QUEEN ELIZABETH, SOME YEARS AGO, WITH A FEW OF HER GRANDCHILDREN

Oznell · ‎11-08-2014

I just came across this, and thought it was so cute. I believe it was taken about 7 years ago:

Princess Charlotte and Prince George are so little here! I think the two Phillips children are Princess Anne's granddaughters (gulp), as is little Mia Tindall-- carrying her great-grandmother's purse with aplomb.

James, Viscount Severn and Lady Louise are Edward and Sophie's children.

I love all the clothes, the little frilled socks, etc.

There as been a population explosion of royal grandchildren since this was taken, but I thought it was fun.

That fabulous green drawing room is in Windsor Castle, I think.

twinsister · ‎03-12-2010

Great picture. Love little Mia holding the purse - as if she is in training for the future!!

Thanks for posting.

beach-mom · ‎03-09-2010

@Oznell - This is an adorable picture! I think here Lady Louise looks just like her dad Prince Edward.

She looks so happy with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Thanks for posting the picture!

Sooner · ‎03-10-2010

Charlotte and Savannah look so much like the Queen!

gertrudecloset · ‎02-13-2021

Very nice. Since Covid has left me indoors a lot now, I've become somewhat of an auodiadtic in my quest to learn more about earlier times in Britain and Africa, but Africa specifically. It really is very interesting to look back on history. I never appreciated history when I was growing up.

Thanks for sharing @Oznell . Here's some of what I learned about Queen Charlotte of Great Britain.

Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), wife of the English King George III (1738-1820), was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a Black branch of the Portuguese royal house. The riddle of Queen Charlotte's African ancestry was solved inadvertently as the result of an earlier investigation into imagery of the Black magi featured in certain 15th century Flemish paintings of the Christmas narrative. A couple of art historians had suggested that they must have been portraits of actual contemporaries since the artist, without seeing them, would not have been aware of the subtleties in coloring and facial bone structure of individuals of African descent, which these figures invariably represented. Enough evidence has been accumulated to propose that the models were, in all probability, members of the Portuguese de Sousa family. Several relatives had accompanied their cousin Princess Isabella to the Netherlands when she arrived there in 1429 to marry the grand duke, Philip the Good of Burgundy.

At least 492 lines of descent can be traced from Queen Charlotte through her triple ancestry from Margarita de Castro y Sousa to Martin Alfonso de Sousa Chichorro, the illegitimate son of King Alfonso of Portugal and his Moorish mistress, Oruana/Madragana. Interestingly enough, in a gene pool that was comparatively miniscule due to royal inbreeding, it was from Martin Alfonso's de Sousa wife, Ines de Valladares, that the British queen inherited most of her African Islamic ancestry.

Queen Charlotte's Portrait:

The Royal Family The African characteristics evident in so many of the queen's portraits certainly had political significance, since artists of that period were expected to play down, soften or even obliterate features in a subject's face, especially a woman's, that were not considered to meet the standards of beauty for the times.

Sir Allan Ramsay was the artist responsible for the majority of the paintings of the queen, and his representations of her were the most decidedly African of all her portraits. Ramsay's anti-slavery sentiments were well known. He'd also married the niece of Lord Mansfield, the English judge whose 1772 decision was the first in a series of rulings that finally ended slavery in the British Empire. It should be noted too that by the time Sir Ramsay was commissioned to do his first portrait of the queen, he was already, by marriage, uncle to Dido Elizabeth Lindsay, the Black grand-niece of Lord Mansfield.

Thus, from just a cursory look at the social awareness and political activism at that level of English society, it would be surprising if the queen's African features were of no significance to the Abolitionist movement.

Lord Mansfield's Black grand-niece, for example, Ms. Lindsay, was the subject of at least two formal full-sized portraits. Obviously prompted by or meant to appeal to abolitionist sympathies, they depicted the celebrated friendship between herself and a white cousin.

It is perhaps because of this fairly obvious case of pointed portraiture that makes one suspect that Queen Charlotte's coronation picture, copies of which were sent out to all four corners of the Empire, signified a specific stance on slavery held at least by that circle of the English intelligentsia to which Ramsay belonged.

A Negative Mind ~ Will give you a Negative Life

shoesnbags · ‎03-10-2010

@gertrudecloset wrote:
Very nice. Since Covid has left me indoors a lot now, I've become somewhat of an auodiadtic in my quest to learn more about earlier times in Britain and Africa, but Africa specifically. It really is very interesting to look back on history. I never appreciated history when I was growing up.

Thanks for sharing @Oznell . Here's some of what I learned about Queen Charlotte of Great Britain.

Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), wife of the English King George III (1738-1820), was directly descended from Margarita de Castro y Sousa, a Black branch of the Portuguese royal house. The riddle of Queen Charlotte's African ancestry was solved inadvertently as the result of an earlier investigation into imagery of the Black magi featured in certain 15th century Flemish paintings of the Christmas narrative. A couple of art historians had suggested that they must have been portraits of actual contemporaries since the artist, without seeing them, would not have been aware of the subtleties in coloring and facial bone structure of individuals of African descent, which these figures invariably represented. Enough evidence has been accumulated to propose that the models were, in all probability, members of the Portuguese de Sousa family. Several relatives had accompanied their cousin Princess Isabella to the Netherlands when she arrived there in 1429 to marry the grand duke, Philip the Good of Burgundy.

At least 492 lines of descent can be traced from Queen Charlotte through her triple ancestry from Margarita de Castro y Sousa to Martin Alfonso de Sousa Chichorro, the illegitimate son of King Alfonso of Portugal and his Moorish mistress, Oruana/Madragana. Interestingly enough, in a gene pool that was comparatively miniscule due to royal inbreeding, it was from Martin Alfonso's de Sousa wife, Ines de Valladares, that the British queen inherited most of her African Islamic ancestry.

Queen Charlotte's Portrait:

The African characteristics evident in so many of the queen's portraits certainly had political significance, since artists of that period were expected to play down, soften or even obliterate features in a subject's face, especially a woman's, that were not considered to meet the standards of beauty for the times.

Sir Allan Ramsay was the artist responsible for the majority of the paintings of the queen, and his representations of her were the most decidedly African of all her portraits. Ramsay's anti-slavery sentiments were well known. He'd also married the niece of Lord Mansfield, the English judge whose 1772 decision was the first in a series of rulings that finally ended slavery in the British Empire. It should be noted too that by the time Sir Ramsay was commissioned to do his first portrait of the queen, he was already, by marriage, uncle to Dido Elizabeth Lindsay, the Black grand-niece of Lord Mansfield.

Thus, from just a cursory look at the social awareness and political activism at that level of English society, it would be surprising if the queen's African features were of no significance to the Abolitionist movement.

Lord Mansfield's Black grand-niece, for example, Ms. Lindsay, was the subject of at least two formal full-sized portraits. Obviously prompted by or meant to appeal to abolitionist sympathies, they depicted the celebrated friendship between herself and a white cousin.

It is perhaps because of this fairly obvious case of pointed portraiture that makes one suspect that Queen Charlotte's coronation picture, copies of which were sent out to all four corners of the Empire, signified a specific stance on slavery held at least by that circle of the English intelligentsia to which Ramsay belonged.

@gertrudecloset

Fascinating!

"Breathe in, breathe out, move on." Jimmy Buffett

Queen of shop · ‎12-13-2020

@Oznell Thanks for posting. What a lovely picture. Just a grandma with her grandbabies. I admire the Queen so much.

spiderw · ‎06-14-2010

What a sweet lovely picture of the Queen and her grandchildren. It is nice to see the children gathered around their grandmother. I do love the room too, quite stunning.

Oznell · ‎11-08-2014

I'm struck by that resemblance too, @beach-mom ! She has that sort of shy smile he had as a youth, too.

That Queen Charlotte material has long been a source of fascination and debate to historians, @gertrudecloset -- thanks for your input. A lot of these monarchies are more heterogeneous than it first appears, for sure.