Sir Allan Ramsay’s 1762 portrait of Queen Charlotte in the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.Posted on 03/12/2009 10:00:05 AM PDT by BGHater
Queen Charlotte was the wife of George III and, like him, of German descent. But did she also have African ancestry?
Queen Charlotte died nearly two centuries ago but is still celebrated in her namesake American city. When you drive from the airport in North Carolina, you can't miss the monumental bronze sculpture of the woman said to be Britain's first black queen, dramatically bent backwards as if blown by a jet engine. Downtown, there is another prominent sculpture of Queen Charlotte, in which she's walking with two dogs as if out for a stroll in 21st-century America.
Street after street is named after her, and Charlotte itself revels in the nickname the Queen City - even though, shortly after the city was named in her honour, the American War of Independence broke out, making her the queen of the enemy. And the city's art gallery, the Mint museum, holds a sumptuous 1762 portrait of Charlotte by the Scottish portrait painter Allan Ramsay, showing the Queen of England in regal robes aged 17, the year after she married George III.
Charlotte is intrigued by its namesake. Some Charlotteans even find her lovable. "We think your queen speaks to us on lots of levels," says Cheryl Palmer, director of education at the Mint museum. "As a woman, an immigrant, a person who may have had African forebears, botanist, a queen who opposed slavery - she speaks to Americans, especially in a city in the south like Charlotte that is trying to redefine itself."
Sir Allan Ramsay’s 1762 portrait of Queen Charlotte in the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
ping.
Sigh.
This one is gonna go political in about two seconds.
What a bunch of claptrap. Racist claptrap, too ... the fact that she was ugly "proves" a distant African ancestor? Academics will make up *anything* to get published!
That’s a man, baby ...
Black Portugese are not negroid, they are Moors....north African Arab descended.
crazy, who writes this stuff?
That’s not ‘racist’ at all.
Sigh.
It just bothers me on how far back some would try and go to claim “black”.
Like 9 generations back with everybody else white? I would not call somebody like that “black”.
that 1762 picture don’t look black to me either.
It’s not racist to say that if a woman is ugly, she must be black, or have an African ancestor?
LOL
Ramsey embellished her “mulatto face”. Other paintings do not. I think Ramsey had an agenda.
Nothing in that excerpt is racist. It might be bigoted, but not racist.
Guilty !
What is the German translation that means, Don’t ask, Don’t tell!
Also...."black branch of the Portuguese royal family"
Most probably, she had some of the Moor blood in her which is generally not considered 'negro' but Berber and Arab descent.
That’s a man, baby ...
__________________________________
I think you’re right! IT’S A TRAP! ;)
BTW, the Russians consider the people from the Caucasus to be "Black". That does not mean that are African!
It's A Trap!
Okay, whatever.
Well, Cleopatra was born in Africa, just like Teresa Heinz Kerry and Charlize Theron.
It comes from the Medici family. One of the men, I think Lorenzo or one of his sons had a son from a black servant. This son became head of the Medici family and from his lineage are famous royals including, Queen Cathrine of France, Queen Marie Antoinette, just to name a few. A lot of Hapsburgs and Medicis and a few other dynasties are connected through this lineage.
I hear a lot of blacks saying that they come from Kings and Queens. Well... They weren't kidding.
Do we have to talk about Michael Jackson? And, I don’t think is the first black queen anyway!
That woman is just as black as our current President!
I knew a blue-eyed blond kid in high school who was born in South Africa and put “African American” on all his college applications.
Trust the Grauniad to get it wrong wrt to the Royals by calling Queen Charlotte the ‘Queen of England’. She was not the Queen of England. The Kingdom of England has not existed since 1707. The last Queen of England was Queen Anne, who after she signed the 1707 Act of Union Became the first Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain....
Google “Queen Charlotte” and you see 4 pictures. Enlarge the pictures and she definitely DOES NOT look black.
Pretty lady and looks like a good mom.
That statue from the airport? WEIRD!
The title is “of Great Britain” sure, but she was still Queen of England, as is our present Queen, as England still exists as a sovereign country, with different laws in some circumstances to Scotland. Just because of the official title the country of England is still here, as is that of Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales. Its a fine line though I grant you that.
For how much longer though? that is the question.
And according to anthropologists we all started in Africa so there’s a touch of the tar brush in all of us.
And the high caste ruling "Moors" were descended from the Arab (Asian) conquerors and not the Moroccan foot soldiers. In either case, they had nothing to do with Sub-Saharan (black) Africa.
Another interesting point is that Moorish rulers had a liking for fair, blond, blue-eyed, Christian wives, especially from Galicia. So, after many generations, there was little genetic makeup left over from the original "Great-Great- ..... Great-Grandaddy the Moor".
When the Kingdom of Granada fell, it's last King, Muhammad XII, was as fair, blonde and blue-eyed as the typical Galician of the era.
England isn’t a ‘sovereign’ country at all. Only the United Kingdom is ‘sovereign’. This even applies to a devolved Scotland, as in theory, the UK parliament at Westminster has the power to dissolve Holyrood, which is not sovereign in its own right.
England is only an entity in a negative sense now, in that it isn’t part of either a devolved Scotland or a devolved Wales, and its laws and domestic policy are still derived entirely from the UK Parliament.
The title ‘Queen of England’ is only an unofficial nickname. Officially, the title has not existed since 1707. Sorry to be pendantic about this, but there it is.
As for how much longer, I would say for the rest of her life. As for how long the monarchy lasts, that would largely depend on how Chuckles performs. Past history and recent events have demonstrated that he will not command anything like the same level of respect the current incumbant of the throne enjoys. I suspect that republican sentiment will rise when the Queen dies and he comes to the throne. Then its just a case of holding it at bay until William gets there, who so far hasn’t made a complete tit of himself and appears thus far to be a credit to his country. I doubt that the Aussies or any of the other Commonwealth realms will wait around long enough for that to happen though....
wishful thinking revisonism to accomodate inadequacy
not buying it
nothing personal to you or your pal
Not out of Africa.
Not from how her kids turned out
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I hope the King had a hot mistress.
I do not know where you derive your information from but England is a sovereign territory within the United Kingdom.
It exists within a union of countries and I do not know where you derive your information from.
Even Yahoo the most unreliable source echos my view as did the education system I was schooled in.
If you was schooled in the UK you will know that this is still taught in our schools and if you were not where are you getting it from?
So telling me I no longer live in an ENGLAND has come as a shock to me and about 50,000,000 others.
I was working in the UK in ‘91-’92 when Charles decided to become an architecture critic. I agreed with him about the ugly buildings, such as the Royal Opera, I think it is, which does indeed resemble a great bomb shelter on the Thames. The other extreme oddity is the BT HQ building, with all the services on the outside.
No offense to UK intended. US has more than it’s share of hideous buildings.
It probably just needs cleaning after all these years decades centuries.
England as a legal entity exists as ‘England and Wales’. It exists negatively in constitutional terms because it’s distinguished from the ‘Wales’ part of ‘England and Wales’ by the fact that it is not covered by the juristiction of the Welsh Assembly.
And England is not in any way, shape or form ‘sovereign’. ‘Sovereignty’ implies that it has independent powers and rights that exist outside the remit of the United Kingdom Parliament, which they don’t. Not even Scotland is a sovereign entity, because its parliament only exists at the behest of the UK Parliament.
The only Sovereign entity that exists in the UK is what is known as the ‘King (or Queen) in Parliament’. That is, the Queen and both Houses of the Westminster Parliament together have the only sovereign right to make laws on behalf of this country. Any other authority in this country to make laws and enforce them is delegated from the Queen in Parliament.
And the Queen is the Queen of ‘the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ in addition to various other dependencies and commonwealth realms. ‘England’ is merely a constituent part of a new kingdom that was created in 1707 and modified in 1801 and again in 1922 when Ireland joined and was then partitioned.
I’m starting to feel like Mr Logic explaining all this in pointless, anal detail, but describing any monarch post 1707 as ‘King or Queen of England’ is technically incorrect, and I just thought I’d point that out....
Actually George III may have been the first hetrosexual (as opposed to a-, bi-, homo-) King of England/UK not to have had a mistress
Actually, George III did not have any mistress at all. He was a deeply committed christian who practiced what was preached to him and was a lifelong monogamist, unusually for Royalty at the time (and even now) and in stark contrast to his eldest son and successor George IV, who was a notorious womaniser....
Curse you for beating me to it Oztrich Boy...:0
Which if you read my original comment is more or less what I said. The history of the UK whilst very interesting is completely uncalled for as I hold a degree in History which is now very much part of what I do. If you read into the statutes (the unwritten constitution) it states specifically that when the act of union was read in both parliaments, England was granted certain conditions of sovereignty not granted in Scotland, which were designed at the time to keep a reign in the English hand. Prior to devolution of the Scottish Parliament it was one of the aces in the Scott’s protest of English domination over the Scott’s, along with other anomalies of law that the Scot ts objected to.
Actually, George III did not have any mistress at all. He was a deeply committed christian who practiced what was preached to him and was a lifelong monogamist, unusually for Royalty at the time (and even now) and in stark contrast to his eldest son and successor George IV, who was a notorious womaniser....
Moreover, his lifelong monogamy was not only due to his Christian faith, but also to the fact that he was truly and deeply in love with his wife. She in turn, stuck by him faithfully and greatly comforted him as he descended into madness in his later years.
It is good to remember that while "King George" may have been our enemy in America's fight for independence, he did so out of his perceived duty to his own country, and on a personal level, he was a good and decent man.
And just a quick PS, from a popular point of view amongst the circle I move in the quicker we can ditch the “Commonwealth” the better, It just seems to take from our wealth and does very little in return.
The Aussies had the vote not to long back and chose to stay, their decision, nothing keeping them except themselves.
I have loads of family there since 1910 and lived there myself until I was 12, and they have mixed views, but I care not either way.
If you read the journal written by George 111, on affairs of the country, which earned him the title “Farmer George”, you will see the he saw the American Colonies as a humongous Farm.
He had been told repeatedly that the land was rich and fertile, and as he wanted to be the peoples king he was convinced that he could feed everyone cheaply.
This did not sit well with most members of parliament who had fortunes tied in there own estates and if cheap alternatives were found they would not only loose revenue , but control over the poor, which would destabilize the power balance of Britain.
Excellent points.
can’t remember if I’ve pinged you.
Celebrating 276 Years of Bowling Green
NY Times | March 12, 2009 | Sewell Chan
Posted on 03/12/2009 11:22:15 AM PDT by Pharmboy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2205241/posts
Could you point out were England was granted certain conditions of ‘sovereignty’? I’m not being sneery, I would be genuinely interested to know if this is the case. It has always been my understanding that whilst England and Scotland have always had seperate legal systems, they have been united as one kingdom since 1707, and thus, whilst they do exist as seperate political entities, they do not exist as seperate kingdoms. And my understanding of England has been that since devolution, it only exists as a kind of negative or a vacuum officially or legally, in that it is a part of the UK that is not Northern Ireland, Scotland, or Wales as defined in statutes.
The Act of Union and the intricacies of constitutional history isn’t my particular specialist area, so I would like to improve my knowledge if it is lacking...
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