Short Review: Red, White and Royal Blue
Aug. 20th, 2023 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennariaI have the book out of the library, so I will revisit this with a comparison post, but in the meantime!
Aside from a bit in the beginning (I am not a fan of second-hand embarrassment), this is the frothiest, fluffiest rom-com ever. Our two leads are very pretty, it hits all the expected beats, and the only part where I really blinked and shook my head was where a major Democratic party strategy was enrolling significant new voters in Texas and somehow this did not get featured in attack ads and challenged to hell and gone by the Republicans. Is the author from Texas? Because I feel like there was some significant wish fulfillment going on there.
(Also, if y'all expect me to believe that the King of England is a homophobic old bastard, nothing more, maybe cast someone other than Stephen Fry? Because I instantly came up with theories about how he's being a bastard because of his own Lost Love back in the day.)
I did see some reactions on Tumblr that wanted it angstier. Eh, de gustibus. Let me have my silly rom-com! Sometimes you just want a Hallmark movie but gay!
Aside from a bit in the beginning (I am not a fan of second-hand embarrassment), this is the frothiest, fluffiest rom-com ever. Our two leads are very pretty, it hits all the expected beats, and the only part where I really blinked and shook my head was where a major Democratic party strategy was enrolling significant new voters in Texas and somehow this did not get featured in attack ads and challenged to hell and gone by the Republicans. Is the author from Texas? Because I feel like there was some significant wish fulfillment going on there.
(Also, if y'all expect me to believe that the King of England is a homophobic old bastard, nothing more, maybe cast someone other than Stephen Fry? Because I instantly came up with theories about how he's being a bastard because of his own Lost Love back in the day.)
I did see some reactions on Tumblr that wanted it angstier. Eh, de gustibus. Let me have my silly rom-com! Sometimes you just want a Hallmark movie but gay!
(no subject)
Date: 2023-08-21 04:21 am (UTC)James II, one of his grandsons, was deemed unsuitable by parliament over religious conflicts and was kicked out (he wanted to remain a Catholic, and hoo-boy that did *not* fly after Charles I and Oliver Cromwell). He was replaced by his sister Mary and her husband William of Orange.
The former James II lived in France for the rest of his life, and later one of his sons was recognized James III (and later a son of his was the storied Bonnie Prince Charlie) by some European powers, inciting the Jacobite followers in England to support them against the new new dynasty, the Hanoverian Georges. From whence descended Queen Victoria, and the family now called House of Windsor.
Making the AU King of England in 2020 be a James III means it's a straightforward substitution for fictional purposes. There haven't been any notable Hanover descendants named James, I would guess exactly to avoid bringing up the troubled history of the 17th century, which a fictional James IV would have done. The copious romantic literature about Jacobean expats, spies, breathless escapes, civil unrest, lovers parted and reunited across political divides, etc., etc., (Walter Scott was one of the early writers on this theme), was not always very comedic but definitely played into the romance genre as it is today.