Bridgerton is well-known for blurring the lines between history and fantasy, and the show’s modern take on Regency-era romance and culture has endeared it to legions of fans. While the show does take many creative and stylistic liberties, a number of its characters are based on people who actually did exist, and sometimes even suffered greater scandal, hardship, and triumph than they do on the show.
While certain characters, like the Bridgerton family themselves, are completely fictional—albeit certainly loosely inspired by wealthy, high-ranking royal families of yore—others are based on well-known facts. Still others are based on speculation, rumors, and oft-whispered-about scandals that would make Lady Whistledown raise both eyebrows.
Here, dearest gentle reader, are six Bridgerton characters inspired by real-life Regency-era figures.
- 1. Queen Charlotte
- 2. King George III
- 3. Prince Frederick
- 4. Will Mondrich
- 5. Kate Sharma
- 6. Lady Whistledown
1. Queen Charlotte
The imposing monarch at the center of the Bridgerton TV show actually isn’t part of the book series by Julia Quinn, but her incorporation into the onscreen adaptation helped give context to one of the most unique aspects of the show—its diverse casting. As it turns out, not only was Queen Charlotte real, but she also really may have been Black or biracial.
The real Queen Charlotte ruled over the British empire from 1761 to 1818. Born Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, she was the daughter of Louis Frederick of Mecklenburg, also called the Prince of Mirow, and Princess Elisabeth Albertine of Saxe-Hildburghausen. Her family presided over a minuscule German duchy in the Holy Roman Empire, and Charlotte was said to be a shy and religious young woman.
As in the Bridgerton spinoff series Queen Charlotte, the real Charlotte married King George III when she was 17 years old. The pair had never met before their wedding, and were married just six hours after first laying their eyes upon one another. The show neglects to mention that the young King was in love with a woman named Lady Sarah Lennox, though his mother and advisor opposed the union. Due to this, he delayed his coronation for eleven months until he agreed to marry Charlotte.
In the show, Charlotte’s betrothal to the king is also the start of the so-called Great Experiment, an effort to diversify British society. This is inspired by the common theory that Queen Charlotte herself might have been Black, both due to her distant Portuguese ancestry and to perceptions of her appearance in certain royal portraits. While there was no real Great Experiment, Charlotte’s ethnicity does remain a topic of debate. One thing is certain: She did rule as Queen for over half a century.
2. King George III
King George III was also a real monarch who ruled England from 1760 to 1820. He is perhaps most famous for losing control of the American colonies, but also oversaw much stability in Britain during his reign as well as the winning of the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic Wars.
Queen Charlotte delves into King George III’s struggles with mental illness, which the real king did have to navigate. King George III struggled with what has retroactively been labeled bouts of mania and psychosis. His ailments have also been blamed on a blood disorder called porphyria, though many contemporary scholars believe he suffered from bipolar disorder.
In the show, his symptoms had already manifested by the time he met Charlotte. But in real life, George didn’t start displaying signs of mental illness until they had been together for over twenty years. At that point, Queen Charlotte had to begin to take over royal duties for him.
The pair did apparently actually share a great deal of love, bonding over a love of plants and music, and would often play duets together, with George on the flute and Charlotte on the harpsichord. Though George’s illness and sometimes violent behavior put immense strain on their relationship, she stood by him until her death in 1818.
3. Prince Frederick
In season one of Bridgerton, protagonist and seasonal diamond Daphne Bridgerton finds herself unsuccessfully courted by Queen Charlotte’s nephew, the highly sought-after Prince Frederick. There really was a Prince Frederick of Prussia, and though he wasn’t Queen Charlotte’s nephew, he did wind up in a possibly heartbreaking romantic entanglement with a member of the royal family.
The real Prince Frederick is believed to have successfully captured the heart of Princess Charlotte of Wales, one of King George III and Queen Charlotte’s granddaughters. Despite the pair’s secret correspondence, Prince Frederick wound up marrying Princess Luise of Anhalt-Bernburg in 1817. It’s unclear exactly what happened, though as rumors would have it, Princess Charlotte may have been the one committed to keeping her options open.
4. Will Mondrich
One of Bridgerton’s primary recurring characters is Will Mondrich, a boxer who works his way up in society and winds up owning a members’ club and inheriting a fortune. Mondrich is loosely based on an actual historical figure named Bill Richmond, a man who was born into slavery in the United States in 1763.
When Richmond was a teenager, a British aristocrat named Lord Percy spotted him fighting in a local bar, secured his freedom, and arranged for him to move to England to apprentice with a cabinet-maker. Richmond wound up becoming literate and successful, provoking ire and racism among some members of white British society. Richmond also fought in numerous boxing matches and eventually became a leading fighter in Britain, and used his winnings to open a pub near Leicester Square and a boxing academy for young fighters.
However, the show wound up taking some creative liberties with his character. “Initially, Will Mondrich was more based on Bill Richmond because he had an American accent in the early stages of developing the character,’ Martins Imhangbe, who plays Mondrich in the show, told The News Movement. “But over time, it was more beneficial for the series to have him from London, instead of trying to go into the backstory of how he came from New York and everything else.”
5. Kate Sharma
Kate Sharma, the protagonist of Bridgerton season two, isn’t precisely based on a real historical figure, though her story has some connections to the life of a woman named Kitty Kirkpatrick.
Kitty was the daughter of Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick, who was the British Ambassador at Hyderabad, India between 1797 and 1805. During his time there, he fell in love with a Hyderabadi noblewoman named Khair un-Nissa, married her, converted to Islam, and became a double agent for India, where he worked to oppose the British East India Company.
His daughter, Kitty, was raised in Hyderabad but later moved to England. There, her tutor—the philosopher Thomas Carlyle—fell madly in love with her. She turned him down, but went on to serve as the muse for several of his books.
While Kitty’s story may not exactly parallel Kate’s, the links between their backgrounds highlight aspects of the relationship between Britain and India in the Regency era, including the fact that it wasn’t uncommon for British officials in the East India Company to marry and have children with women in India and to later bring them into English high society.
6. Lady Whistledown
Though there was no actual historical Lady Whistledown, there were certainly Regency-era gossip publications and Regency-era gossip magazine writers, many of whose identities have remained secret across the centuries.
During the Regency era, printing was just becoming more widespread and accessible, and newspapers often printed columns about high society fashion, romance, parties, and scandals. Some writers even took matters into their own hands, such as “Mrs. Crackenthorpe,” the anonymous author behind The Female Tatler, a satirical and educational column aimed at women which was published between 1709 and 1710.
Perhaps the most influential magazine of the time was Town and Country Magazine (of no relation to the modern magazine of the same name), which ran from 1769 to 1796. This publication featured monthly columns about specific high-society couples and their respective romances and scandals, and may have been one of the earliest gossip rags.