Red, White & Royal Blue: Chapters 8–11

Nobody’s ever got the nerve to be cheeky to a prince, except you.

I feel that James I, who fell madly in love with a very fit and exceptionally dim knight at a tilting match and immediately made him a gentleman of the bedchamber (a real title), would take mercy upon my particular plight.

Come back to me when you’re done being flung through the firmament, you lost Pleiad.

“Yeah, I mean, it’d be great if we could magically mobilize every eligible marginalized voter in red states, but political campaigns have a finite amount of time and resources, and we have to prioritize based on projections,” WASPy Hunter says, as if Alex, the First Son of the United States, is unfamiliar with how campaigns work.

Alex, please don’t tell me Pez has indoctrinated you with K-pop.

Gilded edges, spindly calligraphy: THE CHAIRMAN AND COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT OF THE CHAMPIONSHIPS REQUEST THE PLEASURE OF THE COMPANY OF ALEXANDER CLAREMONT-DIAZ IN THE ROYAL BOX ON THE 6TH OF JULY, 2020.

Henry’s face is calm and genial, but one of his knees has shifted over to dig into Alex’s. “They’re called dashikis, Philip, and he wore one once.”

His “apartment” is a sprawling warren of twenty-two rooms on the northwest side of the palace closest to the Orangery.

Henry’s bedroom is as cavernous and opulent and insufferably beige as Alex could have imagined, with a gilded baroque bed and windows overlooking the gardens.

Henry’s bedroom is as cavernous and opulent and insufferably beige as Alex could have imagined, with a gilded baroque bed and windows overlooking the gardens.

But Henry’s got an entirely different compendium of knowledge.

“It’s young people like Brittany who give us hope for the future of our party. Which is why I’m pleased to announce that, as president, I’ll be launching the Richards Youth Congress program. Other politicians don’t want people—especially discerning young people like you—to get up close in our offices and see just how the sausage gets made—”

The polls aren’t great, Paul Ryan is getting sanctimonious about the Second Amendment, and there’s some Salon hot take going around, WOULD ELLEN CLAREMONT HAVE GOTTEN ELECTED IF SHE WEREN’T CONVENTIONALLY BEAUTIFUL?

There aren’t enough hours in the day for Alex to find a pretense to get there, and no matter how much the world enjoys their public friendship, they’re running out of plausible excuses to be seen together.

I canvassed for him for twenty-seven hours straight.

“I just don’t understand what the point is. Like, what is Luna’s endgame here? Is he some kind of...sleeper agent sent from the future to give me an ulcer?”

God, whiskey makes him maudlin.

They sit there until Henry finishes his drink, Alex listening to the placating murmur of Henry talking about different brands of gin, thankful that for once Henry seems happy to carry the conversation alone.

[His] vocabulary is apparently now only expletives.

He eyes the curtains furtively, as if considering hiding in them.

First, he was a brilliant writer. Second, I knew you were named after him (the pair of you share an alarming number of traits, by the by: passionate determination, never knowing when to shut up, &c &c). And third, some saucy tart once tried to impugn my virtue against an oil painting of him, and in the halls of memory, some things demand context.

First, he was a brilliant writer. Second, I knew you were named after him (the pair of you share an alarming number of traits, by the by: passionate determination, never knowing when to shut up, &c &c). And third, some saucy tart once tried to impugn my virtue against an oil painting of him, and in the halls of memory, some things demand context.

I must inform you, any trace of King George III blood I have would curdle in my very veins and render me useless to you.

If you did decide to take the option mentioned at the start of this email, I do hope you haven’t read the rest of this rubbish.
Regards,
Haplessly Romantic Heretic Prince Henry the Utterly Daft

I’m ruminating on identity and your question about where a person like me comes from, and as best as I can explain it, here’s a story...

Nora’s playlist has segued into “Here You Come Again” by Dolly Parton by the time Alex swings out of the side of the jeep by one arm.

“Anyway," Henry says airily, “how long have you lot come out here?”

Down by the dock, June and Nora are embroiled in what looks like an improvised jousting match, charging at each other on the backs of inflatable animals with pool noodles.

They’ve only broached the topic in passing obscenities over text since the news broke.

June plucks away at “Annie’s Song,” you fill up my senses like a night in a forest, and the breeze keeps moving to meet the highest branches of the trees, and the water keeps rising to meet the bulkheads, and Henry leans down to meet Alex’s mouth, and Alex is. Well, Alex is so in love he could die.

“I was looking for someone else. Handsome, petulant, short, not pleasant until after ten a.m.? Have you seen him?”

I’m allowed, all right, and it doesn’t make me a liar; it makes me a man with some infinitesimal shred of self-preservation, unlike you, and you don’t get to come here and call me a coward for it.

The doorknob turns, and Alex opens his eyes to find Henry, holding two mugs and smiling a wan, unreadable smile.

“You’re one to talk. I wasn’t the one who stormed the palace in a fit of pique..."

“Not there yet!” Henry says over his shoulder. He gives Alex’s arm another pull to keep him running. “Keep moving, you wastrel.”

Deep basins of fountains are planted in the floor between statues on heavy pedestals, and effigies lie behind black doorways with the Resurrection carved into their slate.

He brings Henry’s hand to his mouth and kisses the little knob of his knuckle, the skin over the blue vein there, bloodlines, pulses, the old blood kept in perpetuity within these walls, and he thinks, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

I'm there for whatever you decide you want to do, just, like, let me know if I need to start practicing gazing wistfully out the window, waiting for my love to return from the war.

Have you ever had something go so horribly, horribly, unbelievably badly that you’d like to be loaded into a cannon and jettisoned into the merciless black maw of outer space?

Have you ever had something go so horribly, horribly, unbelievably badly that you’d like to be loaded into a cannon and jettisoned into the merciless black maw of outer space?