Young lovers come and go but the Queen remains, adored by millions, immutable in her pomp and circumstance. In the early days of her reign, she appeared to be little more than a wig-maker’s fancy, a bejewelled figurehead with a disdainful sneer. But at some point over the course of the first season of the Netflix costume drama Bridgerton, the remote character of Queen Charlotte stepped down from her pedestal to become a cult figure in her own right.
Not only is she very much in the foreground of the second series, presiding over her menageries of exotic animals and aristos, but she is shortly to have her very own spin-off series, delving into her background. Meanwhile, in a hard-to-find warehouse in west London, she presides over the Bridgerton Ball – an immersive fanfest hosted by Secret Cinema, where devotees in full fancy dress queue up to see her.
