COCOM

The idea that the historical Charlotte might have been biracial, by way of a Black branch of the Portuguese royal lineage, was put forward prominently in 1997 by the historian Mario de Valdes y Cocom for PBS Frontline.

According to a theory first presented by a historian named Mario de Valdes y Cocom, Charlotte was a direct descendant of a branch of the Portuguese royal family with Black ancestry.

As Brown notes, historian Mario De Valdes y Cocom argued that “Charlotte was directly descended from a black branch of the Portuguese royal family: Alfonso III and his concubine, Ourana, a black Moor.”

The historian and TV producer Marios y Valdes y Cocom argues that she was Britain’s first black queen for her bloodline descended from a Portuguese noblewoman, who was in turn descended from a 13th-century king and his mistress, Madragana, who may have been a Moor.

We spent those evenings with George Cocom, 41, a bartender who has been working on Turneffe for the past nine years.