A review by elisegmusic
Queen Charlotte by Julia Quinn, Shonda Rhimes

emotional hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Queen Charlotte is a historical fiction romance that is part of the Bridgerton world. Unlike the Bridgerton novels, Queen Charlotte was written after its TV series was released. Charlotte is a black German noblewoman who is chosen to marry King George III of England. As a fiercely independent and intelligent woman, she fights against this engagement until she meets the king himself. There are instant sparks. But after the marriage, the king begins to pull away from her. He has a mental health condition that he wants to protect her from, and he keeps this a secret from her. The novel is a tug of war between her desire to be loved by her husband and his desire to protect the woman he loves from the man he is. 

Unlike the Bridgertons, Queen Charlotte and King Charles III were real people. In reality, Queen Charlotte was not black, but George III did have a mental health condition - it is thought to have been porphyria (a condition of the skin and nervous system that can cause, among other symptoms, confusion, hallucinations, and seizures). 

I loved the introduction of race into this novel. In the other eight novels, all the characters are white. When Princess Augusta finds out her son’s wife is so dark, she decides to invite some black members of London society to the wedding and give them titles, to make it look like the choosing of Charlotte wasn’t an accident and they really wanted to integrate blacks into society. What ensues is a tug of war between the newly-appointed nobility who want to have land and rights that their white counterparts have, and the old members of the ton who don’t want to share with those of another skin color. Agatha (Lady Danbury) is one of the four points of view in this novel, and she helps guide Charlotte into making decisions to benefit the entire country, particularly when Charlotte is distracted by the drama of her own marriage. 

I also really enjoyed the depiction of mental illness in this book. There are some scenes that are hard, as George enlists the help of a doctor who believes torture will cure him. However, I did like how the mental illness ebbed and flowed through the book, as many mental illnesses do in real life, and I also like how the ending was bittersweet, as George can never be fully cured. 

I’ve read all eight of the Bridgerton novels before this one, and I think this was much better than the previous novels. I don’t know if Julia Quinn’s writing has improved over time, or if having the outline from a TV script helped her put more detail into her work. I thought this work had more fleshed-out characters, better and wittier dialogue, and was more grounded and serious, as opposed to the downright fluffiness of her other novels.