Bridgerton (technically it's Alternate History SciFi)

[TRP]

I emailed this to the podcast so it might crop up in Bare Your Sword.
I'm posting it here in case people want to discuss it

For those people (possibly including me) that want to express their enjoyment of the new TV season of Bridgerton without losing their SciFi street cred, I think I might have an answer.

Technically speaking, the Bridgerton TV series takes place in an Alternate History Great Britain which is truly multicultural and where racism barely exists.
The timelines diverged when King George III fell in love with and married Queen Charlotte, a woman of clear African ancestry. This marriage appears to have caused a seismic shift in British attitudes to race and meant that, 50 years later, people of colour are integrated throughout all levels of British society.
Britain also appears to have entirely abolished slavery throughout its dominions and, possiblly, reformed the depredations of the East India Company. Both of these things were possible in the late 18th Century, after the Somerset decision in 1772 (for slavery) and the impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1787 (for the East India Company)
The American Revolution still seems to have happened in the TV series and there is still slavery in the United States. Perhaps Britain's abandonment of slavery joined the Quebec Act (1774) and the 1763 Royal Proclamation, among the indictments against the British Crown in the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
In reality both Queen Charlotte and King George III both had a North African ancestor about 12 generations back which would have made them 1/4096th African. That said, early portraits of the real Queen Charlotte make it look like she may have had an African great-grandmother or even grandmother.

Of course you can still watch the show for the clothes and the sexy times but if you need to pretend to be watching only SciFi here's your excuse.
Personally I watch it because of Adjoa Andoh who has been one of my favourite actors for over 30 years

[Seth]

Good call TRP. Depending on why you read SFF there can be a lot of overlap with historical fiction. I like world-building in SFF and a lot of historical stuff has the sort of period detail and description of setting, technology, clothing, etc. that I really like to read. Weirdly, more people lump horror into the SFF camp and I can't stand it. It may have fantastical elements, but it's more about how characters feel and the atmosphere it creates for the reader, and that stuff is much less interesting to me.

On a historical note, despite being written by a slave-owner (and thus it should be taken with a big grain of salt) slavery (it's existence, not it's abolition) was among the things that Jefferson listed as a wrong committed by the crown against the colonies.