Was German-born Queen Charlotte Britain’s first ‘black princess’?

Meghan Markle will be the first member of the royal family with African ancestry in modern times, inspiring some social media commentators to call her a “black princess.”

Her upcoming wedding to Prince Harry has also revived a debate on whether an 18th-century Germanborn queen, who married King George III at 17 and bore 15 children, was actually the earliest “black princess” to be accepted into the British monarchy.

An official royal biography of Queen Charlotte notes that the daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-strelitz was born in a German castle in 1744, marrying George III in 1761.

There is no mention of any other heritage but Mario de Valdes y Cocom, a historian of the African diaspora, has argued that the queen has African roots that can be traced through her direct links to a”black branch” of the Portuguese royal family.

Much of the case for Queen Charlotte’s African heritage is based on several portraits by Scottish artist Allan Ramsay, which shows her with tightly curled hair and, according to some interpretations, African facial features.

The Royal Collection Trust describes one of Ramsay’s paintings as getting close to “the elegance, subtlety and precision of French portraiture,” but it makes no mention of the differences in the queen’s hair and facial features compared with her depiction in portraits by other artists.

The trust was established by the Queen in 1993 to manage the collection of the sovereign which is the largest private art collection in the world.

Valdes argued that Ramsay, an anti-slavery activist, had wanted to show the real Charlotte while other portrait artists who painted her had followed the convention of the time to soften “undesirable features.”

But Desmond Shawe-taylor, surveyor of the queen’s pictures, told

newspaper that a large collection of caricatures of Charlotte, held by the British Museum, showed no hint of any African features.

“None of them shows her as African, and you’d suspect they would if she was visible of African descent,” Shawe-taylor said. “You’d expect they would have a field day if she were.”

In the early 1790s, Queen Charlotte acquired the Frogmore estate close to Windsor Castle, a royal residence outside London.

By coincidence — or perhaps not — Prince Charles, Harry’s father, will host an evening reception at Frogmore House for Harry and Meghan after their wedding on May 19.