The Rise of the Phenomenon That Is Red, White & Royal Blue
Photo: St. Martin's Griffin/Prime Video
Amazon Studio’s latest film, Red, White & Royal Blue, premiered on Prime Video amid a flurry of excitement. The mega-website has often struggled to get consistent eyeballs on its original films and series, finding itself easily overshadowed by the likes of Netflix, but this was something special. The internet was waiting for this film, having spent years making the novel it was based on one of the biggest romance hits of the decade so far. Directed by Tony Award-winning playwright Matthew Lopez and starring Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, the romantic comedy details the enemies-to-lovers relationship between Alex Claremont-Diaz, the son of the first female President of the United States, and Prince Henry, the grandson of King James III. Its success story is a tale of trope-y goodness, TikTok trends, political curiosity, and the eternal hunt for a happy ever after.
The explosion of BookTok over the past couple of years has left an indelible mark on the publishing industry, catapulting many authors into stratospheric levels of fame, from Colleen Hoover to Taylor Jenkins Read. Among the many books that TikTok turned into a mega-hit is Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue. The novel had already received strong reviews and online hype before BookTok got its hands on it, but after that, all bets were off. It staked out its place on the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists, remaining comfortably present for many months as the fandom exploded across multiple platforms. And the fandom’s presence is a mighty one, dominating TikTok and Tumblr, and helping the book to become one of the most prominent romance novels of the 2020s so far.
McQuiston’s novel is a classic set-up: What happens when you’re forced to pretend to be best friends with your mortal enemy, then that disdain turns to forbidden love? It’s a trope beloved in the romance world, a set-up guaranteed to inspire all manner of sexy shenanigans. Red, White & Royal Blue ups the stakes with both a royal and a political twist. Alex Claremont-Diaz is the First Son of the United States, with his mother facing a tough re-election bid. He is sent to England to attend a royal wedding, which puts him in conflict with Prince Henry, the black sheep of the British monarchy. After a confrontation ends in a fight and the destruction of the wedding cake, the pair are forced to pretend to be pals to prevent a diplomatic crisis. Soon, they’ve grown closer and started up a friends-with-benefits relationship that they must keep secret from their families, the press, and the world.
It’s not just peak romance stuff: it’s top-notch fanfiction content. It was long rumored that the book was initially fanfic for The Social Network before McQuiston pulled a 50 Shades of Grey and filed off the serial numbers. That’s not true, but the book still feels very rooted in the styles and themes of fic that readers so thoroughly love. Enemies-to-lovers is a trope that’s huge in fandom, as are the inclusion of quotes to bookend fics, which McQuiston uses here through the historical notes from real-world queer people that Alex and Henry email to one another. Even the decision to name the British prince of the story Henry, which is also the name of an actual ginger prince living in Montecito, feels like a cheeky wink to the liminal nature of fic in the real world. It’s also delightfully smutty, something the film mercifully does not skimp on.