Warning: SPOILERS ahead for Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Return once you’ve danced at the first ball of the season and finished the series!
Anyone who’s been looking forward to Bridgerton Season 3 for what feels like eons got a wonderful treat, when viewers with a Netflix subscription were finally gifted with the prequel series, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Fans are loving the show, which gives us more of Queen Charlotte’s best moments as we watch the young woman adjusting to her new life as queen, falling for King George, and trying to come to terms with his declining health.
I did enjoy the series, much like many of the critics who loved Charlotte and George’s romantic journey, but… by the time the end credits rolled on the final episode, I was sorta overcome with sadness. I imagine that someone else probably felt the same way, and I’m just going to use this as a forum to talk about why I felt that the limited series was sad, so that we can work through our thoughts on it.
This Is A Romance That Doesn't Really Have A Happy Ending
I knew what I was getting into here, OK? I’ve watched all of Bridgerton and we know what becomes of Charlotte and George. They confess their love, have a ton of babies, and she is clearly fond of him in the current day of that series, despite the great challenge of his health.
But, is that really enough to say that this story has a happy ending? Everyone who really loves romantic stories knows that the HEA (that’s “happily ever after” for the uninitiated) isn’t the end of the story. The idea is that the couple in question has finally gotten to a point by the end of the story where they (and the readers/viewers) know that they can overcome anything and do what needs to be done so their love stays strong. In this case, however, they can’t do that. It’s all on Charlotte to stay strong, stay the course, and keep not only what there is of their relationship going, but the royal family as a whole.
It’s obvious that they really do love one another, and had he not been unfortunately saddled with serious mental health issues, I don’t doubt that theirs would have been a great love story. As it is, though, all the pressure was on Charlotte, because George couldn’t do anything about his health. That last scene of them under the bed was a heart-breaker, despite being emblematic of how in love they still are, decades later, and how hard Charlotte has worked to make sure she could keep some connection to the man she loves. I just rewatched that scene, and it made me cry, again! And I just saw it yesterday!
Poor George
While we’re not 100% sure what was wrong with George (researchers now think he was likely to be bipolar, leading to bouts of mania and depression), the thing that is certain is that doctors were in no way equipped to help him. By the time he married Charlotte, he’d already been subjected to a number of useless and troublesome treatments, then his new doctor, who at first seemed to be able to simply talk him out of his low moments, had a far more torturous plan in mind. George, desperate to be a man worthy of Charlotte’s love, let the doctor do horrible things to him in the hope that he would succeed.
I’ve got immediate empathy for anyone dealing with mental health problems, and know how hard it is to constantly look for an answer that will make you feel (or at least seem to others) like a whole, “normal” person. Seeing George go through needlessly barbaric treatments, especially knowing it would be centuries before we’d come anywhere near being able to help someone like him, was one of the hardest and saddest parts of the show.
I Can't Help But Feel Bad For Charlotte, Agatha, And Even Augusta (A Little)
Again, I knew what I was getting into. This story takes place at a time when women were property and at the mercy of whatever man was in charge of their family. We saw it in Bridgerton, and we saw it in Queen Charlotte.
Charlotte’s brother set up her betrothal without any input from her, and once she was married and realized how bad the situation with George was, she had no way out. It would have been treason to leave while pregnant, and would have put her small Germanic nation in danger. So, she stayed and made the best of it. Is a marriage really solid when you have no option but to stay in it?
Agatha (that’s Lady Danbury to you) and the Dowager Princess Augusta (George’s mom) had to deal with their own issues with being treated as property and needing to secure their futures. She was betrothed to her MUCH older husband when she was only a toddler, and the latter spoke about being at the mercy of her “cruel” father-in-law after her husband died, where she “had no other options. So I endured.”
All three of these ladies were crafty enough to figure out how to make life work for them, but not only were many women not so lucky as to be smart enough to figure out how to work the system, but it could come at a cost.
I Don't Doubt That Charlotte Wasn't A Great Mom
I was glad that Charlotte’s kids got a chance to tell her how they felt after she’d berated all 13 of them for not delivering legitimate heirs. Her oldest son, George VI, told her that she wasn’t their mother, but their queen, because she never bothered getting to know them or what they were interested in. Her eldest daughter (the only one who’d married by then) drove the point home by noting that Charlotte had never bothered to ask if she’d been trying to have kids, but was having trouble, and added that she’d had several miscarriages her mom didn’t know about.
And why tell her when it seemed clear that all she cared about was a living, breathing heir? Just Charlotte’s coldness when dealing with George after his pregnant wife died in childbirth, along with their baby, told us everything we needed to know about her skills as a parent. Her behavior isn’t fully even her fault, as who among us would be fantastic parents when we’re stressed over managing the extremes of our partner’s mental health (without solid medical advice) and trying to maintain appearances for an entire country? The only hope here is that she did better going forward.
Watching Racism Be Solved With One Dance Was Hard
Would that it were this easy, right? We would have been totally done with all this bullshit during one Little Richard concert in the 1950s.
I get that a little over six hours of one TV show can’t fully explain how racism ended in the fantasy world that is Bridgerton, but watching one ball, where the king and queen dance and it unites the people in the ballroom (who had carefully divided themselves by race before the royals arrival), was really ridiculous. To the point, honestly, that had it not been so hard/infuriating to watch I would have laughed out loud at the silliness of it.
Did We (And Violet!) Actually Need To Know About Agatha And Lord Ledger's Affair?
Shonda Rhimes (who created the show and wrote much of it) has said that she had Agatha and Violet’s married dad, Lord Ledger, have an affair because she wanted there to be “tension” for Violet and Lady Danbury going forward, but why?
Honestly, I think the story we got of Violet realizing she was ready to move on after her husband’s death would have been better if Agatha had been able to speak more freely about doing the same after Lord Danbury’s death, instead of there now being this open secret that mars their new, more open, friendship. I hate it!
Even Brimsley Couldn't Be Happy!
This might have been the biggest kick in the teeth. No one was thinking about Brimsley’s romantic life before this, and now we know that he had a boyfriend in Reynolds, who held basically the same position for King George that Brimsley fulfills for Charlotte. Plus, they seemed happy, even given the intense difficulty of being in the LGBTQ+ community way back in the 1700s. What happened to Reynolds? Brimsley is clearly sad about him in the current day when we see him. Why couldn’t anyone have an actual cool, full, totally loving and long-standing romance in this show?!
Well, while there was a lot to love about Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, there was also a lot that was sad throughout. I probably won't be rewatching this one anytime soon.
