Red, White, and Royal Blue

“As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.”

Ellen makes this wry comment right after the wedding cake disaster. She is expressing the dichotomy between public and private that will appear at many points in the story. Her personal feelings for her son don’t blind her to the political embarrassment his actions have caused her.

“They’re the White House Trio, but here, in the music room on the third floor of the Residence, they’re just Alex and June and Nora […] Alex pushes them. June steadies them. Nora keeps them honest.”

This quote succinctly expresses the dynamic that exists among the three millennials inhabiting the White House. Their cohesiveness as a group offers them a defense against the tumultuous experience of being constantly in the public eye. Other than Bea, Henry has no such support system readily on hand.

“That’s how it feels here, somehow—wide awake at midnight in a strange place, duty-bound to make it work.”

Alex is drawing a parallel between his father’s California house after his parents’ divorce and the coldness of Kensington Palace. Alex doesn’t yet understand Henry shares his sense of. All his life, the prince has submerged his own identity in an effort conform to his family’s expectations.

“Reading people is what he does. He really doesn’t appreciate some inbred royal baby upending his system. But he did rather enjoy that fight.”

Alex and Henry are stuck in a hospital supply closet. As they wait for their handlers to rescue them, they are given the luxury of a few private moments when nobody is looking. During that brief interlude, they come to reassess one another and learn that they share the same talent.

“He’s been aware for too long that most people don’t navigate thoughts of whether they’ll ever be good enough or if they’re disappointing the entire world. He’s never considered Henry might feel any of the same things.”

Alex expresses the dilemma that both young men face every day. Living constantly in the spotlight gives even their smallest actions great significance. A youthful mistake isn’t simply a personal life lesson. It could have global political implications.

“Alex tries to imagine what they must look like: the prince and the First Son […] It’s intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy. That’s what people see.”

Alex visualizes the glamour that people project onto him and Henry. While it can be a heady experience to be the object of that much adulation, it isn’t real. In the next breath, Alex reminds himself of the turkey episode that exposed all his neuroses to Henry.

“He’s not sure how Henry feels, but some part of his brain that is likely soaked in tequila thinks maybe it would be helpful if Henry could take what he can handle, and Alex could handle the rest. Maybe he can absorb some of the ‘much’ from the place where their shoulders are pressed together.”

Alex and Henry are sitting on a bench under a tree. This is another rare moment when they are afforded some privacy. Alex realizes what a burden Henry carries by being a royal icon. He doesn’t yet understand that the burden is made doubly difficult because of Henry’s sexual orientation.

“It’s nothing like kissing Nora earlier—nothing like kissing anyone he’s ever kissed in his life. It feels as steady and huge as the ground under their feet, as encompassing of every part of him, as likely to knock the wind out of his lungs.”

Henry has just impulsively kissed Alex for the first time. The kiss awakens sensations in Alex that he’s never felt before. The experience comes as a revelation to a young man who has always defined himself as straight before this encounter.

“Straight people, he thinks, probably don’t spend this much time convincing themselves they’re straight.”

In the aftermath of that first kiss, Alex spends hours assessing his response and remembering experiences he had in high school with a same-sex partner.  He wryly begins to understand that behavior he once viewed as meaningless experimentation was probably something more significant. He’s now forced to redefine himself as something he never thought he was.

“Somehow, this is the same person who had Alex so convinced he didn’t care about anything, who still has the rest of the world convinced he’s a mild, unfettered Prince Charming. It’s taken months to get here: the full realization of just how wrong he was.”

Alex marvels at the change in Henry once he finally gets to know him. Henry has spent a lifetime constructing a façade that will be acceptable to his family and the world. It’s possible that Alex has such a hard time reading him because Henry has become a mystery to himself.

“‘Right now, I’m looking for a new dream that’s better too.’ Her big brown Diaz eyes blink up at him. ‘So, I don’t know. Maybe there’s more than one dream for you, or more than one way to get there.’”

June gives Alex this advice after he shares his concern that his career in politics could be derailed by his relationship with Henry. By the end of the novel, a number of characters adjust their sights and pursue new lines of work that don’t conform to rigid expectations of how they can best make a difference in the world.

“Your mother is, without question, the love of my life. I’ll never love anyone else like that. It was wildfire [...] That kind of love is rare, even if it was a complete disaster […] Sometimes you just jump and hope it’s not a cliff.”

Alex’s father offers this advice once he learns how strong his son feels about Henry. Although Oscar is a career politician, when it comes to private matters, he thinks like a romantic. He doesn’t promise Alex that things will work out but urges him to take that leap anyway.

“Alex swallows hard. ‘You’re not even gonna try to be happy?’ ‘For Christ’s sake,’ Henry says, ‘I’ve been trying to be happy my entire idiot life. My birthright is a country, not happiness.’”

This confrontation between Alex and Henry underscores the deep divide that separates them. Alex has been raised to believe in limitless possibilities. Henry has been groomed to fulfill a constricting political role. All his attempts to find happiness within the narrow constraints of his inherited position fail.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a problem that deserved to stay hidden. Never quite trusted myself, or what I wanted. Before you, I was all right letting everything happen to me. I honestly have never thought I deserved to choose.”

Henry has absorbed the homophobic values of his family so completely that he views himself as a problem. It never occurs to him that the system engendering such intolerance is corrupt. Since he rarely moves beyond his family circle, it takes an outsider like Alex to snap him out of his self-abuse.

“When Alex was a kid […] he dreamed of love […] as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it’d turn out he was right both times.”

Alex dreamed of a fairy tale romance. Even though he’s managed to woo Prince Charming, the story is far more complicated than the archetype suggests. The outcome is never a foregone conclusion when fantasy and reality collide.

“He doesn’t care that people think about his body and write about his sex life, real or imagined. He cares that they know, in his own private words, what’s pumping out of his heart.”

Alex is indifferent to external criticism because he’s always kept his real feelings to himself. The publication of his emails unnerves him because he’s disclosed what’s really going on in his heart of hearts. No one besides Henry was ever supposed to know that.

“The worst thing is one of the first big things that ever happens to you in your life. It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips it open and carves out this chasm down below to make room […] you’ll always carry it inside you.”

Bea tries to make Alex understand Henry’s dark moods. Losing his father at a young age left Henry unable to process the enormity of the loss. Every time a new loss occurs, Henry associates it with the greatest pain he’s ever known. His incapacity to save himself without Alex’s help stems from this early trauma.

“Henry flinches like he’s been physically slapped. Alex can see it now—this is how he was broken down over the years. Maybe not always as explicitly, but always there, always implied. Remember your place.”

Philip is criticizing Henry and calls him a coward for not stepping up to the role his family has assigned him. As an onlooker, Alex can see how much damage was done to Henry’s psyche by countless earlier episodes just like this one. At least this time, Henry has someone to back him up when he tells his family he’s no coward.

“I’m as much a person and a part of this family as you. I deserve to be happy as much as any of you do. And I don’t think I ever will be if I have to spend my whole life pretending.”

Henry is drawing a distinction between his own private hell and the stiff upper lip that is normally required of members of the royal family. He has been required to sacrifice his own identity in a way that none of the rest can know. Only his sister and mother seem to be willing to give him the change to find happiness on his own terms.

“Are you so determined to believe nothing could change? That nothing should change? We can have a real legacy here, of hope, and love, and change. Not the same tepid shite and drudgery we’ve been selling since World War II.”

Princess Catherine finally stands up to Queen Mary on behalf of her son. Having married an actor and incurred the ire of her parents, she is in a unique position to understand her son’s dilemma. As the next in line to the throne, she is also articulating her vision for a better future for her family and nation.

“Look at them, Mum. They’re not props of a legacy. They’re my children. And I swear on my life, and Arthur’s, I will take you off the throne before I will let them feel the things you made me feel.”

Princess Catherine threatens to disclose her mother’s growing dementia as a pretext for taking the throne, so her warning can’t be easily dismissed or ignored. Everyone in the meeting also realizes that the mistreatment of Henry is only the latest in a long line of abuse that goes back for generations.

“Alex sees it in her eyes at last: She’s afraid of them. She’s afraid of the threat they pose to the perfect Faberge veneer she’s spent her whole life maintaining. They terrify her.”

As a witness to the royal family’s debate, Alex puts his people-reading skills to use. He begins to appreciate the queen’s resistance as something more than sheer stubbornness. She has devoted her life to maintaining the royal façade. Henry, Catherine, and Bea are the harbingers of the change she has dreaded for a lifetime.

“But he’s a new kind of icon now, someone who laughs on even footing with his royal boyfriend on the cover of a magazine, someone willing to accept the years stretching ahead of him, to give himself time. He’s trying new things.”

Alex has profoundly changed Henry’s life, but he only belatedly realizes how much his own future course has been affected too. As June advised, he needs to consider different ways of making a difference in the world. This comment suggests that he’s now open to that possibility.