Where King George went crazy, Queen Charlotte sipped tea and I sideswiped a traffic barrier

Or visiting the landmarks made famous by Bridgerton.

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Where King George went crazy, Queen Charlotte sipped tea and I sideswiped a traffic barrier

This story originally appeared in Charlotte Magazine.

My hands grip the steering wheel as I shoot a quick look left at an ancient dust-gray wall. Men and women who shaped the Western world lived on the other side of that ancient rampart for 850 years or so. I’m just outside it, wondering about the treasures inside.

Behind the wall, a castle climbs into the deep-blue English sky, and what it lacks in height it makes up for in depth and breadth. Windsor Castle, where English royalty have dwelt since the 12th century, covers 484,000 square feet on grounds that span 13 acres. I glance left again—out the passenger window, which will take me two more days to accept—to gape at this medieval marvel and BAM! hit the curb and HONK! cut someone off and HONK! HONK! botch a roundabout.

I get lost in a labyrinth of narrow roads and can’t find a square inch to park in. I wonder if I’ve flown 3,976 miles to London to examine the life of our city’s namesake, Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, only to be stymied on her doorstep.

Just before I give up, I find a spot wide enough for my car as long as I don’t open the door. I manage to slither out and walk deeeep into history. England’s past is staggering compared to ours, a truth that winds throughout my 11 days—my first ever—in the United Kingdom. It strikes hardest at Windsor Castle. Queen Charlotte didn’t live there until 1776, when the castle was already about 600 years old. The oldest house in Charlotte, the city, won’t turn 600 until 2374.

I visit Windsor, Kew Gardens, and Buckingham Palace to see where Queen Charlotte reveled and ruled. Why now, more than 200 years after her death? Charlotte is, as they say, having a moment, thanks to Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.

She was born in 1744. At 17, she moved from Germany to England and, six hours after her arrival, married King George III. Charlotte birthed 15 kids, met Mozart, feuded with her mother-in-law, longed to live peacefully, died in 1818, and wound up with her name atop our welcome signs. Did we become like her? I ask Natalee Garrett, a history professor at England’s Open University who is writing a biography titled Queen Charlotte: Family, Duty, Scandal. If a city takes on the personality of the person it is named for, what would you expect Charlotte to be like?

Her answer, via email: “I would expect Charlotte to be a city with a deep appreciation for art, music, and education. It would be grand but also a place that is down-to-earth and friendly. Although Charlotte’s position meant that she had to behave regally in public, her letters show that she had a great sense of humour, and she wasn’t afraid to laugh at herself.”

Some of that is in Queen Charlotte. Some is not. On the show, Charlotte is biracial. The basis for that, hotly debated in the press and on social media, is research by historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom, who says Charlotte was descended from Black Portuguese nobility. Everyone, it seems, has dug into her life—except, I discover, the people who work at Windsor.

I want to see her grave. The first attendant incorrectly tells me she’s not buried there and makes me feel like a dumb Yank for asking. The second doesn’t know where she’s buried but suggests I check at St. George’s Cathedral on the grounds. The first cathedral attendant sends me to spot W. The attendant at W tells me X, X tells me Y, and Y tells me Z, at which point I tell myself: Screw it.

I’m more interested in what it was like to live here than be dead here anyway. Garrett tells me the queen loved exploring the grounds but found the castle cold and drafty; it has more than 1,000 rooms, but only a third have fireplaces.

“Distinguished visitors” don’t gather on my terrace back home like Garrett says they did for the queen. But enough of my kids’ friends loiter on our porch that, here at the castle, I mentally fist-bump her. Inside, suits of armor stand in seemingly every room. Through a window, I see grass rolling into the distance. To have a lawn like that would be awesome. To cut it, not so much. I see what Charlotte saw, plus an unattended device that drifts about like a Roomba as it cuts the grass. Charlotte never encountered an autonomous lawnmower, unless you count sheep.

It’s easier to get to Kew Gardens than Windsor Castle. I get lost only once, when I miss a turn, and I almost crash my rental car only once, when I brush a retaining wall. Driving through London during rush hour is like riding a merry-go-round while you take notes with the wrong hand.

I enter Kew with anxiety born of a long London and no sleep on the flight over itinerary but calm down as I stroll the 330-acre property, which hosts a world-record 16,900 plant species. Queen Charlotte, Garrett tells me in her email, “took lessons on (botany) from leading experts, had numerous scientific works dedicated to her, and took a keen interest in the flower gardens at the royal residences.”

When I describe my creeping relaxation to a woman at the information booth, she smiles knowingly. I thank her and nearly walk into an automatic door that doesn’t open fast enough.

The highlight at Kew is Queen Charlotte’s Cottage, where Charlotte and her daughters often had tea. A 25-minute walk from Kew Palace seems like a long way to go just for tea. On the other hand, they surely wanted to get away from Kew Palace, where George was rather famously going insane.

I sit on the cottage’s front porch and wish I had tea. The birds have familiar shapes but unfamiliar colors, and vice versa: One looks like a red-winged blackbird God made the day he ran out of red, and lime-green birds flutter around as if I bonked my head.

I take the long way out and stop at the Treetop Walkway loop. I pass school children in uniforms and Americans in Buffalo Bills gear (they play in London two days later). Many of them are wandering, as I am. 

Charlotte would have approved. “There are lots of anecdotes of the king and queen promenading around Kew with their children following them in pairs—affectionately referred to as ‘the royal crocodile’ by locals,” Garrett says. “George and Charlotte’s love of simple living earned them a lot of mockery and criticism, but many of their subjects admired them for it.”

Our city’s founders initially called it “Charlottetowne” and the county that contained it “Mecklenburg” in honor of the queen and the northern German territory she was from. They were trying to curry favor with George III and sway the North Carolina General Assembly into establishing the new county seat here. It worked: The legislature chartered the city of Charlotte in 1768 and entitled the city to a courthouse and prison. Queen Charlotte was 24. She never visited the city named after her—she apparently never left southern England, Garrett says—and no record exists of what she thought of the honor. She probably saw it for what it was: a power grab.

Power is on my mind as I visit Buckingham Palace. I’ve put it last on my list because it seems like a tourist cliché, but nothing in the U.K. lingered like the walk to Buckingham. I’m an incurable eavesdropper, and I hear virtually no English. I keep thinking I’m not in London but Berlin or Jerusalem or Mecca. I’m soon surprised to see street signs in English, and I use hand gestures to communicate.

I don’t feel a connection to Queen Charlotte there like I did at Windsor and Kew. Nothing at Buckingham is as it was when she lived there. It’s now one of the world’s most famous residences, but when George bought Buckingham for Charlotte, it was a house, not a palace, and a fixer-upper at that—“a rural retreat,” Garrett says. George kept sheep and cows. Charlotte owned an elephant and a zebra, both of which were diplomatic gifts and apparently what you get for someone who has everything.

In Charlotte, we immortalize her our own way: through a bustling city with NBA and NFL teams, Ric Flair, nearly as many breweries as Kew Gardens has plant species, and enough banking to impress the snootiest London power broker. Wait’ll she sees what we’ve done with uptown.