Dear reader, we have a treat for you… Queen Charlottehits shelves on May 9, following the May 4 premiere ofQueen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Storyon Netflix.
EW has your exclusive sneak peek at the novel below with a first excerpt.
Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz became a breakout character in the first season of the hit Netflix series.
Corey Mylchreest as Young King George, India Amarteifio as Young Queen Charlotte, Michelle Fairley as Princess Augusta.Liam Daniel/Netflix
She was married to King George III, a.k.a.
Mad King George, and ruled for nearly six decades.
Charlotte died in 1818 at the age of 74.
The cover of ‘Queen Charlotte’ by Julia Quinn and Shonda Rhimes.Netflix
Read on for more of your first-taste ofQueen Charlotteandpre-order the novel here.
Then there were the many and sundry double-barreled lands and properties that made up her heritage.
It was the simplest of the bunch, but that wasn’t why she liked it.
Her tastes rarely ran to the simple, after all.
She was not a simple creature.
But she liked being called Lottie.
She liked it because hardly anyone ever used it.
You had to know her to call her Lottie.
Her mother was not immediately persuaded by Charlotte’s arguments, but her older brother Adolphus had intervened.
Charlotte had made a good case, he’d said.
She’d shown logic and intelligence, and surely that should be rewarded.
Adolphus was the one who’d coined the pet name Lottie.
And that was the true reason it was her favorite name.
It had been bestowed upon her by her favorite brother.
Pardon, her former favorite brother.
Charlotte wanted to ignore him.
She was bored and furious, never a good combination.
“Statues are works of art,” she said icily.
“Art is beautiful.”
This made her brother smile, damn his eyes.
“Art can be beautiful to gaze upon,” he said with some amusement.
“You, on the other hand, are ridiculous to the eye.”
“Is there a point?”
“You have not moved an inch in six hours.”
He should not have gone there.
Charlotte leveled her dark eyes on his with a ferocity that ought to have terrified him.
“I am wearing Lyonnaise silk.
Encrusted with Indian sapphires.
With an overlay of two-hundred-year-old lace.”
“And you look beautiful,” he said.
He reached out to pat her knee, then hastily withdrew his hand when he caught her expression.
“Apparently too much movement could cause the sapphires to shred the lace.”
“Do you want me to shred the lace?
She did not wait for him to answer.
They both knew he was not meant to.
The bones of whales.
Whales died so I could look like this.”
At that, Adolphus laughed outright.
