I suspect a stroke of genius.
The name Charlotte entered the Royal Family in the person of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the wife of George III, who gave her name to the city in North Carolina.
She, a direct ancestress of the present Queen, was descended from the part-black old Royal House of Portugal, and was in fact referred to in her lifetime as having "Negroid" features.
Portraits often show her looking much like many mixed-race Britons of today. Yet even they were probably, so to speak, toned down.
No wonder that Thomas Jefferson would suffer no son of hers as his King.
Over here, though, we have had her descendants on the Throne for 195 years, and counting.
Every one of them, including this latest addition, legally black in Jefferson's Virginia. Or in North Carolina.
Look how much longer they kept slavery. And they had things like the One Drop Law and bans on interracial marriage, neither of which as ever existed here as you know.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. For all that there were Jacobite elements to their revolt, there was also a pronounced stain of Whiggery unrestrained in a New World setting, and that won out very quickly in the new Republic.
DeleteNever trust either the conservative or the left-wing credentials of anyone who admires Jefferson all that much. Or of any non-American who is all that fulsome an admirer of that political experiment.
Christopher Hitchens. Say no more.
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