Dearest Gentle Reader: Let’s talk about Bridgerton

I am a romance novel reader. One might say I’m a connoisseur. What are my bona fides? I’ve probably read 2,000 regency romance novels (that’s about fifty to sixty romance novels a year since 1993).

For the uninitiated: regency is a specific popular subgenre of historical romance novels set during the British Regency period of 1811–1820. If you were at a bookstore, the lady on the cover would be wearing a ball gown. I personally read the “Dukes and Ladies” variety. I don’t play with the other romance subgenres. I’m not into paranormal romance, I don’t want anyone to turn into a werewolf or a vampire. I’m not into Western Romance, god save me from a cowboy. I don’t even like Scottish romance, so many lairds and clans and kilts. So, when I say that I’ve settled into regency, I do mean that this is pretty much the only genre I read in romance.

Regency Romance’s Race Problem

Regency romance has always had a race problem. As a child of the 90s, the characters in my romance novels were white. Always. When things get hot and heavy, it’s always “peach” or “strawberry colored nipples,” long descriptions of “alabaster” or “ivory” colored skin, etc, etc. But not only were there no brown body parts in these books, there were no brown people. There were never any people of color in this world, no traders, no merchants, not even enslaved people–all of whom existed in Regency society. Mayfair in the books is white from top to bottom, with white dukes and ladies, and white staff in every part of the house. Regency romance didn’t just center whiteness — it erased the empire that sustained it.

A fan of the Bridgerton books

Obviously, I’ve read the whole Bridgerton series and they are one of my favorite Regency series. I read these books when they came, starting in 2000 with The Duke and I. I actually have the whole collection, from the original mass market copies sold in bookstores and airports. And when Shonda Rhimes and Netflix announced it, I was excited. 

There’s a lot that the series gets right. The costumes are gorgeous. The use of dance, choreography and music is delightful. And many of the places where the show veers from the books are smart and add to our understanding, like the recent conversation about “pinnacles” between Francesca and other characters that demonstrates women’s lack of understanding of their own bodies and the prudishness of the Regency era.

As a fan of the books, I have strong opinions about the choices in the Netflix series that dramatically shift the original storyline. Penelope and Colin is by far my favorite story of the whole 8 book series, so I was bummed when they smooshed it into season 2. I also have questions about Mama Bridgerton’s romance, in the books she carries a torch for her dead husband her whole life and never re-partners–which sets up why her children are so insistent on love marriages. Clearly, I have my quibbles.

Interestingly, I did not expect the backlash to the choice to colorblind casting. All the folks that clutched their pearls and said things like “But that’s not what’s in the books” seemed weird to me. Julia Quinn, the author of the series, was supportive of the series and served as a consultant–if she’s okay with it, why are fans reacting?  Oohhhhh, right: the discomfort wasn’t about fidelity to the books. It was about race.

But as I started to watch the series. I’ve felt conflict and had a growing discomfort that is now at a fiery pitch with Season 3. 

How Colorblind Casting Shifted to Colorblindness

There are small and large ways that the colorblindness is starting to kill me.

Let’s start with the small ways. In Season 3, Benedict is trying to find a lady from a masquerade ball whose full face he has never seen because she was wearing a half mask. He could see her eye shape and color, hair color, and her mouth and chin. So, he goes to various events about the ton (dances, walking Rotten Row in Hyde Park, or taking his sisters to the stores on Bond Street), looking at the mouths and chins of women.

And for some reason, he looks at white ladies, Black ladies, Asian ladies as if they are all the same. As if after spending a whole evening talking with and dancing with a lady, he didn’t notice the color of her hair, her eye shape, or her skin tone. When a show insists race doesn’t matter, characters must act as if it doesn’t exist — even when that strains basic logic.

But the larger issue is the ahistoricness of how colorblind casting presents race overall. Regency London is at the height of England’s colonial Empire and there’s no acknowledgement of it. 

Did One Royal Wedding End Racism?

In Season 1, three Black characters play pivotal roles: Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings and Daphne’s great love; Queen Charlotte (not in the original books); and Lady Danbury, society power broker. The show’s explanation is startlingly neat: when King George married Queen Charlotte, who is Black, racism in England was solved. One royal love story, and centuries of hierarchy dissolved? That’s…royally impressive. In reality, an estimated 20,000–30,000 Black people lived in Britain during the Regency era, navigating precarious social and economic realities — and certainly not inheriting one of the fewer than 30 dukedoms in the country. Yet Simon’s title and Lady Danbury’s standing are presented as natural outcomes of a racially integrated aristocracy. Racism is resolved before the story even begins.

Uh, India was a colony

In Season 2, Kate is played by the gorgeous Simone Ashley, who is Indian. For Indians with dark skin tones, seeing Sharma be portrayed as “strong, beautiful, and desirable? That hits deep.” There are a million subtle cues about Kate’s Indianness sprinkled throughout the season: her preference for chai over English tea, the Indian jewelry that she wears, her use of Tamil terms for mother and father, or the Haldi ceremony held by the women of her family the night before her sister Edwina’s marriage.  

But the show wants the aesthetic of diversity without the political reality of empire. The East India Company ruled vast tracts of India in the early 1800s. It was a private corporation with an army of 250,000+ soldiers at the time, it could do what it wanted, so it did. It used its army to conquer princely states and then take over the treasury, simply stealing the wealth of princes, squeezing out taxes from citizens, and looting vast troves of historic and cultural treasures. A dark skinned Indian woman freshly from India would not have been accepted by the ton. Period. And no one in Bridgerton acknowledges that.

Colorblind in the Ballroom

Meanwhile, in Season 3, we have Sophie Baek, the Korean descent love interest of Benedict Bridgerton. Benedict is the most artistically inclined Bridgerton, the one most curious about the world, and the most queer. He’s portrayed as a sexually liberated rake, equally attracted to men and women. As a second son, he has freedom that Anthony doesn’t have, and he uses it to explore himself, art, and pleasure. If any Bridgerton son were going to wrestle with the moral contradictions of empire, it would be Benedict — the one who sees beyond titles and rank. But the show fails to give him that reckoning.

And Sophie’s character remains flat and disconnected from her heritage. The show doesn’t explore how she and her father would have gotten to England or how her step-mother Araminta would have gotten there. The historic absence of Koreans in Regency London isn’t just coincidence — it reflects the Joseon Dynasty of Korea’s strict no western contact policy. The first Anglo-Korean treaty wasn’t signed until the 1880s. And still, there are creative ways this could have been solved that the show doesn’t bother doing.

Spoiler Alert: Don’t even get me started on turning Michael Stirling into Micaela Stirling. While I am thrilled to have a queer Regency storyline in the works, if Bridgerton handles Francesca’s story the same way it has handled the first few seasons, we will have nary a mention of the fact that Micaela is both Black and a woman and their relationship is breaking both the gender and color line, and it will be infuriating to me.

Fantasy isn’t the problem. Selective fantasy is.

“Suspending disbelief” while reading is normal, I get that. But by not acknowledging the historic context and race relations in Netflix’s Bridgerton, the show is doing us all massive disservice. Netflix Bridgerton watchers can handle the complexity of race. And it makes for better stories in a genre where getting to Happily Ever After is the core goal of all romance. When we talk about race, the heroes and heroines have to look at themselves, their own motivations, their image of family and future, and how their families and the community will look at their relationship. When people in romance novels look directly at that and choose each other anyway? Love really can conquer all.

If you’ve been wondering when on earth I’d bring this back to therapy — here it is: I sit with clients who are afraid to love openly, who fear rejection from their family or community because they’ve chosen someone outside their religion, race, gender, or class. Shows like Bridgerton have an opportunity to explore the real risks and costs of that kind of love. When they avoid those tensions, it may be beautiful to watch, but it denies both the historical reality and the present-day courage it takes to choose to love someone across those lines. Romance doesn’t need to erase history to give us hope, in fact, it’s braver and more powerful when it tells us the truth.