English court spectacle linked African blackness to ugliness fixable only in Britannia

Evidence

Inspired by climate theory, it was the story of twelve ugly African princesses of the river god Niger who learn they can be “made beautiful” if they travel to “Britannia,” where the sun “beams shine day and night, and are of force / To blanch an Æthiop, and revive a corpse.” Queen Anne herself and eleven court ladies played the African princesses in blackface, inaugurating the use of black paint on the royal stage. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 82

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s earlier article ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ — court fashion and body-dress signaling, and blackface as a performative marker of racial hierarchy.
• SEED: The masque as the court’s theatrical justification for colonization — the aesthetic ‘whitening’ ritual as propaganda preceding/justifying the Virginia venture.