‘Queen Charlotte’: what is the ‘Great Experiment’ of the ‘spin-off’ series of ‘The Bridgertons’?

To your question of whether the story that tells ‘Queen Charlotte’ was real, the answer is yes, if we talk about the reign of the monarch and George III in England in the Gregorian era or the disease that the king suffered. But no, if we talk about something as important in the ‘spin-off’ fiction of ‘The Bridgertons’ as the elimination of racism. Without a doubt, it is one of the details most commented on by fans, an aspect that has even generated concern, but that fiction has tried to explain through the so-called ‘Great Experiment’.

The first time this concept arises is through Princess Augusta, Jorge’s mother. At the beginning of ‘Queen Charlotte’, she draws up a plan that consists of marrying her son to someone of a non-white race, as is the case of Charlotte, who has African descent. This would begin to allow social classes to be neither separated nor differentiated by title. But what exactly is the ‘Grand Experiment’? Shonda Rhimes and Tom Verica, the director of the series, have explained it.

”It’s one of the themes that I wanted to cover in depth in this series, especially when talking about Charlotte’s arrival in England,” says Shonda Rhimes. It is true that ”At the time of ‘The Bridgertons’ there has always been talk of how Queen Charlotte and King George gave rise to that new England in which we see a fully integrated society. I wanted to show how all that was forgedas well as the role that Lady Agatha Danbury and George’s mother played in that regard.”

”We thought it would be very exciting to show the origin of all this,” explains Tom Verica, director of fiction. And he also adds, the legend that tells that Charlotte had dark skin: “Many historians believe that Queen Charlotte had an eclectic cultural legacy and we wanted that to be reflected in a different way from how the history books tell it, which basically consisted of burying him and not talking about it. We wanted to clarify that question and we asked ourselves: ‘What if society had accepted these differences of diversity and had elevated people of color with good looks and prominent ranks?’ That’s what we do with the ‘Great Experiment’ in this story, imagine what the world would have been like if that facet of Carlota’s identity had been accepted.”

Definitely resolved!