Red, White & Royal Blue

by Casey McQuiston

for the weirdos & the dreamers

When I wrote this book—this niche, political, queer, new adult romantic comedy—I said that if it could find its people, it would do all right. It turns out book’s “people” is a much broader category than I thought it would be. I’ve heard from media folks, political junkies, romcom fans, and first-time romance readers, all types of people who found something to love here. I think that’s because it’s evident on the page how much I love each of these characters, how much I tried to infuse hope and joy into them and their stories. I’m beyond thankful for the recognition from the Goodreads Choice Awards, and for this chance to tell you readers a little bit more about what’s behind the words.

“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.”

I’ll be honest: this was flagged at least once in the editing process for this book by an editor (I can’t remember which) who thought this joke might be a touch too dark, but I thought it was a great “I brought you into this world and I’ll take you out” type of mom line. Ellen Claremont is a fusion of every unapologetic southern mom I’ve ever met and the type of brutal humor you hear on Veep. I’m glad we kept it.

Whatever, fine. Henry is annoyingly attractive. That’s always been a thing, objectively. It’s fine.

Alex has always been aware that, objectively, on a purely aesthetic level, Henry is handsome and fit. The whole world knows it and says it all the time, so it’s hard to deny. Or at least these are the lines he has repeated to himself a few times when the thought, “Oh no, he’s hot,” crosses his mind.

You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life.

I had such a great time writing their text conversations. Texting and emails are a great shortcut for developing characters and dynamics in as few words as possible. Not only does it keep up momentum and allow for some rapid fire banter, but there’s so much subtext and syntax in each message. In just a few lines, we’ve learned that Henry is the type of person who types in complete sentences with proper punctuation and capitalization, and Alex is the type who cared enough to go into the settings of his phone and manually turn off auto caps in order to fit his super chill vibe.

yo there’s a bond marathon on and did you know your dad was a total babe

Alex totally watched Bond movies as a kid, had some idle childhood crush, and then eventually pieced together that Arthur Fox was Henry’s father and had a conniption. In all seriousness, I do love the movie star layer of Henry’s background—I imagine the tabloids were absolutely fascinated with the princess with a doctorate marrying James Bond, and I think it helps to explain why the royal family in this universe has a bit of a different overall PR strategy than the royal family in our own reality.

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

I think if I could single out the most important line of this book, this would be a top three contender. I made a very conscious decision to write an entire chapter of Alex processing and coming to terms with his sexuality after spending 22 years ignoring all the obvious signs, because it reflects the way so many queer people stumble into their identity. That’s why this is a line that resonates with many queer folks—many of us had that exact realization at some point in our lives.

In an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can’t believe he ever thought he was straight.

One of thing about realizing you’re queer is: at some point after that realization, you will find yourself in a moment in which it occurs to you that the idea you ever thought you were heterosexual is the most hilarious thing in the world.

The phrase “see attached bibliography” is the single sexiest thing you have ever written to me.

I think the most important thing a romance novel needs to do is make the reader believe these two people would fall in love. What do they see in each other? Why would this person love that one? There are a lot of reasons for Alex and Henry, but a huge one is how deeply intellectual, cerebral, and obsessive about books and history both of them are. A similar moment to this one is when Henry is going on about history in the V&A and Alex just kisses him mid-sentence. They both are incredible smart people, and they are both attracted to incredibly smart people. Put more plainly: nerds love nerds.

Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I’ve just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?

One of my favorite passages from their emails. Part of why I chose to incorporate their emails was so that Henry had a chance to show that he is actually a decent writer (not just a rich guy who thinks he’s a poet) and so that he could, in his own way, communicate to Alex that he loved him when he couldn’t outright say it. This paragraph has “I love you” written all over it, but he’s nowhere close to telling Alex to his face. The emails are a safe space for the two of them to be alone and vulnerable together, and because of that, we get to see a side of Henry we otherwise wouldn’t.

Tho I long for the actual sunlight contact between us I miss you like a home. Shine back honey & think of me.

Such a perfectly sweet excerpt from a lovely letter. The historical love letters were something I came up with because I’ve always loved epistolary novels—they feel so immersive in ways that it can be hard to capture quite the same with straight-up prose. And for Alex and Henry, these letters say what they’re still holding back from each other. Alex includes this excerpt to Henry, indirectly calling Henry his home, before he even consciously realizes he’s in love with him. It’s a way to confess without confessing.

With me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.

The letters between Vita and Virginia were some of the first queer historic love letters I ever read, so of course they had to make an appearance. With the historic letters, I wanted to contextualize Alex and Henry within queer history and show that they’re not just two people in love but the bearers of a legacy, one that was often dark and almost always hidden. I always wanted them to feel rooted in the people who came before them.

“So, imagine we’re all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there’s that ground floor, a bottom crust of the pie. That’s the maximum depth of feeling you’ve ever experienced. And then, the worst thing happens to you. The very worst thing that could have happened. The thing you had nightmares about as a child, and you thought, it’s all right because that thing will happen to me when I’m older and wiser, and I’ll have felt so many feelings by then that this one worst feeling, the worst possible feeling, won’t seem so terrible. “But it happens to you when you’re young. It happens when your brain isn’t even fully done cooking—when you’ve barely experienced anything, really. 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. And because you were so young, and because it was one of the first big things to happen in your life, you’ll always carry it inside you. Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn’t just stop at the bottom—it goes all the way down.”

This passage is one of the most important to me personally, and one of the ones I’m proudest of in terms of describing a very specific emotional experience that is extremely difficult to describe. Grief is such a strange thing in that it alienates you from others by being so big that it’s unrelatable and untranslatable, but here I think I managed to relate and translate it in some small piece.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If you loved this book for its fun ensemble cast, its specific millennialism, its queer romance, and its banter, then you will (hopefully) like my next book, ONE LAST STOP, coming summer 2021! See more details about ONE LAST STOP on Goodreads and click the Follow Author button above to get updates: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46305911?ref=knh