Queen Charlotte's Crown: Centuries of Historical Inaccuracy

Queen Charlotte's Crown in Morris Muse fabrics from Moda, Morris & Me

 National Galleries of Scotland  

 Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

 as England's new Queen, 1761 or 1762 by Allan Ramsey.

Several copies of this bride's portrait are in museums.

I have been wiling away my May afternoons reading for the second time Janice Hadlow's 2015 biography of the royal family of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Well written, flows nicely and historically supportable. Perfect. I'm only up to the year 1761 and Charlotte's marriage and I know things get tough. Mad King George had mental health issues, shall we say, all his life as far as I am concerned---no late onset porphyry. But they had a happy marriage for quite a while (if a few too many unhappy children).

Perhaps Ruth Finley noticed the Queen's royal headgear in the "Nuptial Crown" portrait when she wrote about a pieced quilt pattern "Queen Charlotte's Crown" in her 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts.

Finley's block reflects the visual pairings in the "Nuptial Crown."

Queen Charlotte was the last of our Colonial queens and we still have a city named for her. Charlotte, North Carolina (The Queen City) boasts a sculptural portrait with crown in hand at the airport (no more historical basis for the statue than for Ruth Finley's block.)

Charlotte at about 20 with her eldest daughter

the Princess Royal.

The Nancy Cabot quilt column in the Chicago Tribune in 1933

must have used Finley's book for pattern copy.

The gray highlighted area is Finley-style "history."

Both book and newspaper column seem to have fabricated the whole quilt tale, as we might say, out of whole cloth.

The Cabot column modified Finley's design in a later issue,

eliminating the set-in seams.

link to austen

Queen Charlotte's Crown was not a popular design. Certainly there are none that appear to have been stitched before Finley's 1929 publication date as the design is not the kind of thing one would see in the 18th century here or in England. After Finley published her pattern a few were done, probably because it a bit hard to sew and rather awkward in composition. 

I found a couple of mid-20th c. quilts in the Quilt Index. The Nebraska and Iowa projects recorded some stitched soon after Finley's book was out.

Mary Schafer of Michigan decided the "historical" design would be a perfect pattern for the Bicentennial collection she was stitching before our 200th birthday in 1976. The history is the sort I was raised on: Far-fetched hypotheses, questionable research (if any evidence at all) and sweet stories designed more as propaganda than accurate accounts. (Don't look now but we are living in a revival of the attitude.)

About ten years ago we stitched a Block of the Week on the Austen family of Queen Charlotte's era and included this one.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58240246@N07/albums/72157644301168681/

Austen Family Album

From my latest Moda collection Morris Muse, inspired by Georgann's red block and the focused cutting. 

More Ideas....

Sunrise Quilts used the Nancy Cabot design recently.

Laura Conowitch at LCSCottage.wordpress.com

Blue for Charlotte's German heritage and red for her English role.

Blocks rotated

If you've been watching the streaming series Bridgerton over the past few years you

will be familiar with their plot line that Queen Charlotte was a Black woman, a concept not found in Julia Quinn's series of Bridgerton novels. 

Producers and writers running the series introduced this far-fetched idea made plausible due to the skill of the casting director who matched actor Golda Rosheuvel to the Queen's portraits. Despite her award-nominated acting the historical idea is as unlikely as Rosheuvel's hair-do.

This all seems relatively harmless and perhaps a good idea by the show runners to shake up our preconceived notions

BUT

There is a big problem in the whole concept of the German Charlotte's ancestry even as an obvious fictional trope. The idea was a principle of Nazi racial bigotry, first described in a 1920s book Racial Mixture as the Basic Principle of Life by Artur Ernst Klaar (Penname: Brunold Springer) who decided the Queen's unfashionable facial features were evidence of African ancestry.

"Nordicism," the idea of a master race, was explored in several pseudo-scientific publications in the 1920s. Books like Hans F.K. Gunther's Racial Studies of the German People impressed Himmler and Hitler, informing their ideas on white supremacy threatened by "degenerate" racial mixing. Euthanasia (the Holocaust) developed from concepts of Nordicizing the population and it continues today in unfortunate American rhetoric.

Nazi leadership was delusional about how they fit Nordicism's ideals

I have worked in the movies and know the industry pretty well through friends & family. Producers feel little obligation to give a responsible point of view based on historical accuracy. Their idea has sold well; viewers enjoy the turn-around in casting and nobody recalls Nazi sources for the pseudoscience.

But don't you forget!

Read More

https://royalwatcherblog.com/2023/11/17/queen-charlotte-nuptial-crown/

https://aelarsen.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/bridgerton-was-queen-charlotte-black/