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 ...
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....
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