The sensational true tale that inspired the motion picture Belle (2013) starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Tom Wilkinson and Miranda Richardson -- a stunning story of the first mixed-race girl introduced to high society England and raised as a lady. Dido Elizabeth Belle was the illegitimate daughter of Admiral Sir John Lindsay of the Royal Navy and the enslaved biracial African-American woman Maria Belle; Dido was sent to live in the household of William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, one of the most powerful men of the time and a leading opponent of slavery -- in his capacity of Lord Chief Justice he was ruling on cases affecting the legitimacy of the whole slave trade. Growing up in his lavish estate, Dido was raised as a sister and companion to her white cousin, Elizabeth. When a joint portrait of the girls, commissioned by Mansfield, was unveiled, eighteenth-century England was shocked to see a Black woman and white woman depicted as equals.