With Museums and Galleries closed, The Guardian is currently on The Great British Art Tour, introducing art from the UK’s collections. One of the works featured in January portrayed Queen Charlotte Sophia, wife to King George III, a figure who, over the last twenty years, has been the subject to theories concerning her racial identity.
The portrait in question was painted by Allan Ramsey circa 1784 and donated to St John’s College of Oxford University in 1785, where it was admired for Ramsay’s ability to capture the character of his subject.
Alongside some historical facts and figures concerning the portrait and its subject, The Guardian also addressed the recently renewed interest in the queen thanks to popular culture.
While Queen Charlotte’s husband, King George III, enjoyed his own surge of attention after being featured in the musical Hamilton, Charlotte is currently a character in Netflix’s Bridgerton, portrayed by Guyanese-British actor Golda Rosheuvel. Apart from contributing some disdainfully sarcastic commentary, Charlotte is also at the centre of the series’ re-evaluation of the traditional period drama.
Bridgerton portrays regency-era Britain as integrated, with members of high society being racially diverse. In the show, a character explains that because the king married a woman of colour, society allowed black people into their ranks. While the series does not claim to be historically accurate, this idea hints at a real-life discussion, as some historians believe that Charlotte was Britain’s first black queen.
Claims concerning the Queen’s African ancestry began in the 1940s, when Jamaican-American author J.A. Rogers described her facial features, especially her “broad nostrils and heavy lips” as non-white, causing theories about Charlotte being biracial.
Historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom took this theory further through genealogical research and, in 1999, published his results. He traced Queen Charlotte’s ancestry back to 13th century Portuguese King Alfonso III and his mistress Madragana, who, in turn, was described to be a “Moor”.
Additionally, Valdes y Cocom referred to Ramsey’s portraits alongside some contemporary descriptions of the Queen, including one of her physician, Baron Christian Friedrich Stockmar. According to Stockmar, Charlotte had a “true mulatto face”, “mulatto” being a racist word for biracial people.
If the theory was true, what influence might Charlotte have had on British society and the world’s perception of the royal family? Could a globally acknowledged, biracial queen have shattered or at least moved regency-era perceptions of race?
Even if Mario de Valdes y Cocom is right and Charlotte was Britain’s first black queen, she did not radically transform society’s racist views. During her time as queen, Britain still benefitted from the slave trade, an enterprise supported by King George III, while high society remained white. The only contemporary who might have respected Charlotte for her ancestry could have been Allan Ramsay, a known abolitionist and exactly the artist Valdes y Cocom used to highlight Charlotte’s “African appearance”.
As for the royal family today, Charlotte’s African ancestry could have passed down to Queen Elizabeth II, therefore making her biracial. Does this transform the image the royal family currently has? The palace seemingly does not want to take part in this discourse, as a spokesman told The Boston Globe: “It is a matter of history, and frankly, we’ve got far more important things to talk about.”
Since Valdes y Cocom published his report in 1999, there has been a lot of criticism regarding his claims and the offensive language he used. His theory is based on Charlotte’s relation to King Alfonso’s mistress Madragana, a supposedly black African woman. However, historians have pointed out that other European royals were also related to Madragana, including Charlotte’s husband King George.
Additionally, Madragana’s race remains ambiguous. Valdes believes her to have been black, based on sources describing her as “Moorish” or “blackamoor”, words that were also used in the context of North African or Muslim heritage.
While some people try to determine if Charlotte should assume the legacy of being Britain’s first black queen, we might look at her portrait to find out what impression she wanted to leave. As a seventeen-year-old German princess, she came to Britain without speaking any English. Together with her husband, who also was from a German family, she had to transform the image they both carried, reinventing themselves as “quintessentially British”, as Georgy Kantor, keeper of St John’s college pictures, puts it. Kantor highlights the British history book which Charlotte rests her elbow on in Ramsay’s painting, acknowledging the royal couple’s loyalty to their country.
Questioning her ancestry, the colour of her skin or her facial features, the theories concerning Charlotte nevertheless affirm her status as a British queen, making the queen’s effort to be British a successful one.
[Image Description: Profile portrait of Queen Charlotte Sophia. She is represented wearing a intricated lace black and red dress. She wears white pearls around her neck and around her wrist.]
Allan Ramsey Queen Charlotte Sophia Image credits: St John’s College, University of Oxford