Warning: Spoilers ahead for Bridgerton season 2.
Bridgerton’s true story should mean a huge Queen Charlotte tragedy is coming. While the majority of the characters in Netflix’s romance series are fictional, Queen Charlotte and her husband, King George III, are based on real-life monarchs who existed during the Regency era. And if Bridgerton is indeed to follow the path of their real-life counterparts, the fictional version of Queen Charlotte might be facing a tragedy sooner rather than later.
In Bridgerton, every young woman’s social debut happens in front of the queen, who is intent on picking one to crown her “diamond” of the season. In season 2, Queen Charlotte chooses Edwina Sharma as such, drawing the attention of the ton’s most eligible bachelors. Behind closed doors, however, Queen Charlotte faces a personal dilemma. Husband King George III had a mental illness — which historians suggest was likely bipolar disorder or the blood disease porphyria — that kept him secluded in the castle, away from everyone, including Queen Charlotte. As Bridgerton goes on, fans will likely witness King George III’s mental deterioration. However, if the series keeps (very, very loosely) to the monarchs’ history, then it’s Queen Charlotte’s death that will come first.
Bridgerton season 2 is set in 1814. Just four years later, in 1818, Queen Charlotte died at the age of 74. Although the Netflix series doesn’t engage much with the queen’s children — she had 15, 13 of which survived into adulthood — Charlotte dies in the presence of her eldest son, the Prince Regent George IV. What’s more, she wasn’t the most popular during the final years of her reign. Naturally, Queen Charlotte was not thrilled by this treatment. While Bridgerton has a few more seasons to go before the approach of Queen Charlotte’s death, it remains to be seen whether or not the series will tackle it at all. The tone of the romance show is light overall, peppered with drama that is ultimately resolved by the end of each respective season thus far. It’s possible Queen Charlotte could be killed off in a later season of Bridgerton for dramatic effect.
Considering how influential she has been on the ton’s families, as well as her continued hunt for the identity of Lady Whistledown, it would be interesting to see how Bridgerton would handle such a significant loss. Crucially, it would be more intriguing to witness Queen Charlotte’s decline in popularity because she pulls a lot of weight in the eyes of the ton and can make or break a family’s reputation at the drop of a hat. Whether or not Bridgerton will kill off the monarch down the line remains to be seen, but for now it seems unlikely with the way the stories have been handled each season.
Death has been a driving force for certain character arcs in Bridgerton — like Anthony’s — but it’s safe to say the queen herself would be missed as she’s rather irreplaceable. There’s also the fact that Bridgerton has used the Regency period as a backdrop to tell its story, but it isn’t beholden to the facts in such a fictional world. If Bridgerton's Queen Charlotte dies during the show’s run, however, it should be a slow-burn buildup rather than an abrupt end to her story.