Bridgerton Real History & Historical Accuracy Explained

The king and queen at the time Bridgerton is set are King George III and Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. However, George III is not the ruling monarch; his son is ruling Great Britain and Ireland as Prince Regent.

Prince Regent is not shown on-screen; Bridgerton instead chooses to place his mother, Queen Charlotte (played by Golda Rosheuvel), at the centre of the drama.

At Queen Charlotte’s court, protocol was everything. This sense of protocol is crucial in Bridgerton, as we see the queen dictate many of the rules of this society.

In Bridgerton, it is the job of Queen Charlotte to name a debutante as the pick of the social season, a so-called ‘diamond of the first water’.

While the phrase ‘diamond of the first water’ was never used to single out any one young woman who would top the season, it is true that certain women were marked by the press of the day as great beauties. Their names would appear in newspapers, they would be written about and publicly celebrated, becoming celebrities of the season; on occasion, they were ranked, with scoresheets.

Lady Whistledown’s scandal sheet underpins almost all the action in Bridgerton.

A key difference is that in the real scandal sheets and magazines of the day, the subjects of gossip would not have been named. Their identities might have been very loosely disguised; someone might have just printed their initials, like the Duke of H instead of the Duke of Hastings. But it was so obvious who they were talking about. It was a way to get around libel laws. There would have been no point in having these columns if we didn’t know who they were talking about.