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The day after the election, Casey McQuiston, author of Red, White & Royal Blue , is wearing a black bleach tie-dyed shirt with “Texas” on it and joking about “being the main character on the internet — in a good way.”
In their New York Times bestseller , Alex Claremont-Diaz , son of the president of the United States—and boyfriend of Britain's Prince Henry—orchestrates his Democratic mother’s victory in Texas. It’s a feat the president’s aides mocked him for even proposing and one that gives his mom the Electoral College votes she needs to win a second term.
On Tuesday night, as election results showed Democratic candidates James Talarico, running for Senate, and Gina Hinojosa, a gubernatorial hopeful, pulling out wins, fans of the book and its movie adaptation began posting memes and references celebrating “Blexas”—“Blue Texas,” duh—in response.
“Casey McQuiston, this is a WILD marketing budget for the new book & movie but I’m not mad about it,” said one post , a nod to the Red, White and Royal Blue sequel novella, Red, White & Royal Blue: The Private Correspondence , coming out on December 1.
“James Talarico clearly got ahold of Alex Claremont Diaz’s Texas Binder,” said another , referencing the giant file Alex kept his strategy in.
By 11 p.m., Casey had gotten in on the fun, reposting one fan’s meme with the text “keep sending me these i’m bout to bust,” to their Instagram Stories. Two of their favorite mentions came from playwright Jeremy O. Harris and their favorite skincare influencer.
Cosmopolitan talked with Casey less than 24 hours after the Democrats swept Texas about their election night, predicting a Blue Texas and what’s next for Alex and Henry.
I was at my sewing machine making some patchwork stuff for Christmas gifts. I had the Steve Kornacki live feed on my computer. I was just passively taking it in, trying not to get too emotionally involved because of what happened in 2024. That was really bad.
At some point, when it was getting close to calling the race for Talarico, I thought, Let’s move this to the living room and lock in, see what’s about to happen. Then, I was under my weighted blanket, living for Kornacki. I’ve never seen him so expressive. I didn’t know he was allowed to make faces.
I’m not going to lie, I was walking on sunshine this morning, baby. I couldn’t be happier for Texas and the people I love who live there.
The one thing I’m not is surprised. I knew Texas had this in them all along. It was simply just a matter of having the resources and having the right stars aligning. I’m just so proud of them, and I’m so happy for them.
I’ve been sent so many memes. I generally have a lot of digital boundaries. I don’t look my name up. I stay out of reader spaces, but there are so many memes. I can’t resist.
I don’t think I can even compute that. It’s hard to even conceptualize myself as being part of any canon because, when I think of that book, the image that comes to my mind is sitting in my bed at my mom’s house, typing it in Google Docs. It’s still that to me.
I’ve had all these different relationships with it over the ten years that it’s been in my life. There have been times I found it hard to access the feelings of hope that went into it. There have been times I’ve found it difficult not to want to leave that feeling in the past because of what we’ve been through the last ten years. It’s so hard to have optimism, and that book is optimistic. What keeps me coming back to it is that I had no idea whether things would get worse or better, but I believed they would get better.
Ultimately, I wrote what I saw: Texas’s heart was a lot more complicated than many people thought, and the people in the state deserve so much better. That’s what I keep coming back to when I think of that back.
First of all, let’s not forget how many fucking electoral votes Texas has. And, if you wanted the big moment at the end where you have one state come in and save the election for you, it has to be Texas. It felt like it could be a huge twist, but I could also see it actually happening.
I wanted to do a story where my Democratic president was not a Kennedy, but more of a [former Texas State Senator] Wendy Davis or Jimmy Carter. To me, Texas is where you go for that. A few years before I had watched a live stream of Wendy Davis’s filibuster for abortion rights in Texas. I was so galvanized by that and so amazed to see there was a woman like that who held office in Texas. She really inspired me too, so it just felt right.
Also, in my experience, Texas is the most American of the states. I wanted the juxtaposition of the British aristocracy and the American gunslinger vibe.
No, I haven’t. Although, I’ve heard there’s a Red White fan on the Talarico campaign or someone who worked closely with them. I don’t blame anyone on any campaign for not necessarily wanting to campaign with a gay smut author before Election Day in a tight race. I’m like, Let’s play it safe. I’ll catch you after your victory lap.
I am hoping I’ll hear from the Talarico campaign. I would love to do a collab.
It’s such an important thing to bring up because it’s sneaky. The trans sports bans are such a weird vehicle conservatives are using right now. It’s a backdoor way of legislating people out of existence.
A lot of people look the other way because they might not have a trans person in their life directly affected by it, or they might think there are so few trans athletes that this isn’t a real problem.
I think what we’ve learned from history is that it’s never that simple. It’s almost always boiling the frog in water, slowly raising the temperature to see what they can get away with. We really do have to keep our eye on the ball when it comes to anti-trans legislation, even if it seems frivolous.
1,000 percent. Romance from its inception is deeply political. So much of the early proto-romance was rooted in, Let’s write a how-to guide on how good women should behave so their virtue could be rewarded with true love. Then, we had waves of the Austen of it all.
Going back to more recent years, the 1970s or so, so much of it was about centering agency and pleasure and, in some weird ways, even educating about sexuality and what your body can do other than be legislated, abused, and prevailed upon.
Any time we have a juggernaut sub-industry of media that is predominantly driven by women and marginalized people, and those stories are centered on those people, that is hugely political. So, yes, I don’t think we can ever separate politics from romance. It’s baked into the pie.
Most of Cat Sebastian’s backlist I think of as really political queer romance. They’re not necessarily about politics, but politics are part of the journey we’re on.
When I think of political romance, I also think a lot about Beverly Jenkins . I think we all do. Much of her backlist, especially the stuff she was writing in the ’90s, is super political and fun to read.
They would be in Texas. Alex is hosting the watch party. He’s trying to keep it professional. Until 10 p.m., it was more of passed-apps vibe; after 10 PM, it became a full-on, slam-down, hoedown fucking party. There was a lot of dancing and some light crowd surfing.
It would be one of those nights where you’re having the most fun celebrating something, and you’re looking at your partner across the room, and you’re locking eyes, and you’re both thinking, It’s on later when we’re alone. Then, as soon as you’re alone, you just pass out.
Red, White, and Royal Blue: The Private Correspondence is an epistolary novella. The concept is that after their emails were leaked in Red, White and Royal Blue, Alex and Henry swore they would never write emails to each other again. But they still want to write. So, this is a collection of all of their handwritten letters, notes, cards, everything else over 20 years after the end of the first book. It covers everything from getting married to moving to Texas to starting a family and Texas electoral politics.
If you have been curious to know what happens to Alex and Henry after the end of the book, I got you. I’ve got 20 years’ worth of answers for you in this novella. It’s really fun. It’s silly, and it’s definitely horny at points and angsty too. But more than anything else, it takes a lot of what I loved from the first book: those emails where they're really pouring their hearts out to each other, connecting so intimately through words, and letting that cook for you for, you know, 300 pages.
Elizabeth Held is a writer and avid reader in Washington, D.C. She writes What To Read If , a popular book recommendation newsletter, and is working on Romancelandia, a book about romance novels and people who love them, out in 2028.
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Source: Entertainment
