Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton prequel served up with tea and two familiar palaces, Blenheim and Hampton Court

Outside Blenheim, one of the stand ins for Buckingham House

This month, Netflix aired "Queen Charlotte", a Bridgerton version of the story of King George III's "better half". It's a parallel universe where "The Great Experiment", sparked by the ethnicity of the new queen, welcomes diversity in both royals and the aristocracy. And, in this unique telling of history, despite the widely stretched interpretation of actual people and events and the extra spicy romance (I suddenly embrace an echo of the past, hearing my mom saying, "is this really necessary?"), we fell in love with the love story of two devoted souls. As an added bonus, we were also smitten with the palaces chosen for filming, including two of our favorites that we toured on two different trips across the pond: Hampton Court and Blenheim Palace.

Queen's Cake tea pairs nicely with the Netflix series

Of course, the perfect accompaniment to the Netflix series, the palaces and our blog, is a cup of  "Queen's Cake" tea from The Republic of Tea's Bridgerton collection. (BTS Queen's Cake review).

Barb and Rachel, outside Buckingham Palace, 2015

During Coronation Week at BTS, we featured Buckingham Palace, the home of Royals since King George III bought it (true story!) for his wife in 1762 and, at the time, known as "Buckingham House" (Buckingham Palace: Where the Coronation begins and ends). In Netflix's Queen Charlotte, Buckingham Palace has a few worthy stand-ins, Blenheim Palace for many of the exterior shots and Hampton Court for some of the interior scenes. We visited Buckingham Palace and Hampton Court in 2015 and Blenheim in 2018.

Blenheim is a BTS favorite as it is connected not only to the English monarchy, but America's Gilded Age as well. It was the Vanderbilt millions that helped keep Blenheim Palace and its contents restored and intact when the Commodore's great grand-daughter, Consuelo Vanderbilt, married Charles Spencer Churchill, Duke of Marlborough in the late 1800's. (For more on this connection, see the article we penned in the March/April issue of TeaTime Magazine. Link to intro:  Newport's Chinese Tea House).  

Netflix's Queen Charlotte where Blenheim stands in for Buckingham

It was a trip down a grand old memory lane as I watched the regal carriage drive up to the entrance of Blenheim Palace, (the Neflix series' Buckingham House), where I had my husband, Chris, take numerous pictures of me, as though I had just achieved a prize for winning a marathon. (These photos -without my presence - as well as many of the ones taken in the interior, are now shared as part of BTS' Gilded Age tea talks).

Never enough pics in front of Bleheim

Outside Bleheim Palace, 2018

Hampton Court Palace, which we visited three years prior to Blenheim, was also used for some of the interiors of  Queen Charlotte's Buckingham House and Hampton's gardens and courtyards were further called upon to stand in for St. James Palace.

Interiors of Bleheim Palace - now part of BTS Gilded Age tea talk

But, for all of "Queen Charlotte" 's wild history and romance, we were swept up with the sweet story of an independent young women struggling to navigate life in a new country with a troubled young man, who was at home in his palace but not in his own skin. 

(above) Hampton Court Palace in Netflix, (below), our visit to Hampton Cour in 2015

*Spoiler Alert*:  After the many years of marriage filled with children, politics and illness, there's a scene that sums up the true love story. One evening, when alone together in the tight, but safe, space under the monarch's bed, the elder King and Queen come face-to-face and see each other only as the beautiful young people they were on the day they first met. . . Oh, my, I'll need to serve myself another box of tissues with my next cup of Queen's Cake tea.