Review
Culture
Royalty
5 min read

Queen Charlotte’s determined love

Is the backstory better than the original? Bex Chapman reviews Queen Charlotte, Netflix’s blockbuster, and finds a determined love story with a lesson.

Bex is a freelance journalist and consultant who writes about culture, the church, and both government and governance.

A regency queen and king stand beside each other looking pensive.
India Amarteifio and Corey Mylchreest play Queen Charlotte and King George.
Shondaland.

Regency romance is very definitely back, if indeed it ever went away.  Fans of Bridgerton will be aware how very binge-worthy the Jane Austen-meets-Gossip-Girl world brought to the screen by Shonda Rhimes is.  But her new spin-off prequal has outdone itself.  Since it landed on Netflix on May 4th, 307 million hours of Queen Charlotte have been watched – especially impressive given it only has six episodes – and now it looks set to become one of Netflix’s most popular series of all time. All the fun and frivolity of the Bridgerton world is here – sumptuous costumes, compelling drama about strong women, electric chemistry between the two leads, supported by a strong and diverse ensemble cast, shown in stunning period locations as they dance at elaborate balls… and all set to a soundtrack of modern pop songs reimagined as orchestral anthems.   

Gentle reader, prequals can be something of a curate’s egg – they can provide the joy of returning to a much loved, familiar world to learn more about favourite characters.  But there might be the devastating discovery that the world you love has become disappointingly plodding, or worse, been leveraged for profit – would this prequel be a Better Call Saul or more of a Cruel Intentions 2?   

Thankfully, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is that rare thing – a backstory that betters the original, with more emotional heft as it shows us how several much-loved characters developed.   We see the context for how the Bridgerton world came into being - controversially described previously as colourblind, in this new show race is part of the story as ‘the great experiment’ unfolds; Queen Charlotte is a love story that supposedly leads to a societal shift.   

This is a very modern love story, with a difference.  It remains frothy and funny, but there is a serious focus and insight too. 

While the two leads may be familiar from history lessons, the show opens with the dulcet tones of doyenne Julie Andrews reminding us, in her role as Lady Whistledown, that Queen Charlotte:  

“is not a history lesson. It is fiction inspired by fact. All liberties taken by the author are quite intentional.” 

We all already know how this story ends – and yet as we spend time with such compelling characters the suspense builds all the same.   This is a very modern love story, with a difference.  It remains frothy and funny, but there is a serious focus and insight too.  This is still a swoon-worthy romance, but here women grow in their power as they understand themselves, and each other, better.  Whether or not you have someone to sweep you off your feet (or help you over the garden wall!)  that understanding is something we can all aspire to.     

Meanwhile, many of the men in the Bridgerton world have their own challenges to work through (from abusive fathers to more loving ones who die in front of them), and this show is no exception.  Juxtaposed with the lightness, banter, and of course the love scenes, there is a heaviness and darkness here too.   

We see George struggling with his mental ill-health such that though he has fallen head over heels for Charlotte from the moment of their meet-cute, he feels he must hide himself away from her to avoid hurting her, and then undergoes a shocking, traumatic series of ‘treatments’.  Having seen their relationship from her perspective, we have our eyes opened from episode 4 as his attempts to hide his illness are revealed, first to the viewer and then to his beloved.  His devastating illness is shown compassionately, but despite the empathy, it is still hard to watch.  This is storytelling so strong that it has left many with a passion for a character they previously thought of as the ‘mad king’ from Hamilton who tried to prevent American independence!   

This level of narrative ability is perhaps why the legend that is Julie Andrews called Shonda Rhimes ‘one of the most powerful creative forces in film and television today’.  We live a world where we see many romances on screen just as they are getting started – we see from the meet-cute to the declaration of love or the ‘I do’, ending as we reach a happy ever after.  Yet Shonda Rhimes has been clear that she is not interested in telling the ‘sort of romantic story of a marriage where everything's perfect’.  Each of us knows we are not perfect, and we know that nor (even in the first flush of romance!) are those we love.  The Book of James in the Bible reminds us that ‘we all stumble in many ways’.  But we choose to love anyway.  In this show, love is not just about a belief in destiny, being deserving, or mere attraction.  Lecturing her son, Charlotte reminds him: 

“Love is not a thing one is able or not able to do based on some magic, some chemistry. That is for plays. Love is determination. Love is a choice one makes.”   

From arranged marriage to meet-cute, from working through an unconsummated marriage to having 15 children and devastating long-term mental ill-health, we see a love that remains constant despite the challenges; Charlotte shouts at George ‘I want to fight with you. Fight with me. Fight for me’ when she thinks him indifferent.  

he actress who plays young Charlotte, India Amarteifio, beautifully noted that ‘unconditional love is the river that runs through their relationship’.  Even as George descends deeper in his madness, Charlotte meets him where he is at (frequently literally as well as figuratively!) to be with him.  As fan-favourite Lady Danberry observes: 

“what matters madness when true love flourishes?  For them, the weeds are all part of the process”.   

This is a love that acknowledges the challenges, the imperfection, the pain and the sacrifice, but it persists. How do any of us find the strength to love like that?  We may not all be King George, but we are all imperfect, and flawed – we all make mistakes and must ask for the forgiveness of those we love.  For those with a faith, there is the hope of God with us to help us; the Bible says ‘we love because he first loved us’.  The Dutch priest and psychologist Henry Nouwen powerfully wrote:  

‘our life is full of brokenness – broken relationships, broken promises, broken expectations. How can we live with that brokenness without becoming bitter and resentful except by returning again and again to God’s faithful presence in our lives’. 

In a world filled with perfect-looking screen romances, the bittersweet depth of Queen Charlotte touched me far more than any aspirational happy ending. This was far more interesting, more powerful, and more complex.  Part of romantic love is attraction and feelings, but also choice and action; hearts and flowers if that’s your thing, but also being a team, wanting what is best for them above yourself, supporting one another to be your best.  To quote the passage from the book of Corinthians and so often quoted at weddings, this ‘Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things’.  In a world filled with perfect-looking screen romances, this depiction of love as a daily choice, made with courage and compassion, is what I long to see more of.   But I’ll happily take it with a side of regency glamour – it wouldn’t be Bridgerton without it! 

Article
Culture
Easter
Romance
Theatre
6 min read

Hadestown hints at so much more

The subterranean stage hit resonates deeply.

Freya is a curate at St Mary's Church, Islington.

A theatrical staging shows a couple seperated by a man standing between them.
Eurydice and Orpheus separated.
Hadestown.com

Hadestown – a folk jazz opera interpretation of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice – is currently flourishing in London’s West End. Like the myth upon which it is based, Anaïs Mitchell’s opus has had many iterations. I had been listening to these songs for a decade by the time I saw the stage show. As a Christian priest, I am used to relating all myths, narratives, and fables to the story of Christianity. And yet, it was not until I saw Hadestown performed that the resonance with the Christian “myth” hit me all at once.  

In the myth (and the musical), a hero goes down to the underworld to retrieve his beloved from Hades, god of the dead. On Holy Saturday (the day between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday), the church celebrates Christ’s descent to the dead and his freeing of imprisoned souls. This tradition is commonly known as the Harrowing of Hell. Art imagining this victory often depicts Jesus standing atop hell’s gates, ripped off their hinges, as he plunders the realm of a bound figure. Icons have Christ encircled in ripples of light as if he’s burst through the very walls of time and space to snatch his people from Death’s clutches. In some portrayals, he is pulling Adam and Eve – the original symbols of the rift in the God-humanity relationship – from their graves. The Harrowing of Hell receives more emphasis in Catholic and Orthodox traditions, but all Christians share some concept of Christ as rescuer, saviour, liberator.  

In the mythical world of Hadestown, something is broken. The seasons have collapsed, resources are scarce. Trouble in the underworld is causing everything to be off kilter in the overworld (not an uncommon concept in ancient thought). A contemporary audience can certainly relate to references to rising seas and widespread famine, as well as to the futility and despair permeating everyone’s inner monologue. The question the show poses is: can anyone break this cycle? Is there someone who could restore a broken relationship, rescue a soul back from the underworld…even make Spring come again?  

Humanity’s potential champion is Orpheus, a young man blessed with a supernatural gift for poetry and music. He is composing a melody “to fix what’s wrong”. When the song is finally sung, “Spring will come again” – the world will come “back into tune”, and “all the flowers will bloom”.  

The foil to Orpheus’s optimism is Eurydice, his lover. In this version, she is not killed but leaves for the underground realm of Hadestown, seeking food and shelter. I was moved afresh by her lament (‘Flowers’), sung in the depths of Hadestown’s mines, as Eurydice, like the prodigal son from St Luke’s story, realises what a mistake she has made. Hadestown’s inhabitants, it transpires, are not just trapped by the city walls – they are spiritually captive, indentured to Hades and his vision: eternal industry; perpetual war. Eurydice can no longer remember her beloved’s name, but she can remember that he could make flowers bloom in winter. She sings a petition for him to come and find her “lying in the bed [she] made.” 

We the audience know all along that Orpheus is coming, thanks to the song in the preceding act (‘Wait For Me’). Upon learning where Eurydice is, he undertakes the perilous descent to the underworld, all the while repeating “wait for me, I’m coming”. In a breathtaking moment of set design, the walls of Hadestown move aside in response to the beauty of Orpheus’s song. Eurydice’s prayer is answered by his sudden appearance, and his poignant invitation: “come home with me”.  

After the bows, the cast toast to the Orpheuses of the world, who show us things as they could be.

Orpheus is soon confronted, however, with the ugly reality of Hadestown. Eurydice has already signed her life away. Beaten and defeated, his innocent worldview shattered, Orpheus sings over and over “is it true?”. He is asking something more fundamental than if what is happening around him is real. He is demanding if this, the world that is, is the world that should be. Should we let the truth belong to those who “load the dice”, he asks?  

Hadestown’s walls take pity on Orpheus as they did before, echoing his song through the mines, where the workers – millions of other Eurydices – take up his song. The Dead-to-the-world realise they have been deceived, and remember who they were. And their faith starts to grow – that if Orpheus can walk out of Hades, then they can too. They want freedom.  

Persephone, Hades’ estranged queen, is won over by Orpheus. But Hades understands the truth about love: one flower starts a Spring. The fall of a kingdom begins with a crack in the wall. Unwilling to kill Orpheus because of Persephone, Hades instead sets up the famous tragic terms: if Orpheus can walk all the way to the surface without looking back to check Eurydice is behind him, freedom is theirs. It is a test Orpheus is doomed to fail, thanks to his experience in Hadestown. The mentality of the underworld has come to live in Orpheus’s head, and so “the path to paradise” becomes “the road to ruin”, and the story meets its inevitable end.  

And yet Orpheus does not fail as completely as he thinks. His musical gift has reconciled Persephone and Hades, and this has brought Spring to the world again. After the bows, the cast toast to the Orpheuses of the world, who show us things as they could be, and leave us with the responsibility to keep singing despite the circumstances, to reject despair, to hold on to that vision of every captive soul walking out of Hell. 

Myths tell us what we collectively fear and desire. Contemporary retellings show us how these longings have changed – or not. In what C.S. Lewis called the “true myth” of Christ, we see the fulfilment of Hadestown’s hopeful vision.  An early modern hymn describes Christ like Hadestown’s Orpheus – his presence “sees December turn’d to May”, making all the ground of the expectant “under-earth” turn to flowers. He is the one who has walked “the road that no one ever walked before”. The one who didn’t need to persuade the gods to empathise with him, because he was God. The one who was the perfect advocate for humankind, because he was human. Divinity without caprice, love without finitude: the one who experienced fear, temptation, ridicule – and yet did not turn back from the task. A peasant living under occupation: “this poor boy brought the world back into tune”.  

I was fortunate enough to see Melanie La Barrie in one of her final performances as Hadestown’s Hermes. Her voice gives the divine storyteller a godparental authority: La Barrie’s Hermes doesn’t so much narrate the story as prophesies it. At the inescapable end of the play, Hermes stands looking down like a graveside mourner, searching for the words to reignite the company. Hermes seems to have a divine vocation to keep telling the tale “regardless of how it ends” until it changes. This act is presented to us as faith, hope, resistance. In this new reality, where Spring has returned and the cosmic order has shifted, the tale might turn out differently upon the next telling, and so Hermes strikes up the band once more.  

Every year we sing the sad song again. The betrayal, the trial, the burial: the body in the tomb; the disciples in hiding. For so many, the-world-as-it-is feels like an endless Holy Saturday. The tradition of the Harrowing of Hell whispers to us to hold steady, because the rescuer is coming. “The darkest hour of the darkest night comes right before the dawn”, and a crack is appearing in the wall. 

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