Is 'rewatching Bridgerton for the fictional experimental 18th-19th century racial integration policy' the 21st century lady version of 'reading Playboy for the articles'
The Queen Charlotte season addresses the whole thing directly (I have so many thoughts about it though), and then the other seasons never mention it once, which presupposes that an elite-marriage-led racial integration policy led from the Crown was completely successful within one generation lol
But other than 'solving racism within one generation by redistributing land to elites from other countries that Britain has colonised & who hang out in London', the notion of co-opting those elites without changing anything about the social structure (e.g. slavery) has precedent.
If you've ever listened to the Haitian Revolution season of Revolutions (@mikeduncan.bsky.social ), or read history that examines the role of often mixed-race 'creole' elites or indigenous proxies for colonial powers in non-settler but still colonial states, this is who the PoCs in Bridgerton are.
They're the Rishi Sunaks & Suella Bravermans of their time. They definitely own slaves. Hell, Lady Danbury is a princess of Sierra Leone in Bridgerton, which would mean her family sells slaves to the British. But she gets the Queen to integrate high society - to attain 'equality' for the rich.
So Bridgerton does work in a weird way as an interesting alt-universe historical specfic, rather than as just 'race-blind fantasy bodice-ripper', but the more you think about *how* it works, the worse it gets.
Yeah, the whole thing is so fantastical it can't bear the weight of serious analysis. Escapist fun, but on the racial integration issues it feels like a projection of American ultra-copium.
Thanks makes sense, but I always thought Bridgerton was just porn for corset fetishists who otherwise can't figure out how to scrub their search histories.
