Florence, Rome, Paris, London — she painted all four. Europe called the work magnificent. Nobody asked who made it. Set across the Romantic Era (~1815–1835) in the great cities of Europe — London, Paris, Rome, Florence — The Romantic follows Isabelle de Bourbon, 25, a Black woman raised by a minor branch of the French Bourbon family as a recognized ward bearing the royal family name. The Bourbon restoration after Napoleon has returned her family to a position of influence, and Isabelle has been raised with the full formation of a Bourbon noblewoman: she speaks French, Italian, English, and German, plays piano at concert level, and paints with a technical mastery that her tutors acknowledged as exceeding their own. She paints under the condition of not publishing — a woman of her standing does not exhibit publicly. Her arranged marriage to Edouard de Chabrier, a French diplomat posted to Rome, gives her both access to the most artistically significant city in Romantic Europe and a husband whose initial adherence to the era's conventions begins, episode by episode, to give way to something more honest. The series is structured as a Grand Tour of Romantic Europe with a love story at its center.
S1E1 — Paris
The Bourbon court restored. Isabelle managing its social demands and painting in secret. The marriage to Edouard announced. Her first look at Rome in the opening season's final scene.
S1E7 — Roma
Isabelle encountering Rome for the first time. The Colosseum at dawn. The Vatican. And the realization that the city sees paintings, not painters.
S2E10 — La Signature
Series finale: Isabelle's name — her real name — on a painting, publicly, for the first time. Edouard standing beside her.
