Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is a satisfying miniseries in its own right, but more importantly, it opened the door to the full potential of the Bridgerton universe. There’s a world of jaw-dropping romance and steamy sex outside of the current Bridgerton sibling alphabetical lineup! Lady Danbury’s single lady adventures, anyone? Against the backdrop of young Violet meeting Edmund?
But there is one romance in it Queen Charlotte the one I’d most like to see in his own six-episode miniseries: the epic saga of Reynolds (Freddie Dennis) and Brimsley (Sam Clemmett), the king and queen’s butlers.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story.]
Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix
In the second episode of Queen Charlotte we learn that Reynolds, the King’s personal chief servant, and Brimsley, the Queen’s top butler, are not only colleagues, but lovers. The show doesn’t reveal how long this love affair has been going on, but it’s clear from the easygoing way they fall into bed together that it happened before Charlotte arrived in England.
In the past storyline, we get to see more of their relationship. It’s never one they can openly reveal, but despite everything, the pair share some happy intimate moments. They prayed together. They find times to sneak out and have sex. They dance sideways at the ball when no one is watching. It’s a complicated happiness for sure, as they can never be fully together, but they’ve found a way to make it work, using the duties of their job as an advantage in this situation.
Of course, their love story takes a bittersweet turn when you realize that we don’t see Reynolds at all in the current timeline. He may well have just visited George at Kew; after all, George’s condition has deteriorated over the years. Or maybe he died sometime in the past few decades. Whatever the reason, there’s an emptiness in his absence, as we see in an absolutely heartbreaking scene where Brimsley dances all alone and shows an unseen partner around the place he and Reynolds were supposed to meet.
Photo: Nick Wall/Netflix
But those intervening years – I want to see more of that! There are 56 years in between Queen Charlotte and the current Bridgerton series. Fifty-six! That’s 56 years of two men who love each other, bound by duty, but whose duty allows them to understand each other like no other, because no one else will ever know what it’s like to be in their shoes. Brimsley and Reynolds are not main characters in it Queen Charlotte, and their relationship isn’t the main attraction of the show, but their scenes together steal the spotlight and take on a particularly suggestive parallel to Charlotte and George’s love. They reflect a similarly complicated happiness and devotion intertwined with an equally-but-totally different tragedy. A series that delves into their point of view over the next five decades would not only be a fantastic follow-up to Charlotte and George’s story, but also provide a perspective that the greater Bridgerton universe so desperately needs.
After all, the main Bridgerton series hardly deals with queer representation. Part of that is because it’s beholden to Julia Quinn’s original novels, in which all of the Bridgerton siblings are presumably heterosexual. This means that while artsy second brother Benedict went to a hedonistic sex party in Season 1 and saw an artist he admired hooking up with a dude, which may have awakened something in him, it’s unlikely that this side of him will get much explored. – at least not if he had to match the romantic arc An offer from a gentlemanthe Bridgerton book which follows his love story.
But being strange in Regency times isn’t exactly the stuff of overwhelmingly happy endings. Bridgerton takes place in a fantasy reality where race isn’t a big deal when it comes to inequality, but sexuality and gender norms are apparently still pretty rigid. Since the main Bridgerton The series adheres closely to the married-to-heirs-on-the-road-and-happily ever after formula the novels use, they are unlikely to feature much of an odd romance unless they decide that in this version of the world, England legalized same-sex marriage 200 years earlier than anywhere else in the world.
Therefore a spin-off like Queen Charlotte – which not traditionally end happily, even if it ends as happily as possible – opens the door to all kinds of stories. Brimsley and Reynolds’ decades-long secret and dutiful relationship is the perfect sequel to Queen Charlotte, and the perfect gateway to more serious Bridger shows, which can expand the world and flesh out some parts that the original series only glosses over.
Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is now available on Netflix.