch of dates you know obviously history as we know is so much more

00:36:49.820 than dates but i think it's important to latch onto those things that are in the public imaginary

00:36:56.620 because that's the place where you can sort of be like here's these really cool things

00:37:01.280 that have meaning because you know the past interacts with us it's not just like

00:37:08.640 dead i mean obviously they're physically dead but like it is alive you know with us so yeah

00:37:15.740 yeah and i think that's oh everything you said i'm so glad i was able to connect with you about

00:37:21.320 this but yeah like the question for me is just the whole discussion about queen charlotte and

00:37:27.220 like who are our ancestors and stuff like it's it's not just it's not a gotcha question it's

00:37:31.240 not a yes or no question it's just like what are the issues that come up and why are we discussing

00:37:35.220 this and that's why i'm doing a whole episode i'm doing an episode next week that's like

00:37:41.720 queen charlotte and her life like she was born in this year here's what she did but i was like

00:37:45.600 this whole other conversation is so much bigger than that and that's why i brought in like you

00:37:49.260 and other experts to just just personally like what this discussion is what the why it's important

00:37:54.620 and why it's interesting yeah absolutely because you know at the end of the day people

00:38:00.420 are curious they do people might be like oh it seems like i'll just take this i mean i'm not

00:38:09.440 explaining it very well but what i mean is that like there's this sometimes i feel this way about

00:38:14.760 like the news the news is like people don't want to learn complicated stuff those people in their

00:38:19.640 white towers and their critical race theory and their craziness we need to keep that away from

00:38:25.440 like us and like i think that's often not true like people actually do want this kind of like

00:38:32.040 in-depth conversation about things that they don't know a lot about but are curious like have this

00:38:37.860 interest so yeah i think i think it's really important to encourage that kind of like

00:38:42.880 exploration and if people sound like you're not you're obviously not on tour constantly or much

00:38:48.800 and neither am i but um like if people want to follow you so you have a like an academic page

00:38:54.280 tell everybody where where you're working like where were you doing your research yeah absolutely

00:38:58.820 so my twitter handle my academic one is the amaryland seats so for those of you who are

00:39:04.300 into wheel of time yes i had the amaryland seat handle before the show came out yes people tried

00:39:09.580 to take my handle if you want to find me on twitter that's like where i can be but i'm doing

00:39:15.220 a PhD in history of Brown. And so I'm like always available through, you know, like Brown's

00:39:21.860 connections to their networks, whatever. But yeah, I mean, I'm around, I, I'm in that weird 0.95

00:39:26.840 dark place of a late stage graduate student who is going to graduate soon. I'll graduate in a year

00:39:32.380 and where I'll be, what I'll be doing after that, who knows. But yeah, my research is mostly in

00:39:39.480 Spain Portugal some Sicily and that's where I'll be this summer trying to do some last minute

00:39:47.060 research uh yeah I wish I could say like I'm super active on medieval twitter but

00:39:54.800 I'm not I can't lie well thank you so so much for for talking to me thank you

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00:43:20.520 So, now that we know a bit more about Queen Charlotte's ancestry,

00:43:24.200 I wanted to follow that up with this interview that I also recorded in 2023 about Queen Charlotte

00:43:29.720 and how she was perceived during her lifetime.

00:43:32.780 Like we know that Bridgerton is a fantasy fictional show about mostly fictional characters.

00:43:38.860 It features Queen Charlotte portrayed and perceived as a Black woman and how that might

00:43:43.860 have affected history. 0.92

00:43:45.020 Like it's not Bridgerton.

00:43:46.140 I don't think anyone's looking at this to be like, this is actual history.

00:43:49.000 So I was curious how Queen Charlotte herself was actually understood, how she was perceived,

00:43:53.260 how she moved in the world during the actual Regency era. So for this interview, I was joined

00:43:57.780 by Brooke Newman. She's currently an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth

00:44:02.280 University and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her specialization is in the history and

00:44:07.840 legacies of slavery, especially in Britain. Since this interview was recorded, in fact,

00:44:13.060 just earlier this year, 2026, Brooke has a new book out that's called The Crown's Silence,

00:44:17.920 The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas. So definitely check out

00:44:23.420 that book. There's a lot to dig into there about the British royal family and their history and

00:44:29.960 involvement and complicity in the slave trade. I do want to give a content warning. During this

00:44:35.520 interview, you're about to hear the word mulatto is said twice while quoting someone from Queen

00:44:41.120 Charlotte's era discussing her skin tone.

00:44:47.920 Okay, so fresh off of her success of running a 10k race, it's Brooke Newman.

00:44:57.260 Yay, thanks for having me.

00:44:58.580 Yeah, thank you for running all the way to this interview.

00:45:02.320 Can you just first, like I'm going to put in an introduction and stuff explaining about what this episode is,

00:45:08.360 but could you explain what your historical expertise is and how it relates to the topic of Queen Charlotte's ancestry?

00:45:16.520 Sure. So I'm an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University, and I work on early modern Britain and the British Atlantic.

00:45:25.120 And I'm currently writing my second major book on the topic of the British monarchy's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and an expansion of colonial slavery over multiple centuries.

00:45:36.560 And Queen Charlotte plays, you know, not a central role, but she is definitely an important historical figure as the wife of George III and as someone who gave birth to 15 royal children during her reign.

00:45:51.680 You know, more power to her, I can't even imagine. I think she is someone who has been overlooked in some ways by history, but also is having a renaissance to some extent because of her, you know, new spinoff in Bridgerton. So I think she's definitely someone that people are interested in.

00:46:09.260 And so just in terms of not her role directly in the colonization of America, but there's a lot of places named like there's Charlotte, North Carolina, like there's places, there's a lot of her name is all over the place in the US.

00:46:24.820 Yes. And actually, it's Charlotte, North Carolina, that is one of the reasons why there are so many different rumors about the ancestry of Queen Charlotte.

00:46:36.220 And, you know, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that in Charlotte, New Carolina, people in the 20th century wanted to push back against white supremacy and against racism.

00:46:48.560 And there, you know, they have a town named after George III's wife.

00:46:54.080 And obviously, she is the British queen during the height of the British Empire, when the British Empire is at its peak in terms of its involvement in the slave trade.

00:47:04.640 but at the same time there is a push to really I think rehabilitate her to some extent because

00:47:12.100 she is the patron queen of Charlotte North Carolina and so in the 1980s there was a new

00:47:19.960 statue that was unveiled in Charlotte this is around 1989 and there were some people who said

00:47:26.540 initially and were writing letters in to the editor of newspapers well you know this statue

00:47:32.260 is lacking the features that have been seen in some of the images of Queen Charlotte that make

00:47:38.260 her look African. And at the time, I think this was a bit surprising to some people in Charlotte

00:47:45.120 because they hadn't really heard any of these rumors before. And also, this is granted before

00:47:49.940 the internet. So it's not like this was something that you could easily look up. But there had been

00:47:55.440 some previous claims that perhaps Queen Charlotte had African ancestry, but this was primarily

00:48:03.000 based off of a couple of images of her that were painted or reproductions that were made in the

00:48:08.560 early 1760s when she was 17, 18 years old, right when she married George III. And because of these

00:48:16.740 depictions and the reading of them hundreds of years later that, you know, maybe she might be

00:48:22.380 this, maybe she might be that. There was a sense that her ancestry to some extent was potentially

00:48:29.580 up for grabs. And I think that the sort of general pushback against yet another white figure that was

00:48:39.200 being memorialized came from a good place, but it wasn't necessarily from historically accurate place

00:48:45.700 in the 1980s in Charlotte, North Carolina. But that is really where some of these ideas began

00:48:52.060 to take off in the United States, actually not in Britain. And so it's sort of, I don't want to say

00:48:58.400 like reverse evidence, but it's like you look at the portrait, think like you recognize some

00:49:03.260 features and think, well, that let's retroactively figure out why maybe that's what she looked like.

00:49:09.820 It's not finding the evidence. I don't know. So it's not going from genealogy and making,

00:49:14.880 it's like looking for the genealogy, hoping it will provide a specific answer. It'll confirm

00:49:19.700 your suspicion, but can you talk about images of her? So you're saying there were some images of

00:49:24.960 her that have been interpreted as having African facial features, and there's other images of her

00:49:30.860 that haven't, that don't. Right, so there are hundreds of images of Queen Charlotte, and these

00:49:37.140 are portraits that she set for, reproductions of those portraits, commemorative coins that were

00:49:44.580 lamented when she married George III, and even also later when she died. There are many, many

00:49:50.820 caricatures of her from her life. And in those caricatures, she is always very thin. Sometimes

00:49:59.120 she has missing teeth. She has a very long pointy nose. She looks sort of witch-like, but extremely 1.00

00:50:05.980 pale. And, you know, from my experience working on this time period, if you were known or had a

00:50:13.520 reputation for having what they would have considered, quote, a swarthy complexion, you

00:50:18.740 would have been viciously mocked in the press because they love to mock whatever they could

00:50:23.360 potentially find that they could exaggerate in some way. And in her case, it was what we would

00:50:31.120 now consider a German nose. It was still racial in the sense that they were mocking this nose. 0.67

00:50:38.020 They were pointing out that her nose, her nostrils flared, that she had a large nose

00:50:42.440 as she got older she became more frail and thin and her nose was exaggerated in the caricatures

00:50:49.640 as being even more pointy but when she was younger and also another thing we consider too

00:50:56.300 is that she had 15 children so she was constantly pregnant i mean this poor woman for 20 years 1.00

00:51:03.320 basically of her life she was pregnant so her weight fluctuated dramatically because she was 1.00

00:51:08.340 pregnant so much and so by the time she eventually was older and started to lose weight particularly

00:51:14.500 when George III was ill and mentally ill that took a real toll on her and started to lose weight and

00:51:20.660 so the images of her change over time but what the images that were made or that were painted in

00:51:28.100 you know the really early 1760s when she was only 17 so there's two one was by a man named Alan

00:51:35.740 Ramsey and she did actually sit for that portrait and then later there was a mezzotent which is like

00:51:41.320 a copy that was made and you know when I look at those portraits I don't see African features I 0.99

00:51:48.960 see the features that I see in all the other paintings and caricatures of her but that is

00:51:54.180 also because I have been working on this family for for years now it's about to say centuries oh

00:52:00.440 my god i am immortal you know for centuries um and years and what i've the main thing i've noticed

00:52:08.020 is that you know these portraitures um these portraits in the 18th century you know they

00:52:14.140 vary slightly but they tend to have similar like there's a repetition in terms of features

00:52:20.160 and you can see them if you lay them side by side hundreds and hundreds of images but if you take

00:52:26.540 just a couple of them, and you are looking at them, and you want to see a particular type of

00:52:32.800 feature, it's not that hard to, you know, use your imagination and think, well, what if maybe,

00:52:38.600 you know, her nostrils or the description of her nostrils by one, you know, one person at the time

00:52:44.680 in this particular painting, what if it actually hints at something else that the royal family

00:52:50.320 doesn't want anyone to know? You know, what if there's actually a lot more exciting, you know,

00:52:54.600 behind the scenes story here. And I think that that is something that makes her more interesting

00:53:00.280 to people, it makes her more appealing. And it also, to some extent, rehabilitates her

00:53:05.640 in the popular consciousness. But my as a historian, my question is, why do we want to

00:53:11.900 rehabilitate Queen Charlotte? I just don't understand that I'm having a hard time wrapping

00:53:16.600 my mind around wanting to rehabilitate her into someone that she wasn't.

00:53:21.480 Well, and the question that I and this is why I'm having you and another expert on to talk about this that occurs to me is if she was the other interview I'm doing is like what her ancestry was.

00:53:33.380 But let's say like if she if she did have some amount of DNA that like had an African, you know, she had some ancestry.

00:53:41.780 She did not move in the world. She was not treated the way that black people were treated in England at that time.

00:53:47.120 So if she was black, that's kind of beside the point. 0.87

00:53:50.440 like she, right? Right. I mean, regardless of what her ancestry may have been 15 generations 0.99

00:53:57.220 before, so hundreds of years before, this was a woman who was raised in what we, what they

00:54:03.640 considered at the time, what we consider a rural sort of backwater in a German province. She,

00:54:09.360 at a very young age, was married off to George III, who was one of the most powerful monarchs

00:54:15.060 in Europe. He was the monarch over an expanding empire. She was treated like a queen. She was a

00:54:23.020 queen. She gave birth to many future members of the royal family, and she lived a life of extreme

00:54:29.440 privilege, a life that actually she complained about quite a bit. If you read her letters that

00:54:34.880 have survived in the royal archives and that were sent to some of her friends and her brother who

00:54:40.840 was living in German provinces. She talked about the tedium of her life, that she was always being

00:54:46.780 schlepped from, you know, Buckingham Palace to Kew to eventually to Windsor, and that she was at the

00:54:52.720 beck and call of whatever George III wanted her to do. And that was her life. She was socially

00:54:58.560 conservative. She was someone who did not want to go against established hierarchies and against

00:55:05.500 established order. She didn't do anything remotely positive for enslaved people or on behalf of

00:55:13.240 people of African descent during her lifetime, despite being appealed to by abolitionists,

00:55:18.920 including Black abolitionists like Alado Equiano, who wrote her a letter beseeching her to fight on

00:55:26.740 behalf of the abolitionists to support the abolition of the slave trade. And he actually

00:55:34.140 published the letter that he wrote her in his book, The Interesting Narrative in 1789. And so

00:55:40.060 not only did we have some manuscript copies of this letter that survived, he wanted the British

00:55:44.820 public and the wider world to know that he had appealed directly to the monarchy and to the

00:55:50.280 queen and gotten no response as well. And so I think that the question really is really less

00:55:56.380 significant in terms of what was her ancestry, et cetera. It's what did she actually do during

00:56:02.040 her reign? And the answer is not much. So, okay, I'm going to frame this question by the first time

00:56:08.200 I heard about I'm in Canada. So like, I don't know a lot about like, George and like the colonies.

00:56:14.340 And I didn't know his wife was Charlotte. But the first time I heard about her as a person,

00:56:18.440 and it piqued my interest, and this is pre-Richerton, the series was, I don't even know,

00:56:23.280 five or six years ago, the first lifetime made for TV movie about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

00:56:28.860 I don't know if you've heard about this, or if you know what I'm going to say.

00:56:31.060 i've heard it but i haven't seen it but my students have told me about it yeah so there's

00:56:34.900 a scene just to recap for those who haven't seen this movie so there's a scene where megan markle

00:56:38.700 goes for the first time to meet queen elizabeth ii and she's you know worried and stuff and then

00:56:43.280 queen elizabeth ii is like well this is a portrait of my royal ancestor queen charlotte and it's one

00:56:47.640 of the portraits you're talking about it's what it's the one that some people see african features

00:56:51.280 in a light-skinned person but with african features and queen elizabeth ii in this movie

00:56:55.240 says like you know so apparently she she was mixed race but like most portrait painters would

00:57:02.180 hide that in their portraits so really in that way the british family has been biracial for many

00:57:08.160 years and i was just like what is happening what like first of all like i'm not here and i don't

00:57:15.840 know anyone is here saying like oh the modern windsor family are actually biracial i've not

00:57:20.260 heard even the most monarchist person suggests that but so my question for you based on that

00:57:25.620 anecdote is and i've heard other people say this too the theory that she did have african looking

00:57:31.380 features but port but all portrait painters except for one or two were instructed to hide that and to

00:57:37.880 paint her differently that's ridiculous i mean i just i don't even know what to say to that to be

00:57:43.680 honest. It's just not true. It's not true because, yes, the royal family had a significant amount of 0.82

00:57:52.700 influence over their official portraits, but that is about it. I mean, we're talking about

00:57:59.460 the 18th and early 19th centuries when people in the royal family were viciously mocked. I mean,

00:58:05.920 to a significant extent. They were depicted in the nude. They were depicted having sex.

00:58:12.200 They were even George III, when he was ill, was depicted ill in his bed.

00:58:17.140 And this really upset George, the Prince of Wales.

00:58:20.400 And he actually tried to threaten to sue, you know, the people who are producing these caricatures.

00:58:26.100 So they don't have the level of control over their image that we might want to imagine that they did.

00:58:34.380 I mean, sure, if there was an official portrait that they didn't like, they would just not purchase it or they would not have it replicated.

00:58:40.800 but they couldn't control the press to the extent that we might imagine.

00:58:44.900 The other thing that I think is important to emphasize is that, you know, we don't really

00:58:50.680 necessarily know what people look like in the 18th century. I mean, other than looking at

00:58:56.940 these paintings, I mean, even I'm going back to Elizabeth I, there's always been all this debate

00:59:02.480 about what does she really look like? And there are a few portraits of her that survived from

00:59:07.600 when she was young and then when she took the throne and then after that there was just this

00:59:12.180 industry of reproductions of her over and over and over again to where she was in some ways

00:59:16.340 immortal and never aged even when she was like nearing death she looked about the same but with

00:59:21.600 Charlotte there are actually some images of her that were painted some depictions of her that are

00:59:26.780 painted when she's young when she's middle-aged and then when she's older and actually there's

00:59:32.400 a painting of her that actually she did not like and George III didn't like either, painted not

00:59:38.240 long after his really serious illness in 1788, where she looks tired, she looks frail. And it

00:59:46.180 is a very honest looking depiction of her that the royal family did not like, and they did not

00:59:51.880 want it to be reproduced. None of those features that people have been fixating on are seen in

00:59:59.440 this image. So I think that in some ways, we're reading too much, we're reading too literally

01:00:04.100 into visual representations in the 18th century. The other thing I wanted to mention,

01:00:10.280 because I forgot to mention earlier, is that King William IV, he was the only member of the

01:00:15.000 royal family as a teenager who was in the Royal Navy and actually traveled around the Atlantic

01:00:19.360 world. He visited Jamaica and places like that. And he was rumored, and there are eyewitness

01:00:24.840 accounts that he had sexual relationships with enslaved women of color. These relationships

01:00:31.340 and the rumors of them got back to the press in Britain, and he was mocked. And there were

01:00:36.740 caricatures of him, you know, in a hammock with a Black woman. This at the time would have been

01:00:42.100 truly shocking to depict a member of the royal family, you know, with a Black woman in a sexually 0.90

01:00:47.660 suggestive manner. And there's more than one of him in this particular depiction. 0.92

01:00:53.400 If Queen Charlotte had had even a remote resemblance to someone of African descent at the time,

01:01:01.260 she would have absolutely been mocked in that way. During the abolition debate,

01:01:07.520 the royal family was mocked, including her. And particularly during, there was a sugar boycott in

01:01:13.480 1792. And allegedly the royal family claimed that they were going to participate in this boycott

01:01:19.500 because it was so popular all across the country.

01:01:22.260 And there were thousands and thousands of people

01:01:24.000 boycotting sugar that was produced by slave labor.

01:01:28.360 But the caricatures that were by Gilray

01:01:31.880 and Isaac Cruikshank that were produced

01:01:33.960 of the royal family show them around a tea table.

01:01:38.260 And, you know, they're essentially George

01:01:39.760 or George and Charlotte are telling their daughters,

01:01:42.680 you know, don't put sugar in your tea.

01:01:44.520 It's so great without it. 1.00

01:01:45.620 And the daughters are moping

01:01:46.900 and they're essentially mocking the royal family saying you know these people are just pretending

01:01:51.520 to care about slavery when really they're just excited they can finally tell their daughters

01:01:56.360 oh you don't need sugar and save money and so they were mocking them for that but in those

01:02:01.820 depictions both of them look you know and germanic essentially is what i'm saying

01:02:07.160 there's another um i was listening to just some other podcasts discussing this issue just to kind

01:02:12.580 of get a sense of what the conversation is. And so another concept that I've encountered is

01:02:19.340 that the royal family, I'm just like, I know you're gonna explain why this is wrong, but I'll

01:02:25.060 just explain it to you first. That the royal family wanted the queen to be depicted looking

01:02:30.000 like a black person on the coinage and on the portraits that were sent to places like Jamaica

01:02:35.500 so that they would support the monarchy more. 0.88

01:02:39.360 That's a myth.

01:02:40.060 Okay.

01:02:40.680 Yeah, that is not true.

01:02:42.220 That is definitely not true.

01:02:43.560 And actually, I looked at the depictions of the queen on the coins and so forth,

01:02:48.400 and she does not look like she is African or of African descent.

01:02:52.700 And I'm not exactly sure where that rumor, I'm not sure where that came from.

01:02:56.440 I've actually been digging into this, and I just cannot figure out where it came from.

01:03:00.500 but I will say that I mean and I think people may be surprised to hear this but

01:03:05.800 so these rumors about her potentially being of you know mixed race began prior to Harry and

01:03:13.240 Megan dating but they resurfaced with a vengeance once they became engaged and in my opinion

01:03:21.200 one of the main reasons why this narrative came back with such force was to undermine

01:03:28.080 Meghan, and to undermine the historic nature of her marriage into the royal family. Because here

01:03:35.200 you have a woman who actually is descended from enslaved ancestors, marrying for the first time

01:03:42.100 into the royal family. And not only that, she identifies as someone who is mixed race. She

01:03:46.440 identifies as someone who, you know, grew up in this scenario. And I know it's a really important

01:03:52.240 moment. But around the time the engagement was announced, I started seeing percolating around

01:03:58.520 the internet, oh, well, maybe she's not really the first mixed race person to marry. And maybe

01:04:04.100 the Windsor family is already, you know, this and that. And I was thinking, well, that's very

01:04:08.680 interesting, because what is really happening here is that Meghan is being attacked by the press,

01:04:14.320 particularly in the UK and tabloids for not being white on one hand. But on the other hand,

01:04:20.440 they're saying oh but also she's not really that special either because there's this other woman 0.72

01:04:25.760 hundreds of years ago who probably maybe was of african descent and probably maybe really did

01:04:32.300 look black but that was all hidden and it was all conspiracy and so there was a lot of a lot going on

01:04:38.140 there that needed to be unpacked that ultimately boiled down to a lot of misinformation and it's

01:04:45.280 replication. And unfortunately, I have to say I will blame and I hate to do this, but I will blame

01:04:51.560 a lot of journalists for this because they took an idea and they ran with it and it became

01:04:57.220 sensationalized and it ended up on Wikipedia. And if you Google Queen Charlotte ancestry or Queen

01:05:03.240 Charlotte Black or Queen Charlotte African, it is an explosion of findings, none of which are based

01:05:10.300 on the actual historical record. And that is problematic because when you have misinformation

01:05:15.760 spreading in this way on the internet, it gets to the point where when you actually say,

01:05:21.180 well, wait a minute, let's stop and unpack these claims, people get angry because they think you're

01:05:25.960 just trying to attack her identity or attack the fact that maybe she was Black and what does that

01:05:33.820 mean, rather than let's really look at these claims and see if they're legitimate. And as a

01:05:39.760 historian, I don't take things for granted. I tend to sit with them and dig as much as I can

01:05:46.040 to see where did this come from and why. Well, and it's really interesting that we're having

01:05:50.980 this conversation now, like the Queen Charlotte British in the series is just coming out when

01:05:55.080 this episode airs, I think that same day. But we're also in a moment where I think that same

01:05:58.920 day or the next week, there's the new Cleopatra series. So there's that discussion happening now,

01:06:03.460 which i've seen um so much it's not the same discussion but it's a similar discussion

01:06:10.080 except for i don't know i don't know this isn't a cleopatra podcast but it's like it's

01:06:16.200 i saw somebody say that cleopatra is one of the women in history about whom

01:06:19.600 we can almost guarantee exactly who her ancestors were because the ptolemies kept marrying

01:06:25.020 its own family each other yeah no that was their whole deal it's like what was her ancestry well 0.91

01:06:32.700 it's like, just this. It's like, there's not in-laws. It's, it's just Macedonian. So with

01:06:39.080 Charlotte, it's a similar conversation. Well, I guess it's different because the Cleopatra,

01:06:43.720 that's a documentary and that's presenting. It's not presenting what if Cleopatra was a black 0.90

01:06:49.020 woman. It's presenting Cleopatra was a black woman in a documentary format, whereas Bridgerton

01:06:53.140 is already an elevated fantasy. Right. And Bridgerton never claimed to be historic and true. 0.96

01:06:59.440 Yes. I mean, I've read the novels. This is a full off historical romance. It's fun. The novels are fun. The series is great. I'm a fan of the series. I can't wait for the spinoff. But we're reading way too much into fantasy and into and actually Shonda Rhimes said, you know, in her mind, this was an alternate universe to some extent.

01:07:23.540 Let's imagine an alternate universe where people of African descent actually have a position of privilege and power in this society, where actually a woman is queen in this scenario, where there are members of the aristocracy who are Black, and yet they still have to contend with some prejudice, but they have reached the higher echelons of society.

01:07:45.940 And I have a number of historian friends who have found Bridgerton really problematic because they believe that Bridgerton, in some ways, takes away from the reality of what it was like to actually be of African descent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

01:08:01.640 That it was, you know, an enormous struggle, that it was extremely hard to be accepted in this time period.

01:08:07.520 Obviously, this is the moment when you have formerly enslaved people pushing against slavery and the slave trade and really being ignored for a number of years.

01:08:17.960 And so there's some sense that, well, maybe this is going to give people a false impression.

01:08:21.820 And my response to that is mixed to some extent, because on the one hand, I agree. And even these rumors about Charlotte and her ancestry, it has troubled me a little bit about why are we trying to rehabilitate and change Charlotte when there are so many other people of African descent in around the world who deserve to have their stories told, who actually identified as a person of mixed racial ancestry or African descent who, you know,

01:08:51.300 we should be focusing on telling those stories versus this white woman who was a queen, you know,

01:08:56.500 during this time. But on the other hand, I think Bridgerton is, you know, it's a good show. It has

01:09:01.700 diverse casting. It's a fun show. And I'm hoping it'll lead to more interesting historical

01:09:08.000 depictions and also more diverse casting like Hamilton, which I personally am a huge fan of.

01:09:13.740 I would like to see more of. So I think the main message really is the public should be receptive

01:09:20.660 these sorts of shows, but they should also do a little digging to see, you know, what is what's

01:09:25.940 the real story for, you know, people living in this time period? How hard would it have really

01:09:30.700 been for someone like Queen Charlotte to actually be of African descent and or identify as a Black 0.97

01:09:37.800 woman? It would have been impossible in the 18th and early 19th centuries. I mean, look at what 0.87

01:09:42.800 happened to Meghan Markle in the 21st century. That is really, I think, what we should be thinking

01:09:46.980 about. That's a really good point. And I really do want to emphasize that to anyone who's listening

01:09:50.660 the name like both you and i are fans of bridgerton we're not here to be like boo we're both here to

01:09:55.460 be like can't wait to watch this new queen charlotte series the costumes look amazing like

01:09:59.240 i'm into it i have no problem with changing historical things to make a more fun fluffy

01:10:04.860 you know tv story and it is it's such a it's such a nuanced thing like the difference between you

01:10:11.040 mentioned hamilton or there was recently like in the last couple years there was a show in england

01:10:15.940 in britain that was about anne boleyn and they cast jody turner smith right yeah or there was

01:10:21.420 the mary queen scotts movie and jemma chan was cast as best of hardwick like that's not being

01:10:25.560 like what if best of hardwick was chinese like that was not they were just like let's just cast

01:10:30.060 people so that this and i think more and more nowadays in a good way i think um television

01:10:36.660 programming if you have a cast that's all white people that just feels uncomfortable i think you

01:10:41.840 want to have like a representation that kind of looks more diverse like what contemporary society

01:10:46.200 is like so if you're doing a historical thing you can either do the hamilton approach where it's

01:10:50.760 like hamilton is not being like what if aaron burr was a black man no it's just like we just

01:10:55.560 cast a bunch of people and they're in these roles and they're good at it and then what bridgerton

01:10:59.420 is doing is like kind of that but not really because they're saying well what if if queen

01:11:06.560 charlotte was a black woman and she was accepted as a black woman okay then what would the trickle

01:11:10.600 done effects of that be a couple decades later and that's how they are able to bring more diversity

01:11:15.640 into their show so it's different from just being like we're just casting quote-unquote colorblind

01:11:20.440 like brandy cinderella if people know that where it's just kind of like well the king is white and

01:11:25.160 the queen is black and their son is filipino and like let's just do it who cares like bridgerton

01:11:30.580 so it's the fact that it hinges on someone who there's already his like these kind of rumors 0.86

01:11:36.380 about, I think it was a very canny and a very smart way to do it. Because it's like, it's a

01:11:43.200 possibility. I mean, I can absolutely see not only why the show, you know, turned out the way it did

01:11:51.060 and has now decided to do an entirely different spinoff focus on Queen Charlotte. But also these

01:11:57.920 rumors, whether they're have any legitimacy or not doesn't really matter. Because if the public

01:12:03.400 is in any way confused about the actual story

01:12:07.900 or interested in it or just, you know,

01:12:10.100 they don't really know, that gives you a hook.

01:12:12.600 You can then turn it around

01:12:14.720 and change it into whatever you want.

01:12:16.800 And I mean, as someone who appreciates creativity

01:12:21.800 and film and all the rest of it,

01:12:24.420 I think it was a brilliant idea.

01:12:26.240 And I think it's going to do really well.

01:12:28.380 And I do hope people will be more interested

01:12:30.880 in the Georgian era

01:12:32.960 and the Regency era that this represents.

01:12:35.160 But I also think there is a real difference

01:12:37.140 between fantasy, you know, alternate realities,

01:12:40.780 historical fiction and history.

01:12:42.480 And history was a lot bleaker

01:12:44.240 and more violent and depressing than we want it to be.

01:12:47.960 It wasn't, I think, this fantasy reality

01:12:50.780 that people would like the 18th century to be.

01:12:53.520 And I think that's probably the hardest thing

01:12:55.640 for a lot of people to wrap their heads around,

01:12:58.320 even in the arguments about slavery now,

01:13:01.120 about talking about slavery,

01:13:02.620 about acknowledging this history, you know, what's next step should be particularly for Britain

01:13:07.800 and the British monarchy, which is what I work on. And it's mainly that there is a real sense

01:13:13.940 that this is in the past. And for some people, they're all well, this is really wasn't that bad

01:13:18.960 anyway. And my response to that after having spent years working in the archives was,

01:13:24.180 it isn't past, we're still dealing with the legacies. Now, many people are grappling with

01:13:28.820 these legacies on a day-to-day basis. It's affecting their actual everyday lives through

01:13:33.560 racism, structural underdevelopment in places like the Caribbean, but also it's impacting the

01:13:40.400 way we think about the world and our place in the world and why we want to look back and reimagine

01:13:46.940 that maybe the world could have been a little bit better. Maybe there are secrets in the past that

01:13:53.160 been hidden. And I think there's a genre of history, like history's mysteries, that people

01:13:59.240 are so fascinated by. You know, like people love stories of like unsolved crimes, unsolved

01:14:06.020 historical mysteries. And this idea that maybe this queen really had a secret history or a secret

01:14:13.700 identity or a secret ancestry that we don't know about is very appealing in a time when, you know,

01:14:19.540 we want to look forward and not dwell on all the negative aspects of the brutal aspects of slavery

01:14:25.500 in particular and imperialism yeah it's just making me think a couple weeks ago i was talking

01:14:30.480 with um patterson joseph the actor and now writer and he he wrote this novel about charles ignatius

01:14:36.260 sancho yeah and so he was saying when i was chatting with him you know to him because charles

01:14:42.080 ignatius center like that's the georgian period as well so he he was like you know in the archives

01:14:46.620 and whatever and reading about like this is what it was like for this exceptional black man

01:14:50.440 at this time who was able to vote and all these things and so he was the first the first black

01:14:56.860 to vote in britain yeah so what what that story and how that resonates with him and how we wanted

01:15:02.200 to share it versus something like bridgerton which again is not presenting historical fact

01:15:07.460 but you see reggie jean page like swanning around uh you know i've been swinging over him at a ball

01:15:12.760 where it's just kind of like so to him to patterson he was saying like it just it i think i don't think

01:15:17.120 these are his words but there's just such a disconnect there being like well imagine black

01:15:21.680 people like this and in this era and he was just like but why like they weren't so right he didn't

01:15:29.180 have this experience it was actually a constant challenge yeah so it's it's interesting to um

01:15:35.660 when you were talking about the how the claims kind of got a new wind with when megan markle

01:15:40.840 married into the royal family and stuff but also this sort of sense of like what if history wasn't

01:15:44.720 so bad and this is like again like bridgerton shonda rhymes like i love you like nothing against

01:15:51.080 this or the show it's just what this what the discussions that are sort of unfolding about this

01:15:54.600 are is there's some sort of risk i guess to just like well what if not just like what if the past

01:16:00.940 wasn't there's cool things about the past but like you know the role of black people in georgian

01:16:05.760 england was not one of those that was not a good time to be time or place to be black person

01:16:10.440 but also it's kind of showing like what if the british royal family is actually really woke

01:16:16.720 yeah like what if they've been like don't worry about it like they've been that whole thing that

01:16:21.500 came out recently but like oh kate milton's ancestor was an abolitionist and stuff where

01:16:25.980 it's like what if what if the this family is like they're so not racist that they've been like back

01:16:31.900 even before it was cool they had you know so it's kind of revamping the royal family's reputation as

01:16:37.440 well exactly yeah and i and as someone who works on the royal family i'm opposed to to that i mean

01:16:44.180 i don't think this is something that they deserve i think we should be really you know reasonable

01:16:50.220 and restrained when we think about the royal family and when we think about the fact that

01:16:54.460 this is a thousand year old institution that is based on hereditary privilege uh definitely on

01:17:00.500 whiteness hereditary wealth and hereditary status everything about the royal family is based on an

01:17:06.700 accident of birth. And I've been asked recently by, you know, a number of journalists in the wake

01:17:12.240 of King Charles saying, you know, oh, I support research into the connections between the royal

01:17:17.580 family and the slave trade because of the evidence that I gave to the guardian and they shared it

01:17:22.400 with the palace, you know, which is exciting that he responded to this. And it is a big deal. But

01:17:27.920 at the same time, it doesn't really mean much. Because, you know, this is evidence that's been

01:17:34.060 around for a while. These people have been in the archives working on the history of slavery for

01:17:38.980 decades now. You know, the company that was founded in the 7th century was called the Royal

01:17:44.260 African Company. It's not like a huge surprise. So to take this family and this institution that

01:17:52.440 gave rise to the transatlantic slave trade, that invested in it, that profited from it,

01:17:57.200 that expanded it dramatically and then defended it all the way through the abolition movement

01:18:02.480 into the 19th century, and then claim, oh, and by the way, secretly, George III's wife was actually

01:18:09.340 of African descent and was like a closet abolitionist and all this other stuff. It's 0.54

01:18:13.380 giving them too much credit. And it's allowing them in some ways to turn that narrative around

01:18:19.760 and create yet again, an alternate reality where they were on the right side of history.

01:18:25.760 And you know, we might do that with Bridgerton. But we need to understand that that is not real,

01:18:30.240 That is fantasy. And that's great. And it's fun to watch, but it is not real. And Meghan Markle, I'm sure, would be the first person to point out that that was absolutely not her experience marrying into this family. She was not protected by this institution. And they didn't really understand what she was going through as a woman of mixed ancestry.

01:18:51.280 that is one of the claims because obviously i've read about all of this and what she went through

01:18:56.420 i've heard i mean it's always hard to confirm this but i've heard that william said to her

01:19:02.140 and to harry you know we've all had to deal with the press we've all had to deal with you know

01:19:07.000 kate had to was was you know attacked for her weight and you know all her alleged weight

01:19:12.140 problems and various things and then megan's response was yes but this is racial and it is

01:19:17.600 a different level of attack. It's a different level of hatred and hostility and some violence

01:19:24.740 essentially inflicted against her in the press. And the palace didn't protect her, didn't respond

01:19:30.040 in a way that made her feel safe. And they just didn't get it. And I still don't think they do

01:19:36.060 even now. I don't think after all this time has passed that the royal family or even the tabloids

01:19:41.600 really understand what Meghan went through and what anyone would go through who is not white

01:19:48.940 and is in the royal family. I mean, the racism and the extreme hostility that Meghan faced,

01:19:57.120 the fact that she actually felt suicidal. I mean, I think that is a really important story. And

01:20:02.920 it's in some ways, the real story, right? It's not this fantasy reality of, oh, maybe they were

01:20:08.840 actually a lot nicer than we like to imagine well no and even when i've been sort of describing

01:20:13.780 the situation to like um friends in my friends who are not involved in history and stuff like

01:20:20.680 that i said yeah or they saw the statement that charles was like oh yeah i'm gonna look into the

01:20:24.260 connection between the british royal family and the slave trade like people who have no who've

01:20:27.560 not been in the archives are just like like obviously there's a connection it's like you

01:20:33.800 think you think that this had said like like of course how could they have not have had like that's

01:20:41.400 anyway it's right and that and actually he you know he they're not looking into anything i mean

01:20:47.860 and they're not really doing anything because all that was was the palace saying at this point we

01:20:55.560 recognize that the connections are irrefutable there is a historical paper trail that we have

01:21:01.380 to acknowledge, which it is good that they at least acknowledge it because Elizabeth II

01:21:05.120 would not have even responded. So I do think we have to give Charles some credit for that.

01:21:11.060 But that's it in terms of how far I'm willing to go. Because beyond that, we are talking about

01:21:16.800 someone who is the head of what is essentially a multi-billion dollar corporation, the royal

01:21:22.480 family. They have immense wealth, immense resources, the ability to assemble a team of

01:21:30.000 people, to create an independent commission to look into the links between the monarchy and

01:21:34.320 slavery, to hold a summit. He's also head of the Commonwealth. He could reach out to CARICOM,

01:21:40.800 to people in African countries, to people in Britain, and, you know, and really investigate

01:21:46.080 and acknowledge and address these links in an important and historically significant way.

01:21:53.100 That has not happened. I would be shocked if it does happen. I do have to say, though,

01:21:58.380 I'm trying to be moderately optimistic in that I think I'm hoping there'll be some changes in the

01:22:03.540 future. But at the same time, I've seen, you know, what's happened since 2018, what's happened in the

01:22:09.760 wake of 2020. And that generally speaking, the monarchy is very good at releasing statements

01:22:17.040 that sound really great, but don't really mean anything. And then kicking it down the line a

01:22:23.780 few more years into the future and saying, well, we'll just wait a few more years and see what we

01:22:27.220 discover. Or, you know, we'll, we won't refute possible claims that one of our ancestors might

01:22:33.580 have been of African descent, because why, you know, at this point, why would they, it's not 0.75

01:22:37.180 going to make them look good either way. And so they're better off remaining silent on that issue. 1.00

01:22:42.340 And I guess this sort of like, as a final question, I wanted to ask you, what do you

01:22:45.800 think the significance is? Well, first of all, like yourself as an American working at an American

01:22:49.660 university, the fact that Bridgerton, this is not like a BBC show, like this is a Netflix series

01:22:54.400 produced by Shonda Rhimes it's American based on and I don't I believe Julia Quinn herself is

01:22:59.960 American so it's very much like England reimagined through an American lens and you were seeing a lot

01:23:05.880 of the stuff with Charlotte kind of started in Charlotte the city in America like what so it's

01:23:11.120 weird because now we're in more of a I don't know I don't know just talk about that like the America

01:23:15.880 versus UK and how she's seen as a black person like do the people in the UK think about this

01:23:21.240 Or is this entirely an America, America's thing?

01:23:26.220 I can't speak entirely to what they think in the UK, but I will say I do think it is

01:23:30.120 more of a focused issue in the United States.

01:23:33.720 And that is partially because we rejected the monarchy, you know, with the American

01:23:38.800 Revolution.

01:23:39.780 But at the same time, Americans now are fascinated with the royal family.

01:23:44.900 There are so many Americans who love British history, who love, you know, the history of

01:23:50.360 Tudor period, who loved the Regency period, the Austen novels, all of the historical recreations

01:23:57.100 of these time periods, mostly based on novels, not on history. And because of that, we've

01:24:04.120 romanticized British history, the British royal family, to an extent that we've even imagined,

01:24:10.140 you know, entirely new worlds that they operate in, in the 18th and 19th centuries. And I think

01:24:16.760 that there is this romanticization of british history and an attempt to in some ways project

01:24:23.200 on to britain the fantasies that americans have and even you know african americans too of you

01:24:30.260 know being royal being part of the royal family and someone like megan who was she left she actually

01:24:38.820 walked away from that and rejected it and so well maybe you know that fantasy is over and so let's

01:24:45.180 turn back to Queen Charlotte, because that is pure fantasy. And we can just indulge that fantasy

01:24:50.480 and not have to actually deal with the racism, the sexism, the death threats, you know, the

01:24:57.120 suicidal thoughts and all of that that Meghan Markle actually experienced. And so there is a

01:25:01.360 sanitization of the historical record in this fantasy world. But I also think Americans,

01:25:07.020 we really love fantasy. And it really appeals to our sensibilities and our desire to escape,

01:25:13.220 you know just the constant negative news and our own you know political issues over here

01:25:20.480 uh we can all just you know fixate on the royal family and you know imagine being you know having

01:25:25.700 swanning around in you know a castle or on an estate or having all these like beautiful men

01:25:31.300 to you know that are also wealthy who who are desirable and we can go and dance with them at

01:25:36.940 balls i mean you know that is definitely a trope it goes all the way back to the disney princesses

01:25:42.640 stuff which is also incredibly popular and still is and not just among children adults too so i do

01:25:50.200 think there's a connection between how we romanticize the royal family and also just our

01:25:55.820 you know the way we digest film you know stories that are fantasy i think well i'm just when you

01:26:03.580 were talking talking about bridgerton as a fantasy and people in the ballroom and stuff i'm just like

01:26:07.300 yeah this really just brings me back to the the cinderella with brandy from the 90s which was my

01:26:13.060 first experience like as a young person watching colorblind casting and i was like oh this is cool

01:26:16.800 this is great like this is like imagine a world where it just kind of like everyone is just

01:26:20.240 whatever it's like you know here are two sisters and one is black and one is white whatever it's

01:26:23.880 like that's i don't know so watching thinking of bridgerton in that way it's just kind of like oh

01:26:29.340 look imagine a world where everyone it's kind of like regency england but it's also like more

01:26:34.280 diverse and there's like yeah so you can imagine yourself and I love that about Bridgerton like

01:26:39.580 getting back to like nothing against Bridgerton like I love that they're giving you know cosplayers

01:26:44.840 of color like opportunities of people you can dress up as I love to think of people you can

01:26:49.220 see yourself like the hate the heroes and the heroines like Shonda Rhimes does in her contemporary

01:26:54.260 shows too like such a good job of having a cast that represents the full viewing audience and I

01:27:00.640 think that's really great for bridgerton and we can see it as a fantasy situation right yeah and

01:27:08.220 the world of fantasy shouldn't just be white and that is also something that i've seen in there's

01:27:14.900 been a backlash to science fiction novels and science fiction and fantasy stories if you know

01:27:21.400 there's a diverse cast or if oh my god there's a white elf or something it's like i didn't know

01:27:27.460 you knew that all elves were white i didn't realize that was a thing i guess somebody dug

01:27:31.240 around the archives and they discovered a hidden treasure trove of elf letters and they all said

01:27:36.240 we're all white and we always have been since time immemorial but i mean like all of that

01:27:40.160 always makes me so frustrated you know imagining that here is this you know in the actual world

01:27:46.920 where we should be able to be whoever we want and people should be able to see themselves represented

01:27:51.160 in shows, in, you know, films, and to have that be attacked by essentially white supremacists

01:27:58.920 is horrific. And I think that that's also why this issue of Queen Charlotte's ancestry is so

01:28:04.680 contentious, because if you question it, there's a sense that you are basically acting like those

01:28:12.640 white supremacist people who are critiquing, you know, oh, and you know, you, you watched or read

01:28:18.600 something in Tolkien, and it wasn't all white characters. So that's not right. But that never

01:28:23.500 was supposed to be real. That was always fake. That was always a fantasy. Why can't it be diverse

01:28:30.000 and more interesting? And Bridgerton is also a fantasy, and it should be diverse and interesting.

01:28:35.480 But the actual Queen Charlotte, you know, I mean, I'm not saying she wasn't interesting,

01:28:40.460 but she's definitely not as interesting as people want her to be. And actually, she herself,

01:28:45.320 if she was here, would probably tell you that her life was not that interesting.

01:28:49.380 She complained bitterly about how bored she was, how her life was tedious.

01:28:54.860 You know, she was into botany and she loved music,

01:28:57.660 but she also was under the thumb of George III most of her life.

01:29:02.480 And she did not like to go against him because the number one reason he married her

01:29:07.260 was that she had a reputation for being compliant.

01:29:10.100 smart but not political um not philosophical not not anyone who might be radical not someone who

01:29:17.920 was a free independent thinker she was someone who did what she was told and did what george

01:29:23.260 iii wanted um and so when george iii was not supportive of the abolition of the slave trade

01:29:29.780 behind the scenes neither was charlotte this is where like i feel like bridgerton as much as

01:29:35.200 bridgerton the og series is a fantasy i think this new queen charlotte series it's like everything

01:29:39.940 you just described it's like that is not the character in the trailer that i have seen

01:29:43.200 not at all no and so this is where i appreciate is like a sliding glass doors moment of like the

01:29:50.260 okay let's do bridgerton and like what if charlotte was a black woman okay and then they

01:29:54.100 create this fantasy world around that and now queen charlotte is like taking it even one step

01:29:58.760 further like that wasn't even a book julie quinn has since written a book about queen charlotte

01:30:02.980 but that was a breakout character people want to see and i love i love the imagery of her with her

01:30:08.100 like afro and everything i'm like this looks like a cool fantasy show that's the prequel of

01:30:15.460 bridgerton which is also a fantasy show yeah it's not based on the actual charlotte's personality

01:30:21.520 on her character imagine a show where the main character is just pregnant for two decades and

01:30:28.400 is constantly writing letters talking about how she's so sick of she called it my you know my

01:30:33.640 campaign which was just being pregnant being pregnant and that was her job was to ensure the 1.00

01:30:39.100 succession but then she did it and then some to where they had so many children they didn't even

01:30:44.280 know what to do with all these children and 13 of them survived into adulthood which was pretty

01:30:49.680 amazing for i mean amazing for that then and now to think that she survived her children survived

01:30:56.100 but i don't think that she had a life that she truly enjoyed i think she was pretty unhappy

01:31:02.840 based on the letters that I found.

01:31:05.180 I think she tried to put on a good face

01:31:07.280 and to be cheerful,

01:31:08.860 but she also was someone

01:31:10.620 who was very much about

01:31:12.140 exhibiting complete self-control

01:31:14.240 as much as possible.

01:31:15.940 And that's what George III valued.

01:31:17.960 And that's also what he wanted

01:31:19.300 the rest of his family to be like.

01:31:21.200 And they were constantly

01:31:22.580 disappointing him.

01:31:24.480 And so the real story

01:31:25.940 of the royal family in the 18th century,

01:31:27.420 in some ways,

01:31:28.240 is a story of a dysfunctional,

01:31:30.600 toxic family

01:31:31.500 with all kinds of weird, you know, daddy-son issues and other things. Daughters that were

01:31:36.780 never allowed to go off and marry for years and years because they didn't want them to be 0.99

01:31:40.160 independent and to, you know, be free of them. But it's not a story about diverse people, 0.88

01:31:46.740 diverse ideas, diverse worldviews. This is a conservative, extremely wealthy, privileged

01:31:52.480 family. Yeah, it's really interesting to see. And I'm curious because there's a book that just

01:31:57.460 came out um it's called like the real queen charlotte and i'm just in the midst i'm going

01:32:01.940 to be reading this and i think people who watch queen charlotte the series or bridgerton who are

01:32:05.720 like let's read about this real life person are going to be disappointed it's not like oh here's

01:32:09.420 this badass woman from history that you know no one's told you about it's like no here's this 1.00

01:32:13.940 like quite typical queen who was like the reason we don't know a lot about her is because the stuff 1.00

01:32:20.100 that she did was not scandalous was not like she did her job right she married the king she had 0.83

01:32:25.600 children like that like that was like top tier that was what was asked of her and she did it

01:32:29.940 but that's not that's not the Anne Boleyn story you know that's not the Elizabeth the first story

01:32:35.060 it's not some sort of person sort of like stepping out of line with expectations no she's not like

01:32:41.160 some proto-feminist or a rebel or anything like that she's a conservative queen who was constantly 0.78

01:32:48.520 pregnant and did what her husband told her to do in the majority of cases and took care of him when 1.00

01:32:54.080 he was ill, and then was his guardian later in life. And I just wanted to mention one thing,

01:33:00.240 because I think it's significant. So one of the quotes that's used to, you know, back up this

01:33:05.520 claim that she was actually of African descent, was a quote from a physician made about her on

01:33:13.140 when she was basically on her deathbed. And he said that she had, quote, a mulatto complexion.

01:33:17.900 But what he meant by that was yellow, because she was dying. And at the time, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Lotto was a term, it was a racial term, so it was a racial comment, but it could mean many things.

01:33:34.580 And one of the things that it meant in terms of complexion was yellow.

01:33:38.140 And I think a lot of people now don't realize that.

01:33:41.100 And so when we look at historical evidence, even, you know, letters and quotes and books

01:33:47.680 that were published at the time, we have to not read into them our 21st century understandings

01:33:54.060 of even terminology, because it's often not the case that what we think something means

01:34:00.020 is exactly what it meant at that time.

01:34:01.940 it might be similar, but there's often variations. And so I think this is another reason why,

01:34:08.000 I mean, at least as a historian, I'd like to make a push to say, this is why history education

01:34:11.860 is so significant, because people have to not only understand the history itself and read and

01:34:16.940 understand the context, but they also need to understand what terms people used. And so if you

01:34:22.320 find certain, you know, random pieces of evidence, and you just point to go, aha, this one image means

01:34:28.120 X. Well, that's not how historians work. We can, we never make claims based off of just one piece

01:34:33.800 of evidence because we need more than that. We need to corroborate the claim. And sometimes

01:34:38.540 there's contradictory evidence. And I think all of those things are really important. And it's

01:34:42.780 not always easy for, you know, people who are amateur historians to, to get into the complexity

01:34:49.160 of studying history, that it's time consuming and that it requires a lot of knowledge to understand

01:34:55.420 what something means and and maybe how different ways you can read it and I think that's so

01:35:00.900 important to point out as well like you've looked at what is it hundreds thousands of images of

01:35:05.220 queen charlotte so you have uh hundreds of so you really have a sense in your head like you've seen

01:35:10.660 you can see what features carry from image to image but if someone has only ever seen the one

01:35:15.100 that people perceive as having african features and then you've also read so much about queen

01:35:19.280 i'm sure lots of people describe what she looks like and then when you have someone who then

01:35:23.900 puts this on the internet and says, oh, well, here's this quote, and here's this other quote,

01:35:28.600 and here are these two images. And then Wikipedia then takes it and makes a little story. And then

01:35:33.760 journalists start to take that and turn it into a story. And then it gets replicated over and

01:35:37.240 over again. It ends up on Twitter, on Facebook, on blogs, in news stories. Well, no wonder people

01:35:43.580 are confused. I mean, I'm not at all surprised that people believe that this is true. I mean,

01:35:48.700 the New York Times contacted me and they said, you know, we can you help us legitimize these

01:35:53.580 claims? And I said, well, unfortunately, I can't help you legitimize them because they're not true.

01:35:58.160 And I think they were surprised because they had heard, oh, well, we thought this was true.

01:36:03.040 And so I mean, even at the highest levels of investigative journalism, they're not really

01:36:07.580 sure. And it's because it is that easy for claims to multiply and take on a life of their own on

01:36:14.780 the internet in a way that in, you know, the 20th century, when Charlotte, North Carolina

01:36:19.260 had the statue, and there's some letters to the editor, most people probably didn't know anything

01:36:24.460 about Queen Charlotte or anything about her ancestry. It's really only since the birth of

01:36:28.240 the internet and social media that we now even have this, you know, rumor going around that has

01:36:34.100 become so contentious. Well, and I think it all comes not it doesn't all come down to one of the

01:36:39.380 things it comes down to is just people wanting to see themselves like people who are like, say,

01:36:44.000 an African-American person in the United States is a fan of British history to find someone that

01:36:49.600 you can see yourself in. Like I can see how that would, that would be appealing to find,

01:36:54.400 like to find yourself in a story. So like myself, we're talking on video chat. Like one of the

01:36:59.000 reasons why I got interested in Tudor England was I visited England as a child. And I was like,

01:37:02.860 oh, who's that pale red haired person with a long nose that kind of looks like me? That's

01:37:06.800 Elizabeth I. Great. So like, that's my like privileged white person take on it. But it's 0.51

01:37:12.540 like yeah to see someone who looks like you is powerful and so we still want to see that

01:37:17.680 no i totally agree and i and i think i can sympathize with that and i also think that's

01:37:24.240 why there are all these new shows and obviously we need that but i also think there are historical

01:37:30.960 actual historical figures that are real and that did far more for the greater good than someone

01:37:37.920 like charlotte but if people want to continue to imagine who she could have been in an alternate

01:37:44.020 reality and in like a fictitious world then you know i can totally embrace that and i do but i do

01:37:51.940 think we have to stop you know at some point and say okay what is this based on and why are we so

01:37:59.320 keen to have her not be you know this this white germanic woman that she was in her time period

01:38:06.480 and as she was seen and treated by the people around her

01:38:09.680 and the extreme life of privilege that she led.

01:38:13.740 So if people want to keep up with you and your work,

01:38:17.660 can you just share, do you have social media or a website

01:38:20.140 where people can kind of read more of what you've written

01:38:22.180 or see what you're talking about?

01:38:23.960 Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Dr. Brooke Newman,

01:38:27.340 and I'm working on a book called The Queen's Silence,

01:38:29.600 which is on the links between the monarchy and slavery,

01:38:33.120 which will be out in 2025.

01:38:34.120 and i'm currently working on my website with an amazing designer website designer and that'll be

01:38:39.960 out sometime in may so i'll have to circle back to you on the the url for that but yeah yeah for

01:38:46.760 sure no let me know when that's there so i can let people know because this is obviously the stuff

01:38:50.820 that you're working on could you ever imagined it would be so pertinent to contemporary life

01:38:55.840 well what's funny i was just talking to someone about this yesterday i came up with this book

01:39:01.120 project in 2017 on the monarchy and slavery and at the time nobody was working on that and nobody

01:39:07.820 really cared and I thought well I don't know if this is going to go anywhere and I was a little

01:39:11.360 nervous like what if I can't find anything and you know is this the dead end but I never thought

01:39:16.620 it would you know this is prior to Meghan Markle becoming a huge since it was really I honestly

01:39:22.960 really was Meghan Markle marrying the royal family everything happened to her the 2020

01:39:28.600 Black Lives Matter movement, and then just the push across the Caribbean in particular 1.00

01:39:35.040 for not only reparations, but to potentially separate from the monarchy and remove the

01:39:40.920 monarchist head of state and the royal tour, which was a complete disaster.

01:39:45.180 All of that snowballed into my book going from being this kind of esoteric, interesting

01:39:51.040 topic to being relevant politically, socially, and historically.

01:39:55.380 And so it's been really exciting, but it's also really stressful because of the fact that this is a book that it's going to be poured over and funneled through the culture wars because people are so anxious about, you know, in their minds, rehashing the past and, you know, bringing all the stuff up about slavery and all the rest of it.

01:40:15.540 And so I'm, you know, excited about it, but I'm also, it's making me like, you know, need to really buckle down and get it done and also just be really careful with it.

01:40:24.060 God, I didn't even think about that. Because usually, usually, and I've interviewed a lot

01:40:27.760 of people in my podcast, like an academic writing a book about, they're writing a book and it's

01:40:31.940 going to get a nice audience, you know, of other academics and just like people who like reading

01:40:35.440 history, but you're just because of the profile you have and the topic, like, yeah, so you're

01:40:40.240 writing this knowing it's not going to be like, oh, other historians will read this, but like,

01:40:44.240 we're going to look at this in a really different way.

01:40:48.860 Right. And you spend, I mean, writing these kinds of books, years just sitting in a corner

01:40:52.360 by yourself, you know, digging around in the archives, transcribing things, writing up your

01:40:56.500 findings. I mean, it's a pretty lonely, tedious job, very time consuming. And then just suddenly

01:41:02.900 realize, wow, you know, the king of Britain has actually heard about my research and people are

01:41:07.840 talking about it. And the Daily Mail is attacking me. And it's like, oh, my God, you know, it really

01:41:13.140 puts a lot of pressure on you. I think the only way to deal with it is to is to try to just tune

01:41:18.600 it out because otherwise, and just tell the story. But I also have to say that this has been the most

01:41:24.580 fun project ever. I went to a conference years ago, around like 2019 or so. And somebody said,

01:41:32.580 who's excited about their second book project? And I, my arms shot up and I was the only person

01:41:36.800 who was excited. And I think that shows because I was excited about my topic. I thought it was

01:41:42.440 interesting. I thought, why isn't anybody writing on this? And why doesn't the book already exist?

01:41:46.340 And now I realize that other people feel the same way.

01:41:49.320 And as a writer, there is nothing better than knowing that there's an audience out there

01:41:53.040 that actually wants to read your work and engage with it.

01:41:56.560 Whether or not that engagement might be like toxic to some extent,

01:42:00.440 you know, you can't, you can't control all of that,

01:42:02.840 but it is really motivating and exciting.

01:42:05.920 Yeah, exactly.

01:42:06.560 To know that people, for any writer,

01:42:09.180 to know that there's like a bunch of people who are like waiting with bated breath for your book to exist.

01:42:13.120 And a lot of that is in a good way.

01:42:15.200 Yeah.

01:42:16.340 That's true. Yeah. I mean, there's always going to be some people who are just anti-history, anti-talking about empire, slavery, race. We're having the same issues in the United States that they're having in the UK. But I'm hoping and I do believe that the public is eager for this history and they want to know more. And the more that they learn, the more skeptical they're going to be of these claims that none of this matters or that we should all just move on and not talk about it.

01:42:43.080 I think people are going to realize, wait a minute, there's actually a lot here and we do

01:42:46.580 need to engage with it and address it. And I wonder too, what effect, not your book specifically,

01:42:51.540 but just like culture kind of moving in that direction might have on maybe people are going

01:42:56.540 to stop romanticizing, you know, English history, English royal court in past eras.

01:43:02.900 And maybe we can romanticize somewhere else in some other time.

01:43:06.520 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know if, I don't know if they will anytime soon,

01:43:12.320 because i mean there's still like jane austen oh gosh yeah yeah um i heard hillary mantle before

01:43:17.640 she died was working on a jane austen you know compilation novel of various and everyone was

01:43:23.660 like oh i wish i could read that i mean i would have read that too it sounds really great but

01:43:27.140 at the same time i think the more people know the more they're going to be able to separate between

01:43:32.040 fantasy and history yeah well thank you so much this was i was so excited honestly i was thinking

01:43:39.640 about the Queen Charlotte thing.

01:43:40.800 And I saw something you tweeted

01:43:42.100 and I was just like,

01:43:43.120 could I ever get her on my podcast?

01:43:44.960 And you agreed and I was so excited.

01:43:47.720 Yeah, no, this was great.

01:43:48.980 It was really fun.

01:43:49.740 Yeah. Thank you so much.

01:43:57.560 So I want to thank Stacey and Brooke again

01:43:59.900 for these interviews that they so generously

01:44:02.720 spent their time to talk with me

01:44:04.240 so that I could learn more about this,

01:44:06.140 that we could all learn more about this.

01:44:07.500 really complicated and interesting topic of Queen Charlotte. And the question, is Queen Charlotte

01:44:14.160 Black? Was Queen Charlotte a Black woman? Not an easy answer, but it really leads into so many 0.99

01:44:19.580 interesting other conversations. If you want to learn more about Stacey Murrell's work and Brooke

01:44:24.660 Newman's work, I've put links to both of their websites in the show notes. Brooke's book, again,

01:44:30.080 is called The Crown Silence, and that's available now in bookstores everywhere. You know what else

01:44:35.180 is available in bookstores everywhere. My book, Rebel of the Regency, The Scandalous Saga of

01:44:40.580 Caroline of Brunswick, Britain's Queen Without a Crown. And if and when you pick up this book,

01:44:45.880 which you can also get as an audiobook, as an ebook, Queen Charlotte does show up in this book.

01:44:51.280 And unfortunately, it's not the cool Queen Charlotte from Bridgerton. It's the actual

01:44:55.200 Queen Charlotte from history. She's the mother-in-law of the main character of my book,

01:44:59.280 Carolina Brunswick. And honestly, she's, she's not, she's kind of the mother-in-law from hell

01:45:05.200 to Carolina Brunswick. And you'll learn more about that in the book. Yeah, I just, it's too bad that

01:45:10.260 the real life Charlotte was nowhere near as cool as she is on Bridgerton, unfortunately. Next week

01:45:15.440 on Vulgar History, we'll be back with a regularly scheduled episode. We're going to be talking about

01:45:20.220 another very famous British queen, someone that I think a lot of you will be excited to hear about,

01:45:27.260 especially in the context that we're going to be talking about her.

01:45:30.360 We're going to be talking about Anne Boleyn

01:45:32.220 and what might happen in another historical fantasy situation.

01:45:38.360 What if Anne Boleyn woke up after having her head chopped off 0.74

01:45:41.480 and decided she wanted to get revenge against Henry VIII?

01:45:44.320 That is the premise of Rebecca Lehman's new,

01:45:49.020 well, coming out soon, book, The Beheading Game.

01:45:53.080 And I'm going to be talking with Rebecca next week about all of that.

01:45:56.040 So stay tuned for sure.

01:45:57.420 I know you're going to love that conversation as well.

01:46:00.280 And just a reminder that you can get some, if you want to get some Vulgar History merchandise,

01:46:04.920 some stickers, some t-shirts, some hoodies.

01:46:07.460 I feel like there's like mugs, socks, magnets, all kinds of different things because it's

01:46:12.680 Women's History Month.

01:46:13.980 We're having a sale from March 18th to 21st. 1.00

01:46:18.080 So just go to vulgarhistory.com slash store to stock up on your Vulgar History merchandise. 1.00

01:46:23.080 And until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out. 0.97

01:46:53.080 and foster writer vulgar history merchandise is available at vulgar history.com slash store for 0.99

01:46:58.800 americans and at vulgar history.redbubble.com for everyone else follow us on social media

01:47:04.280 at vulgar history pod get in touch with me at vulgar history pod at gmail.com

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01:48:09.980 Reality TV is messy.

01:48:12.480 Pop culture is louder than ever.

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01:48:17.020 Welcome to Roxanne and Chantel,

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01:49:33.160 The Chaotic's Case Files.

01:49:35.140 Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Vulgar History - March 18, 2026

Was the Real Queen Charlotte Black？ (Revisited)

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