When the first season of the Netflix series “Bridgerton” premiered on Christmas Day, Amanda Vickery sat at home with her three daughters and watched every episode. It was 2020, in the middle of lockdown in England, and Vickery remembers thinking: “Thank God for this escape. »
That Vickery can lose herself in this way is a particular compliment to “Bridgerton,” a flowery fantasy adapted from Julia Quinn’s romance novels set in the Regency. Vickery, professor at Queen Mary, University of London, is a historian. And “Bridgerton,” a show in which empowered women swoon to orchestral versions of Ariana Grande, takes a fairly liberal approach to the story.
Looking back at home, Vickery didn’t imagine she would one day work on “Bridgerton,” but for its third season, the second installment of which arrives Thursday, she served as its historical consultant, succeeding her friend and colleague, Hannah Greig, an emeritus professor at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Does a show that turns Coldplay’s “Yellow” into a wedding march really need historians? Yes. Several.
“We recognize that Bridgerton is not striving for documentary accuracy,” Vickery said during a recent video call, with Greig in an adjacent window. “It’s a fantasy, but it’s a fantasy based on an understanding of the times.” Her role, she says, is to point out potential anachronisms and then let the writers and directors decide from there.
Greig had a slightly different wording. “You’re the geek on call, the walking encyclopedia,” she said. But she and Vickery share a sort of motto: The show makes choices, not mistakes.
“When they deviate from the absolute letter of the story, it’s knowingly and for a reason,” Vickery said. “It’s intentional.”
The Regency period generally extends from the late 18th century until the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837, a period which coincides with the work of Jane Austen and a popular setting for romance novels. While the writers of “Bridgerton” are largely aware of the mores and customs of the time, there is an assistant in the writers’ room tasked with Googling questions (Were there hot air balloons in that period? Yes. ) and provide historical information.
There is also a dialogue consultant, John Mullan, another professor from University College London. Mullan reviews each script and makes suggestions, helping, as season 3 showrunner Jess Brownell puts it, to “regency-ify” the discourse.
Brownell accepts almost all of his notes, except when it would take 10 Regency words to replace a modern word. “In that case,” she said, “it’s just not worth it.” »
Greig and Vickery also review scripts in advance. Sometimes they are asked to consult on broader issues, such as: what was the social status of a widow at that time? The goal, Vickery said, is not to be “a schoolteacher who scolds them,” but rather to give the creative team all the information they need and offer suggestions that might free them from a plot hole.
Of course, some anachronisms are deliberate. In this Regency, it is always spring and it very rarely rains. As “Bridgerton” is a progressive fantasy, it grants women significant autonomy and includes people of color in the highest echelons of English society.
“It’s a way to balance the extent of the erasure of people of color in the Regency era, on television and in movies,” Brownell said.
Most notably, “Bridgerton” cast Golda Rosheuvel, a mixed-race actress, in the role of Queen Charlotte. Although at least one historian has postulated that the real Queen Charlotte was multiracial, this theory has received little acceptance. During the queen’s time, Vickery noted, Charlotte was seen as very German and very boring.
“Luckily this Queen Charlotte is a lot more exciting,” Vickery said. So exciting that it inspired a spinoff series, “Queen Charlotte,” which strays more enthusiastically from the historical record.
Otherwise, and with the exception of a few pointed omissions, “Bridgerton” largely fits the story. The balls were truly extravagant and the sex was potentially just as hot. (The sources for this: delicious 18th-century erotica.) Even Queen Charlotte’s swan wig has precedent.
Yet there are dozens of threads online devoted to the ways in which “Bridgerton” deviates from the real Regency — the hairstyles, the fashion, the smoking. And there are more substantive arguments online, discussions about what it means in retrospect to diversify the aristocracy without taking into account the real-world racism and colonialism of the time. The series also ignores the political changes taking place elsewhere (the Napoleonic Wars are barely mentioned) and the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution in the country.
“It would be a very, very different show,” Vickery said. “That’s just not what ‘Bridgerton’ is trying to do. It’s really about female pleasure. “The Bridgertons Chronicles” probably thinks more about female pleasure than many aristocratic men.
Vickery and Greig say that as spectators, they never feel the discomfort of apparent anachronism. Especially because they know to expect it. And they believe that deliberate anachronisms can spark productive conversations between historians and laypeople. “We get asked a lot more questions now about what is the real story of race, what is the real story of relations between England and South Asia,” Greig said. “It actually opens up the conversation in a way that other period dramas might not.”
Vickery said consulting on the show enriched her work as a historian. The questions of fashion and etiquette that writers pose often border on those of power, reputation and risk. And she described her visits to the set in vivid terms. “It’s astounding,” Vickery said. “It’s like seeing an army on the ground. But then you are asked if you have any grades.
This is often the case and these notes are then incorporated, a gift for any academic.
“Bridgerton is an absolute joy,” Greig said. “It’s fiction. It’s a fantasy. It’s a way of asking yourself to think differently about the past, and it’s one of its great pleasures.