Meghan Markle is not the first biracial member of the British royal family, tracing her lineage to at least two queens of African descent, according to a royal expert.
“All British royal families have African blood,” said Lady Colin Campbell, a socialist of Jamaican descent who has written numerous books on the Windsors, including “People of Color and the Royals,” published in 2019.
One of the black kings was Queen Charlotte, who is the focus of the Netflix series “Bridgerton,” Campbell told The Post. Born in 1774, Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a direct descendant of Margarita de Castro Souza, a Portuguese noblewoman who traced her line to Madragana Ben Aloandro, the North African mistress of King Alfonso III of Portugal in the 13th century. Historian Mario de Valdés i Cocom has said that Charlotte’s depiction in royal paintings emphasizes her African features.
In addition to Charlotte, who was married to King George III, Campbell and other historians point to Philip of Hainault, the wife and adviser of King Edward III. Philippa was of North African Moorish descent, born in northern France in 1314.
“When you consider this story, it’s absurd to accuse the royal family of racism,” Campbell said, referring to Markle’s recent interview with Oprah Winfrey in which she claimed she was mistreated because of his race and that he had suicidal thoughts. Markle also said a member of the royal family expressed concern about her baby’s skin color before the birth of her son, Archie, in May 2019.
According to Campbell, there were “constant marriages” between the British and Europeans who have “a proportionately large percentage of African blood,” he said. And there was little in the way of racial prejudice until the late seventeenth century, when the British colonies of the West Indies increasingly relied on slave labor for the cultivation of sugar cane.
“When sugar began to be more important than gold for the British community, the slaves who worked the fields were dehumanized,” he said.
Caesar Shaw.
It has been debated whether the family of Princess Diana, the Spencers, were part of the slave-owning nobility. An 18th-century portrait of ancestor John Spencer depicts him and his son, also named John, the future First Earl Spencer, with a black man named Caesar Shaw crouched near a dog. Historians have described Shaw alternately as a slave or servant. Many Spencers are listed in a database of historical British slaveholders, although it is unclear how they relate to Diana’s line.
Campbell, who has appeared on a British celebrity reality show and wrote one of the first biographies of Princess Diana in 1992 (“Diana in Private”), has also written “Meghan and Harry: The Real Story”. She is not a fan of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. She described Markle’s recent interview with Winfrey as “the cynical ploy on behalf of a greedy woman.”
“I think Meghan Markle is … a very destructive and divisive operator who is reckless in terms of the damage she does while achieving her goals, which are fame and fortune,” Campbell said.