Red, White and Royal Blue was a huge bestseller, and people have been looking forward to the film adaptation, which comes out on Amazon Prime this month. The book is one of the most popular LGBTQ romances in years, plus it peppers in the pop culture obsession with royalty, fake politics and the transatlantic culture clash. The core love story is about a British prince – named Prince Henry – falling in love with the son of the American president. As you can imagine, the British media is worked up about what this book and movie say about British royalty and how Americans see Britain and their royal family. Instead of just shrugging it off and saying “hey, it’s a charming work of fiction,” the usual suspects are lining up to make this about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and how America is laughing at Britain.

Fictional dramas that exploit a transatlantic obsession with the Royal family are a mini-industry in their own right, be it Channel 4’s Harry Enfield satirical soap opera The Windsors or E!’s primetime series The Royals, starring Elizabeth Hurley, which ran from 2015 to 2018. Not to mention, of course, Netflix’s ongoing juggernaut The Crown, which incurs more public wrath with each new season for its creative blurring of fact with fiction. There have been novels, too, mostly in the unashamedly commercial lowbrow romance genre, including Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan’s 2015 The Royal We – a giddy fairy tale about an American girl who finds love with a royal prince, and which McQuiston has cited as an influence on Red, White & Royal Blue. Forget the White House: evidently the real objective of the American dream is to gain entry to the British aristocracy.

Yet the novel’s success also raises ethical questions about the responsibility of fiction when it comes to playing fast and loose with the private life of a living person. Prince Harry is unlikely to complain about the novel’s gay storyline, not to mention its gushy depictions of Henry as extremely hot in bed. But he may admit to some private misgivings over the way the book exploits the very real loss of his mother, albeit in loosely fictionalised form: Henry – whose siblings are “Princess Beatrice” and “Prince Philip” – has been badly affected by the abrupt death of his father 14 months previously. What’s more, Harry’s publicly articulated real-life struggles with mental health and battles with duty, family and the paparazzi provide much of the novel’s fictional emotional capital. And forget accusations of unconscious racial bias: this Royal family are nakedly homophobic.

Of course, if Harry does have anxieties about his private unhappiness being cannibalised by novelists in the name of art, not to mention money, you could argue he has only himself to blame.

“The popularity of this book does seem to suggest what many in Britain have long feared, that the Royal family have become the Kardashians of popular culture,” says the veteran British royal correspondent Robert Jobson, who regularly contributes to NBC and who was a script editor on The Royals. “And that has partly come out of the whole Megxit affair and Netflix documentaries. Most of all, there was Harry’s book, Spare, which dealt with a lot of areas that wouldn’t normally come out in public. It’s interesting, because up to now, British publishers in particular haven’t been very interested in this sort of thing.”

Certainly, Red, White & Royal Blue wasn’t originally published in this country, although a new edition, tied to the film, was published last month. An industry insider, who didn’t want to be named, points out there are currently sponsored posts about the book on the UK Amazon site, which suggests the publisher is now putting serious money behind it. The book is also climbing up the Kindle and Apple charts.

“I do think the author has been very clever,” says Jobson. “It’s an LGBT project by a writer who knows the market and is utilising a genre to create a bestseller. If it had been written 20 years ago, there would have been more of an uproar about it. There’s a general apathy now among the younger generation, who don’t have the same connection to the monarchy. And I think certainly in America, among the general public, there is a greater frivolity in the way the monarchy is perceived.”

[From The Telegraph]

“The popularity of this book does seem to suggest what many in Britain have long feared, that the Royal family have become the Kardashians of popular culture…” In truth, the Windsors wish they were as exciting and popular as the Kardashians. At least the Kardashians have true soap opera storylines, whereas the Windsors just have old farts being racist, clueless and lazy. And why would Prince Harry worry about this book or movie in any way? It’s clear that some real-life stuff has been mined for this work of fiction, but that’s fine, and in fact, that’s probably contributed to the popularity of the story – there’s something familiar about it, but skewed for a LGBTQ romance. “It’s interesting, because up to now, British publishers in particular haven’t been very interested in this sort of thing…” Like… Jobson’s books never sell. Most of those royal biographies don’t sell. The only royal books, in recent years, to make a huge impact are Spare and Finding Freedom.

Posters courtesy of Amazon Prime.