Without the opulent costumes of Bridgerton’s Queen Charlotte, the storyline would most likely be erased alongside a hidden truth and history of Great Britain’s original Queen Charlotte during the 18th century. Bridgerton producer Shonda Rhimes recently disclosed the making of Queen Charlotte and how the hit TV show sheds light on the true history of the British queen’s hidden identity.

“Race is considered, and there are many historians who believe that Queen Charlotte was England’s first mixed-race queen. That theory resonated with us hugely. What if Queen Charlotte was recognised as being of mixed-race in 1813? What would that look like? What would happen? What if this Queen of England used her power to elevate other people of color in that society? And that’s where the fictional part came in,” Rhimes said in an interview for Radio Times.

Shonda adds, “Chris took the sense of the world at the time, but allowed it to be as fictional as he needed it to be. There weren’t really Bridgertons back then, so it wasn’t like this was a docudrama. It allowed Chris to create the world that he wanted to live in. He took one possible fact, which was that Queen Charlotte was a woman of color, he extrapolated it, and built a world from there in terms of how society ran.”

We often retrieve our history from textbooks, research and the discoveries of historians on a global scale; however, much of the knowledge and insight we receive is usually a result of the entertainment we watch. From Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton to Chris Van Dusen’s Bridgerton, costume design plays a vital role in how we tell stories, and in turn, how we relive our history’s past.

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