In 2020, a TV drama series adaptation was made of Julia Quinn’s historical romance series Bridgerton (2000–2012). Several choices in the adaptation were inspired by the recent hypothesis that Queen Charlotte was Black, and an unusual number of Black actors were cast in roles that both fictionally and historically have been predominantly reserved for white actors. This article explores the hypothesis’ impact on the adaptation in the intersection of romance, race and history. What notions (historical and contemporary) of romance, race and historical accuracy are challenged and endorsed in contemporary popular media like the Bridgerton series? What are the benefits and setbacks from a decolonial perspective when Black people are cast, and “familiar” history is told, in such “unfamiliar” ways?
There is a section which specifically addresses romance: "Genre Matters: Popular Historical Romance and Racialized Scripts" (125-128).
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In this chapter, I explore why the Bridgerton adaptation and its casting are interpreted in such a mixed and challenged way (e.g. Jean-Philippe 2020; Kini 2021). I will show that the adaptation’s problems with achieving its goals of representativity and color-consciousness are related to the fact that the screenwriter and the producers have not fully considered the implications of genre. My analysis takes the genre of historical romance as one of its starting points, delves into the way race and romance are intertwined in popular Regency romance (such as Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton novels), and shows how this creates a number of concurrent and contending interpretations of the character Simon, Duke of Hastings, when cast as Black. In order to further show why genre is so important, I discuss the adaptation’s casting in relation to the British casting policy of the last decades. I consider the portrayal of some of the other Black characters in the series, such as Marina Thompson, Lady Danbury, and Will Mondrich. Also, since Van Dusen has stated that both the script and the casting were influenced by his awareness of “the historical theories of the actual Queen Charlotte’s African ancestry” and how he found it “revolutionary—not just as a real, historical theory but also as the basis for the show,” I pay attention to the role of history in the process and field of adaptation. Using Queen Charlotte’s possible African ancestry as his starting point for the adaptation, Van Dusen also writes a kind of speculative fiction for the screen. Hence, my analysis investigates the implications of the alternate history that emerges in Bridgerton, a Regency world without racism, and I conclude by discussing how the adaptation may be reassessed when explored through the perspective of decoloniality. (124)
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Note once more the importance of the romance genre for understanding the alternate world of this adaptation. In fact, romance fiction can in itself be seen as a form of speculative fiction by its insistence upon love as the universal means for resolving anything from gender inequality, family conflict, enmity, classism, ageism, to racism. (138)
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Even though Bridgerton, as shown in my analysis, does not resolve the universal fiction of white supremacy underlying Britain’s colonial legacy and the romance script, it could, from the perspective of decoloniality, still be argued that it engages in and has caused global engagement in analytic and “praxical” work of a decolonial kind. [...] Hence, if we shift our perspective from the content of the conversation to the terms of the conversation, we might discover that Bridgerton, despite its entanglement in a racist script, also constitutes a change of the terms. And this may indeed explain why the adaptation has been received with both praise and criticism. (140)
Here's the abstract:
There is a section which specifically addresses romance: "Genre Matters: Popular Historical Romance and Racialized Scripts" (125-128).
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