This is the true life story of queen charlotte, whose character and work are screened in the new series "Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story" and in which she is represented as a monarch of the black race, writes the Serbian "National Geographic".

Charlotte was born in 1744, in Mirow, present-day Germany. In many texts, she is described as educated, fond of art and the French language. But those abilities of hers did not attract the attention of the English king George the Third to choose her as his wife, or at least not at first.

After the sudden death of Frederick, Prince of Wales, his son George III succeeded to the throne. He was only 22 at the time, so he hadn't thought much about marriage yet. Faced with the haste that the situation demanded, the new king asked the court to hold a review of all the German Protestant princesses. And so Queen Charlotte entered the British royal scene.

At the age of 17, she became Queen Consort of George III and they were both crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1761. Less than a year later, the first of their 15 children was born, two of whom died before adulthood.

The royal couple's first residence was St James's Palace, until they moved to Buckingham Palace in 1762. As for his married life, the relationship between George III and Charlotte was satisfactory from the start, but the monarch's physical and mental health began to deteriorate in the 1780s, leading to problems in their relationship.

As George III's mental disorders became more frequent and intense, to the point where the king became a threat to the queen, doctors had to isolate him. Then the monarch's inability to rule led to the appointment of George the Fourth as Prince Regent, although Charlotte was still responsible for her husband.

This lasted until she died, separated from her husband, in 1818 in her armchair, surrounded by her daughters Augusta and Mary, as well as the Prince Regent and the Duke of York. And George III died two years later, in Windsor Castle.

Was she really black?

Queen Charlotte's ethnicity was the subject of scholarly research at the turn of the 20th century, and now the popular series has reopened the debate.

The Biographical Archives of the British Royal House contain no information about her before her marriage to George III. Therefore, some historians support the hypothesis that she was of African, but also that she was of Muslim origin.

In that sense, the historian Mario de Valdes Cocom presented in 1997 the possibility that the wife of the English King George III was a direct descendant of Margarita de Castro Souza, who belonged to a black royal house in Portugal. He based his hypothesis on some portraits, where the queen is represented with subtle African facial features.

Other experts, however, point out that the kinship between the two of them is too distant to have any impact, as they were 15 generations apart.

Therefore, the ethnic origin of Queen Charlotte cannot be definitively determined because there is no historical evidence that would prove anything in favor of one thesis or the other.