3. The Moorish Ancestry of Queen Charlotte
Bridgerton’s show runners have not claimed that their series is historically accurate. Indeed, they have gone out of their way to describe the show as a light, escapist fantasy that essentially takes 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. Nonetheless, the issue of the ancestry of that royal figure created a stir among many fans and generated controversy among some sectors of the public.
The claim that Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744 – 1718) is black rests on her descent from a Madragana Ben Aloandro (born circa 1230). Madragana is described in the earliest available historic sources as either Moorish or Mozarab. A mistress of King Afonso III of Portugal, Madragana bore him at least two children, one of whose distant descendants, fourteen generations later, included Queen Charlotte. So far, that is supported by historic evidence. Whether that made Queen Charlotte black, as seen below, is a different story.
