“Queen Charlotte” Has a Sexual Assault Problem

TW: Sexual Assault

Obviously — or maybe not obviously because it doesn’t seem to be treated as s/a in the show — I am talking about Agatha and her husband, Lord Danbury. We are introduced to Agatha being assaulted by her husband, and the way it’s repeatedly shown and treated is dicey at best. This is one of the biggest problems in the show, so let’s dig into why that is.

First, we have to establish that this is in fact sexual assault. I have heard a lot of people say oh it’s not sexual assault because it’s just her duty in marriage. Even just from Wikipedia, the definition includes: “Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will.” This is obviously not something Agatha wants to be doing, but it’s something she feels she has to be doing because he’s her husband. That’s marital rape. And it’s important to call this what it is, to treat this as sexual assault, because in the US, marital rape was legal in all 50 states until the 1970s. It wasn’t made illegal in all 50 states until 1993. Thirty years ago, it was still legal in the US, and in many places in the world, it still is legal. So this is not a small issue.

Thankfully, we do see Agatha have a big problem with this reality. It’s not being treated as though she would be fine with it just because it’s been sold as her “duty.” Women throughout history have had to endure sexual assault as part of their daily lives, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t aware that it was something they didn’t want. That’s an important distinction that Queen Charlotte does well. Agatha is enduring, not accepting, and in her way, subverting what she’s forced to do.

One of my biggest questions is, why show this at all? We lose nothing if it simply starts with her in the bath, or fleeing the bed as her husband falls asleep. What is the virtue of showing this over and over again? What I think it was thought or meant to be, and what makes me honestly sick, is that they thought it was funny. I felt ill watching this happen to her the first time, and even with Lord Danbury taking out his teeth, I had to ask myself, is this supposed to be funny, or just further gross us out? I was deeply uncomfortable, not just from watching the sexual assault portrayed onscreen, but how it was being done. But with just the one, I was willing to work with it. To say it was supposed to make us uncomfortable and show Agatha’s desensitization and disdain, and we would get her outrage later.

But then they kept showing it. I think it’s four times in three episodes. That’s astronomical. And that was when I started getting outraged for Agatha. Not just that this was happening to her, but that it was being exploited, and still worse, being played for laughs. Lord Danbury is a comical figure, a caricature of someone who is old and foolish. He can be those things, though, without making a mockery of how serious what he’s doing to Agatha is. The show seems to vacillate between what it wants to say. When Agatha has her speech after he dies about being raised for him, about not knowing how to breathe air he didn’t exhale, it’s devastating. With Arsema’s performance, we feel the weight of all she’s endured. Yet, when we see the sexual assault scenes, the repetitiveness of her banging into the headboard, the overblown and almost farcical way it’s played, makes it seem like we should be laughing.

I don’t pretend to know what was in the creator’s minds when they did this. Maybe they meant it to be deeply serious. If that’s the case, they largely failed. The amount of posts I’ve seen calling out this moment as “funny or gross” or even just outright laughing about it, makes me uncomfortable at best. And the amount of people who are saying no, it’s not rape, he’s just making her have sex, as if that isn’t the actual definition, is why we need more responsibility from media in regards to rape. Hell, there isn’t even a warning for this in the show, nor is it part of the rating on Netflix. At least for Bridgerton Season 1, they did the latter. If I hadn’t been warned by a commenter before I watched, it would have caught me totally off guard and been even more upsetting.

While I fully admit that I don’t know what they were going for here, the lack of acknowledgment of this as sexual assault on a production level makes me think it’s supposed to be played for laughs. Regardless, they needed to be more responsible with this material, and I’m highly disappointed that, after a season that prized consent so highly between Kate and Anthony, we’re back to damaging portrayals of rape. This was a big disappointment.