"Red, White and Royal Blue"

[fiefoe]

Happy to see that Casey McQuiston name-checked "Death Comes To the Archbishop", and gave a shout-out to Austin ("a beer bummed off a stranger on the spill of Barton Creek Greenbelt"). The buildup to the romance seems to be a bit rushed, but of course the couple has much fallout to contend with.

• Alex tells her, "Royal weddings are trash, the princes who have royal weddings are trash, the imperialism that allows princes to exist at all is trash. It's trash turtles all the way down." "Is that your Ted talk?" June asks. "You do realize America is a genocidal empire too, right?"
• "Has he decided to finally shut me up by wooing my sister?" "Aw, little buddy," Nora says. .. "It's cute how you think everything is about you." "It should be, honestly." "That's the spirit."
• "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."
• "Both sides need to comeo out of this looking good, and the only way to do that is to make it look like your little slap-flight at the wedding was some homoerotic frat bro mishap, okay?"
• Ha. It was about royal finances. I'll be hearing Philip's voice saying the words "return on investment" in my nightmares for the rest of time.
  Alex rolls his eyes and sends back, the harrowing struggle of managing the empire's blood money.
• When Henry’s gone, Alex finds the stationery by the bed: Fromagerie Nicole Barthélémy. Leaving your clandestine hookup directions to a Parisian cheese shop. Alex has to admit: Henry really has a solid handle on his personal brand.
• It's intimidating and thrilling, living up to that kind of rich, untouchable fantasy. That's what people _see, but none of them know about the Great Turkey Calamity.
• But he thinks about Henry, and, oh. He thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he’s been avoiding for too long.
• The class is Ethical Issues in International Relations. He really has got to stop talking classes so painfully relevant to his life.
• “Er," Henry says, adding to the list of vowel sounds he has to show for himself. It is, unfortunately, also sexy. After all these weeks, the bar is low.
• "and if you fucking ghost me again, I'm going to get you put on a fucking no-fly list. Got it?"
• until they're only two people tangled up in a dark room making a brilliant, epic, unstoppable mistake.
• (In a tack room:) "What in the rich-white-people-sex-dungeon hell?" Alex wonders aloud.
• “Just so we're clear, I'm about to have sex with you in this storage closet to spite your family. Like, that's what's happening?'
  'Right.'
  'Awesome, fuckin' love doing things out of spite.”
• The next slide is titled: 'Exploring your sexuality: Healthy, but does it have to be with the Prince of England?' She apologizes for not having time to come up with better titles. Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death.
• An third, some saucy tart once tried to impugn my virtue against an oil painting of (Alexander Hamilton), and in the halls of memory, some things demand context.
• “Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything. Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I'm listening.”
• Henry lets Alex take him apart with painstaking patience and precision, moans the name of God so many times that the room feels consecrated.
• 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.
• He rolls onto his side and listens, trails the back of his hand across the pillow next to him and imagines Henry lying opposite in his own bed, two parentheses enclosing 3,700 miles.
• You are the thistle in the tender and sensitive arse crack of my life.
• When they kiss, Alex can hear a half-remembered old proverb from catechism, mixed up between translations of the book: “Come, hijo mío, de la miel, porque es buena, and the honeycomb, sweet to thy taste.” He wonders what Santa Chiara would think of them, a lost David and Jonathan, turning slowly on the spot. 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.
• On the map of you, my fingers could always find the green hills, Wales. Cool waters and a shore of white chalk. The ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. Your spine's a ridge I'd die climbing.
  If I could spread it out on my desk, I'd find the corner of your mouth where it pinches with my fingers, and I'd smooth it away and you'd be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps. I get the nomenclature now- saints' names belong to miracles  {Lovers as geography. Works as well here as in Connie Brockway's "As You Desire".}
• This is the same as when Alex took Henry to the lake house. The most sacred place he has. { How I envy them for being able to hide out in the V&A.}
• It's well known that the king of England fucks the Duke of Buckingham... The reason the King Jame's translation of the Bible exists is because the Church of England was so displeased with James for flaunting his relationship with Villiers that he had the translation commissioned to appease them.
• But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable. America has always believed this. And so, I am not ashamed to stand here today where presidents have stood and say that I love him, the same as Jack loved Jackie, the same as Lyndon loved Lady Bird. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice.
• Up close, it’s beautiful. Two stories tall. He can’t imagine how somebody was able to put together something like this so fast.
  It’s a mural of himself and Henry, facing each other, haloed by a bright yellow sun, depicted as Han and Leia. Henry in all white, starlight in his hair. Alex dressed as a scruffy smuggler, a blaster at his hip. A royal and a rebel, arms around each other.
• “What?" Henry shouts over the noise when he sees the look on Alex's face.
  "My life is a cosmic joke and you're not a real person," Alex says, wheezing.
  "What?" Henry yells again.
  "I said, you look great, baby!”
• At cruising altitude, he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring on next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side.

I say this to you because you know it and will not charge me with vanity. I hate Congress—I hate the army—I hate the world—I hate myself. The whole is a mass of fools and knaves; I could almost except you and Meade. Adieu
― A Hamilton

Whereas 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. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become.
― Vita Sackville-West, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf

 “And you have fixed my life — however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze.”
― Wilfred Owen

You engross my thoughts to intirely to allow me to think of anything else- you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream- and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.
― A Hamilton in a letter to Eliza

I miss you greatly dear. The nicest time of the day is when I write to you. You have a stormier time than I do but I miss you as much, I think.… Please keep most of your heart in Washington as long as I’m here for most of mine is with you!
― Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickock—1933