It is said that a lie travels around the world, while the truth is still busy tying its boot laces. And no wonder, since false narratives, unrestricted as they are by facts, are usually juicier and more fascinating than the humdrum and often more boring reality. Take the controversy surrounding the depiction of British Queen Charlotte as black in Netflix’s hit series Bridgerton. Or the widely accepted but false notion that the Aztecs thought the Spanish Conquistadors were gods. Following are thirty things about those and other popular historic facts that are untrue.
30. A Hit Series That Became as Greatly Controversial as it is Wildly Popular
Producer Shonda Rhimes’ Netflix historical romance hit series Bridgerton has been a runaway success. With a viewership of over 82 million households as of March 2021, Bridgerton has catapulted to Netflix’s # 1 spot in about 80 countries and has become the giant streaming service’s most-watched series, ever. However, the show’s depiction of racial relations in nineteenth-century Britain has made it as greatly controversial as it is wildly popular. For some reason, many people cannot get over the series’ depiction of Queen Charlotte as a black woman.
To be sure, the depiction of Queen Charlotte as black – even though she might have had black ancestry – is historically false. However, Bridgerton’s showrunners have made no pretense of claiming that their series is historically accurate. Indeed, they have gone out of their way to describe the show as a light, escapist fantasy, essentially taking place in an alternate universe. In that alternate reality, nineteenth-century Britain is a race-blind – or at least racially progressive – country. One in which nobody bats an eyelash at a black queen, and in which racial discrimination is no barrier to the free movement and advancement of people of color.
