Top 10 Things Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story Got Factually Right & Wrong

In the show, on George and Charlotte’s wedding night, he sends her off to live in Buckingham House – which would eventually become Buckingham Palace – while he retreats to Kew Palace on his own. This serves as a source of conflict, as Charlotte believes the King and Queen should live together, while George wants to protect his new wife from himself. But in reality, there’s no evidence that they ever tried to live apart like this. When George was healthy, which he was for much of his life, they had a very happy relationship even from the beginning. Though, it’s true that Buckingham House WAS bought to be primarily Queen Charlotte’s home.

In the third episode, we see a young boy arrive at the palace to perform for the Queen and her Ladies-in-Waiting, a boy soon revealed to be none other than Mozart. But did Mozart ever actually perform for Queen Charlotte? Yes, he did! In 1764 Mozart, just eight years old, was in the middle of a three-year “grand tour” of Western Europe, in which he performed for many royals including one of the most powerful monarchs in history, Empress Maria Theresa of the Habsburg dynasty. He actually performed alongside Queen Charlotte, too, who herself was a patron of music and the arts. She even struck up a friendship with Marie Antoinette because they had this in common.

While George is still trying to stay away from Charlotte, he sends her a gift that he hopes will make her feel less lonely: a Pomeranian. It takes Charlotte a while to warm up to the dog, but we later see the adult Queen Charlotte always accompanied by an entourage of Poms. This isn’t exactly true, though: in reality, Charlotte already had TWO Pomeranians when she left Germany to marry the King in 1761, called Mercury and Phoebe. And she’s far from the only British royal to have an affinity for dogs: Elizabeth II was well-known for her love of Corgis, while Queen Victoria also had many dogs throughout her life.

There’s a popular story that it was Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, who introduced Christmas trees to Britain, something that was previously a German tradition. But as shown here, it was actually Queen Charlotte who brought decorated Christmas trees to the country. Though, just like Albert, it’s because she was born and raised in Germany. The tradition WAS still continued by Victoria and Albert, however, and it was thanks to them that Christmas trees took off throughout the country, not just in the royal households as in the Georgian period. Christmas trees eventually spread through the entire western world.

We see very little of the coronation of King George III and Queen Charlotte in the show, especially compared to the lavish attention coronations have gotten in other period dramas. But this is even more notable because, in real life, the coronation was a magnet for disaster. Practically everything went wrong that day, and the service of the coronation itself lasted for six hours. The most recent coronation service in British history, of King Charles III, didn’t quite last TWO hours. The coronation events in 1761 also didn’t end until late at night, while in the show, it’s clearly still daylight when George and Charlotte return.

Early, we hear George talk about his love of agriculture and the fact he spends a lot of his time working on small farms. The nickname “Farmer George” appears, which is a real nickname the King did have. However, it was actually a name meant to mock him because he was so much more interested in things considered boring. George III was a much more down-to-earth and frugal king in a lot of ways, in contrast with his son, the Prince of Wales, who was notorious for spending the country’s money on lavish and outrageous things. After this, “Farmer George” became a name that celebrated that the King was more ‘dull’ than his eldest son.

In 1817, the heir presumptive, Princess Charlotte of Wales, tragically died in childbirth. This is all shown early on in the show, as the Queen is informed that a key member of the royal family has passed away. The Queen is more frustrated by the death of Charlotte of Wales than anything, but this isn’t true to life. In reality, the Queen was deeply affected by this loss. The show also wrongly calls Charlotte of Wales “The Princess Royal”; in fact, the Princess Royal at this time was a DIFFERENT Princess Charlotte, the oldest daughter of George III. Charlotte, Princess Royal, died in 1828, while it was Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales - George IV’s daughter and heir - who passed in 1817.

The adult Queen Charlotte in the show is very preoccupied with the lack of heirs to the throne, following the previously mentioned death of Princess Charlotte. And it’s true that there was a serious succession crisis at the time because of the lack of any legitimate heirs from the King and Queen’s children. In the end, after the brief reigns and deaths of both King George IV and King William IV, Queen Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, only eighteen years old. She was the only child of the Duke of Kent, himself the fifth child of George III. Victoria would go on to reign for 63 years.

While Charlotte’s brother Adolphus occasionally lets something slip in German, the German origins of the Queen aren’t focused on too much. She never speaks German and talks with an English accent. In real life, though, upon her arrival in Britain, Queen Charlotte spoke almost no English. She also had little to no education about courtly life, something the show DOES get right. Charlotte quickly learned English, though she was noted to always speak with a strong German accent. Luckily, George III did know German, as both his father and grandfather grew up in Hanover, so they would have still been able to communicate.

George III has long been known as the “mad king”, as he struggled with mental illness throughout his life. There’s some evidence that he may have fallen ill in the 1760s, but his unknown condition returned in the 1780s temporarily before becoming permanent at the end of his life. For most of this time, his sickness was kept hidden from the Queen, though eventually it reached a point where it was impossible to keep it from her. To this day, nobody really knows what the King was afflicted with, though many believe it was bipolar disorder though his mania could have also been symptoms of a liver condition.