Bridgerton: The Mad King

“If a man who thinks he is a king is mad, a king who thinks he is a king is no less so.”

– Jacques Lacan

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is part of a long line of fictional depictions of the ‘Mad King George’ (also known as the ‘Last King of America’). It was previously believed that his insanity was caused by a metabolic disorder known as ‘porphyria’, although it has also been suggested that George suffered from ‘the effects of the arsenic used in his wig’ (Black), which may also have been the cause of Napoleon’s death in 1821. According to modern medical opinion, however, the King did not suffer from porphyria, but ‘recurrent manic-depressive psychosis’:

Making retrospective diagnoses in historical figures is fraught with difficulties, especially in the field of psychiatry, but the case for bipolar disorder rather than one of the porphyria diseases, is compelling […] The evidence of elation, handwriting change, pressure of speech, disinhibited behaviour, occasional violence, disorders of thought (that is, psychosis) and so on all point toward acute mania, which is part of what we used to call manic depression, but now more often is referred to as bipolar disorder (Sir Simon Wessely, Regius Chair of Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience in London)