“Queen Charlotte reminds me that we’re all capable of loving and being loved, disabilities included”

A new television series has seen disability advocate Laura Pettenuzzo – and much of the world – moved by the story of a woman falling for a man with psychosocial disability. It might be historical fiction but, as Laura writes, this narrative is a powerful symbol of growing acceptance.

Like many of us with a Netflix subscription, I’ve recently binged ‘Queen Charlotte’ and cried happy tears at its representation of love and mental illness.

In this show – a spin-off of the wildly popular Bridgerton series – we see a portrayal of British Monarch King George III, who ruled between 1760 and 1820. George struggled with a mental illness that is not specified in ‘Queen Charlotte’, though historians suspect it was a combination of bipolar and dementia. 

The series has George enduring all sorts of horrific treatments in an attempt to be fixed. He tries to stay away from his new wife, Charlotte, to protect her. He shouts at her and tells her to leave him, that she deserves better than him, better than the “half-life” that he could offer her.

Charlotte, though initially hurt and confused by George’s behaviour, eventually sees what he is trying to do. She does not let him push her away. She does not leave.

Instead, she reassures him, “If what we have is half, then we shall make it the very best half.”

Instead, she asserts that she loved him exactly as he is, proclaiming, “I care not for his sanity. I care for his happiness. I care for his soul. Let him be mad if mad is what he needs”.

I cried when I watched the scenes between George and Charlotte, both because of their beauty and because I have been George. I have pushed my loved ones away to protect them from the burden of my presence. I have told them – friends, and partners – to leave, and many of them did. 

‘Queen Charlotte’ challenged my conviction that my mental illness and my cerebral palsy make me impossible to love. If Charlotte could choose to stay, I reasoned, if she believed that George was worth staying for, then someone, someday, might believe the same of me.

Internalised ableism is at the core of my conviction. But that conviction is reinforced every time someone on a dating app says they’re “not ready to date someone in a wheelchair”. 

‘Queen Charlotte’ prompted me to reflect on how far we’ve come in our understanding of mental illness. There are medications and therapies and tools which have helped me address my maladaptive thoughts and behaviours, including the urge to push people away. We are encouraged to talk about our mental health rather than suffer in silence. 

Dating app Bumble has even given users the option to answer mental health-related prompts on their profiles. But that’s not enough, when suicide is still the leading cause of death among Australians aged 15-44, when one in six Australian women experience depression, a statistic which increases during and after pregnancy, and one in three experience anxiety.

We need a mental health system that acknowledges and addresses the systemic barriers to mental health and wellbeing. Barriers like ableism and stigma, as well as the impact of the pandemic, racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. We need a mental health system that sees all of us, like Charlotte saw all of George.

Until we have such a system, I’ll watch ‘Queen Charlotte’ and I’ll remember that we’re all capable of loving and being loved, disabilities included.