The Sadness of "Queen Charlotte"
The "Bridgerton" spinoff has a richness and an emotional maturity far exceeding its parent series.
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Bridgerton. Though I haven’t read Julia Quinn’s novels, from the moment I started watching the first season of the Netflix series I knew that I was going to be hooked. It was everything I loved about costume dramas, from the bodice-ripping to the lush cinematography and costuming. While it might sometimes sacrifice solid storytelling on the altar of spectacle, that was a trade-off I was more than willing to endure. In fact, it’s precisely the frothy sensations of Bridgerton that make it such solid escapist fare. However, it’s always been the case that there is a remarkable amount of emotional complexity lurking beneath the frothy surface, if you knew how to look for it.
Which brings us to Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. It’s been clear from the very first season that Queen Charlotte was one of the series’ most engaging and tragic characters, thanks in no small part to Golda Rosheuvel’s inspired performance. Though her story often takes place in the background–pushed somewhat into the shade by the romances and entanglements of the Bridgertons and the Featheringtons–what little glimpses we do get suggest that, beneath that icy hauteur there lies a heart bruised by the knowledge of her husband’s madness. Her fixation on the ton and its various foibles can be seen, in this light, as a means of escaping her own deeply sad circumstances.
In Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, she finally gets her time in the spotlight.
By the time the series opens (after the events of the second season of Bridgerton), Charlotte has been repeatedly buffeted by tragedy. Not only has her beloved George finally succumbed to the madness he fought so hard to keep at bay; she also has to face the reality of a Crown without heir, once her only legitimate granddaughter dies in childbirth. Never one to succumb to something as weak as sorrow, Charlotte sets out to berate her children into producing the longed-for heir, only to belatedly realize that, in trying to be the best queen she could be, she sacrificed her status as a loving and caring mother.
However, as we know from seeing her in Bridgerton, there’s a softer side to Charlotte, though she is loath to show it to anyone. It’s there when she tries to comfort her eldest son at the death of his daughter, for beneath the slightly awkward pats there lurks a true well of sorrow. And, as we learn throughout both the past and the present sequences, Charlotte has always had to deal with heartache, whether it’s leaving her beloved homeland or falling in love with a man who far too often feels as if he has to keep himself apart from her so as to protect her from his own mental illness. The final scene of the series, in which Charlotte informs the terminally mad George that they are to have a granddaughter, is heartbreaking for, though she manages to pierce the fog that shrouds his mind by appealing to their shared memories, there’s no escaping the fact that it will be temporary. Eventually, he’ll recede into his shadowy life, and she’ll return to her increasingly isolated life at court.
Much of the series’ action, however, takes place several decades previously, when young Charlotte is essentially auctioned off by her brother–the ruler of a relatively unimportant German province–in an effort to procure the protection of the mighty British Empire. Once she reaches England, she finds herself falling head-over-heels in love with the dashing and handsome and sensitive King George, even as she also has to navigate the fraught politics of the court and the fact that their marriage is part of a “Great Experiment” to create a more integrated society. India Amarteifio shines as the young Charlotte, a young woman thrust into an unfamiliar country and into a marriage with little to no idea just what to do. Very quickly, she proves to be a person of indomitable will, and this proves to be both to her benefit and to George’s.
Michelle Fairley, who has excelled before at playing steely dowagers (Catelyn Stark in Game of Thrones, Margaret Beaufort in The White Princess), is once again in fine form as Augusta, George’s mother. Though as prim and proper and downright cold as anyone could expect of the mother of the king, beneath all of that frosty exterior the tender, bruised heart of a mother who has had to watch her son suffer both the cruelty of others and of his own mental illness. She has no patience for fools or “womanly” emotions like weeping (as she pungently reminds Lady Danvers), but that doesn’t mean that she is without sympathy. Indeed, Fairley’s brilliance lies in her ability to let us see behind the mask she has cultivated throughout her life, to understand her as a mother and a person. Arsema Thomas is definitely a stand-out as the younger version of Lady Danvers, and I appreciated getting to see this beloved character’s youth and the circumstances that made her who she became. Like Charlotte, she has to learn how to navigate a brand-new world, and she does so with strength and a steely grace.
The women rightly deserve the lion’s share of the accolades this season, but I would be remiss if I didn’t also single out Corey Mylchreest, who portrays King Geroge. From the moment he appears on-screen he manages to capture the many complexities of this character. He wants so badly to be the husband for Charlotte that he feels he deserves, and to this end he subjects himself to numerous harsh treatments. The series allows us to see the tremendous toll that these take on him and, while Charlotte’s love does seem to provide him a light out of the darkness, such a promise is forever overshadowed by our knowledge of what lies ahead. Yes, they’ll have a happy marriage and produce many children and yes, there will be moments when he’s able to emerge from his illness, but eventually it will come to define both of their lives.
While all of this is playing out, the Bridgerton franchise finally gets the love story that we’ve all been waiting for, in this case between Brismley (Queen Charlotte’s secretary) and Reynolds (King George’s secretary). Though it’s clear how much they care about one another, and how intense their physical and sexual chemistry is, like so many other members of the court they find their fates inextricably tied to the royals and their battles with George’s illness. It’s to the series credit that it shows the extent to which queer people have, throughout history, managed to carve out their own spaces on the margins, even in the most restrictive and dangerous of times.
Beneath all of the usual Bridgerton trappings–the delightful pastels, the sumptuous fabrics, and fervent sexual escapades–there’s something more profound at work. While the series’ historical revisionism may not be to everyone’s liking, I actually would argue that there’s something more than a little radical about its postulation that the marriage between George and Charlotte threw open the doors of acceptance. Queen Charlotte takes the costume drama’s typical emphasis on matters of desire and the heart and uses it to imagine what history might have been, rather than what it was. Is it implausible? Absolutely. Is it real history? Absolutely not. Does it provide us a much-needed escape from the burdens of everyday reality? Also absolutely.
Queen Charlotte also excels at weaving together its past and present storylines, using this juxtaposition to heighten the dramatic and emotional stakes. All of the characters who are still alive in the present–Queen Charlotte, Lady Danbury, Violet Bridgerton, Brimsley–carry with them the joys and the sorrows of the past. In one of the series’ most evocative and deeply moving scenes we see Brimsley dancing alone in the palace courtyard, a wistful echo of the past, when he spent one joyous evening with his beloved Reynolds, the two of them dancing in the gardens, out of sight of the rest of the court. We don’t know what has happened to their romance, but I like to think that they were able to carve out a little space for their own love in the hustle and bustle of court and their devoted service to their respective monarchs.
Thus, while Queen Charlotte is a much more somber and serious show than either of the parent show’s two seasons, this is to its benefit. It shows that beneath all of the seeming frivolity of Regency Era fiction, there is a real engagement with feelings, with emotions, and with the complicated stuff of history. While it remains unclear whether we will get to see Charlotte in any more of her own series, I hold out hope that Shonda Rhimes finds new and fascinating stories in this beloved queen’s biography, so that we get more of a chance to see the life she builds with George.
Until then, I’ll simply patiently wait for the next season of Bridgeton.