Red, White & Royal Blue author loves seeing the book compared to fanfic

Readers and critics alike describe the best-selling romance novels in a variety of ways. Red, White & Royal Blue as reading “like fanfiction.” Four years after its debut, the queer love story and political commentary of Casey McQuiston’s novel have amassed a certifiably huge online fandom. Matthew López, director of Amazon Studios’ newly released movie adaptation, described himself as a “rabid, passionate fan” of the book himself.

The comparison between fanfiction and fiction is not without reason: Red, White & Royal Blue’s central relationship, between a U.S. president’s son and a British royal, feels like a crossover story between outsized fan-favorite character types. It’s full of tropes like enemies-to-lovers and fake relationships. The film also contains a lot of humorous smack talk. These characters, who are influenced by pop culture and modern youths, have been adapted to the times. It’s also a queer love story, a favorite theme in fanfiction.

McQuiston loves the word “flattered” no matter what it is called.

“I think that ultimately, it’s a compliment,” McQuiston tells Polygon. “Fanfiction is pure pleasure reading. It’s not like almost any other kind of reading. The purpose of this book is to have fun. It’s here to calm you down, to make you feel better. It’s just pure love.”

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Red, White & Royal BlueAlex Claremont Diaz, son of fictional United States first female President, is paired with Prince Henry who is fourth in the line of succession to the British crown. The leads’ highly publicized lives contribute to the book’s tense political landscape, but the book digs into broader politics as well. Alex’s mother, Ellen Claremont, was elected in 2016, when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were facing off in the real world, and Ellen’s reelection campaign plays a huge role in the novel.

Reading about a reality where a woman won the 2016 election has been demonstrably cathartic for much of the book’s core audience. McQuiston began writing the book before the election results were announced, but their first draft was more tongue-in cheek satire. Veep. But after the election, that tone didn’t make sense anymore.

“When the election happened, I literally just put it aside for six months,” says McQuiston. “I was like, I don’t know how to write this anymore. It took six months for me to return to it and decide what I was going to do. This became my form of escape. At the time I lived in Deep South Louisiana (red-state territory), and felt really isolated and surrounded by everything that was going on in 2016. The book was really conceived for me as a very big wish-fulfillment place.”

The comparison was likely inspired by the idealism and wish-fulfillment of a better world. McQuiston thinks that specific tropes within fandoms are important. Red, White & Royal BlueThis could play a role. In fact, many fic searches involve typing in the name of your ship and favourite tropes to a search engine. (“We’re out here doing media studies and playing around with constructs of fiction that make stories what they are,” McQuiston laughs.)

One of the book’s most iconic elements is the inclusion of historical notes from real-world queer people, which Alex and Henry begin sending each other via email. Remove quotes bookend fics and caption Art or editing is an important part of fandom and fanfiction. But there was a specific reason McQuiston included these messages in their novel, and it only had a little to do with being a history nerd who wanted a chance to look over Rictor Norton’s anthology collecting centuries of gay love letters.

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“I knew it was such a fantastical story,” says McQuiston. “There’s so much to it that it’s just inhabiting hyper-reality. It is big and tropey, and it’s a rom-com, and it’s 80-foot screens. There had to be some kind of context and grounding in the book. This fantastical idea of two great men having this clandestine love for each other is something that is actually very much historically precedented, whether or not anyone ever teaches that in a classroom or puts it in a book.”

McQuiston was inspired by a phrase that’s gotten wide attention recently as historians consider gay erasure in the historical canon. “We love the expression, ‘They were close friends,’ McQuiston says. “I was just thinking so much about how these two characters would fit into history and why, and contextualized it within the history of the world that they are, for lack of a better word, presiding over.”

This is the movie version Red, White & Royal BlueAmazon Video has released the new release.