Since the start of the “Bridgerton” franchise, Rhimes and her team have worked from the idea, put forth by some historians, that Charlotte was a woman of mixed racial heritage, a descendant of a Black branch of the Portuguese Royal family. Many other historians disagree with that theory. But in developing the new series, Rhimes was less interested in the debate than in staying true to the world she had already created: a fictional story with historical elements, in which a Black Queen Charlotte, richly adorned in jewels and corseted gowns, ruled valiantly while caring for the king.

“It was permission to really fantasize about telling the story of the character I was most fascinated by, and that was an easy jumping off point for me,” Rhimes said. “It’s not a history lesson. It’s really the story of the Queen Charlotte as we know her from ‘Bridgerton.’”

The idea that the historical Charlotte might have been biracial, by way of a Black branch of the Portuguese royal lineage, was put forward prominently in 1997 by the historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom for PBS Frontline. But many historians have disputed that claim or argued that any potential African heritage would have been so removed as to be virtually untraceable.

Rhimes said she had no opinion on the real Queen Charlotte’s heritage, though she found it “interesting,” she said, “how vehemently people need to say that she’s not a person of color.” Arianne Chernock, a professor at Boston University who specializes in British and European history, argued that questions over Charlotte’s potential Blackness miss the point that Britishness, whatever the color, is not a fixed thing.

“We know that Queen Charlotte had Portuguese ancestry,” Chernock said. “She was a German princess, the daughter of a Duke,” she continued, noting that “when Charlotte arrived in Britain in 1761, she didn’t speak English.”