After The Bridgertons, Queen Charlotte has become another great Netflix success. The series focuses on the true story that at the time was added to the plot of the Julia Quinn books. Real for the veracity of the facts and for its relationship with the monarchy, since there is talk of the first years of marriage between Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and King George III from England. In the series, those early years are marked by the monarch’s incipient mental illness. A disease that also occurred in reality, although it started a little later.
Jorg III began to suffer continuous attacks in 178827 years after his wedding to Queen Charlotte. In addition to showing apparent fits of madness, he often complained of severe pain. He even went so far as to experience convulsions, making it necessary for his pages to sit on him to prevent him from getting hurt. Without a doubt, his pages were very attentive to him, as can also be seen in the Netflix series.
Logically, given the backwardness of medicine at the time, it was not possible to know exactly what was happening to it. However, many current researchers have made diagnoses a posteriori. At first it was thought that he suffered porphyria. However, a scientific study published in 2017 reveals another much more plausible theory.
Porphyria, the first theory about the disease of George III
Porphyrias are a group of diseases, characterized by the deficiency of some proteins involved in the synthesis of a very important part of the hemoglobin.
They are usually accompanied by a very varied range of symptoms, among which some of those experienced by the monarch stand out. This is the case, for example, of pains, hallucinations, confusion, and seizures. Throughout most of the chapters of Queen Charlotte many attacks marked by these symptoms can be seen.
There are also some cutaneous porphyrias, which cause hypersensitivity to sunlightHence, in the past these patients were confused with vampires. But, without a doubt, the main reason why it was thought that George III’s illness was this was the blue color of your urine. As her symptoms worsened, this color became more intense. Although patients with porphyria usually stain more than one tone brownish or red, in certain cases it may contain substances that give it a color blue or purplish.
This has led to its being considered the leading theory for years. However, today we know of another, which also matches what we have been able to see in Queen Charlotte.
Points in common and differences with Queen Charlotte
Although he suffered a minor crisis in 1765, shortly after his marriage to Queen Charlottewhat were then described as the monarch’s madness attacks began regularly in 1788. That would be a difference with the series.
Yeah that fits with something we saw in The Bridgerton, when George III he asks Queen Charlotte about his daughter Amelia. She tries to remind him that she passed away a few years before, but he doesn’t believe her and suffers another of her attacks. It may seem that she was a girl, although in reality Amelia, the youngest of her children, died at 27 in 18103 years before the time in which the series is set.
Those who did die when they were very young were Octavio and Alfredo, with 4 and 2 years respectively. Both died after undergoing the smallpox inoculation process to prevent the disease. It should be noted that this procedure was the one that gave rise to the vaccine, but that it was much less safe, since inactive or mild forms of the pathogen were not used. It happened a few months apart, in 1782 and 1783being able to be one of the triggers of the disease of Jorge III.
All of this fits with something Queen Charlotte says when she appears older in the series. And it is that, despite having 13 adult children, points out that she and her husband brought 15 children into the world. It is true that at that point it should already be 12 due to the absence of Amelia, but it is something that we can forgive.
too long sentences
The symptoms that he began to suffer, and that we have been able to see in Queen CharlotteThey seemed clear of mental illness. For this reason, a team of scientists from the University of London He decided analyze some letters and other documents written by him, in search of clues of what could happen to him.
All this was subjected to a linguistic analysis softwarein order to locate trends in the moments in which he lost his lucidity. So it was. Those writings that coincided with attacks, based on other records of the time, coincided in having very long sentences. So much so that some of them were found 400 words and only 8 verbss. This is common today in patients experiencing the manic phase of psychiatric disorders such as Bipolar disorder.
For this reason, these scientists believe that it is a more accurate theory to explain the George III disease. We must not forget that porphyria is a genetic disorder and that none of their fifteen children suffered from the same symptoms. It would only remain to give an explanation to the color of the urine.
It was necessary to investigate some reports from the doctors who treated him to locate the explanation. The key was in one of the medications that were prescribed to him from the beginning of his attacks. In its composition, it contained gentiana bluish-hued flower that has historically been used for medicinal purposes and may stain urine.
So while we can never know for sure what George III’s illness was, science has a theory that makes quite a bit of sense.