Regency and Equality?

I hopped on to the Bridgerton (Netflix) bandwagon with some reluctance because I'm not a huge fan of period pieces which are about the intrigue amongst nobility and the privileged. Someone has described Bridgerton as a mash-up of Jane Austen and a trashy romance novel and that about sums it up for me. I'm hanging on the edge of the wagon with Ruth, but barely.

What has intrigued me is Shonda Rhimes' emphasis on the racial diversity of British society during the Regency period around the turn of the 19th century. Mad King George III was monarch and it has been speculated that his consort, Queen Charlotte (Charlottetown PEI, Charlotte NC) was a Person of Colour because of Moorish heritage. According to the series, this opened the way for a diversity which history tells us disappeared during the Victorian era. 

Charlotte's background is certainly the source of scholarly debate, but there is some truth that during George's reign Black's and People of Colour were more widely accepted and represented in different strata of society. This may have been because of the concerted effort to abolish slavery, a movement which was hotly contested but eventually received popular support long before emancipation in the United States.  Leading the way were devout Christians, including William Wilberforce, who did have the king's ear and was an eloquent speaker decrying slavery in Parliament. 

In so many British period pieces the cast is uniformly white, although the recent Sanditon series, based on an unfinished novel by Jane Austen, has a significant Black character, Austen's only one. 

It's worthwhile to imagine society outside of stereotypes and Bridgerton certainly does so. Why not?