“You and Me and History”: Queer Romance and Liberal Fantasy in Casey McQuiston's Red, White & Royal Blue

Here's the abstract:

This chapter examines Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue (2019) as a queer romance embedded in a liberal political fantasy. Situating the novel within “Trump fiction,” it argues that McQuiston’s alternative-history love story—centering on the US president’s son and a British prince—constructs a political fantasy by intertwining romance-genre conventions with Democratic electoral triumph. The analysis demonstrates how the novel aligns personal romantic fulfillment with ideologies of both liberalism and nationalism, translating queer love into proof of liberal democracy’s moral health. The chapter also interrogates the text’s homonormativity and its investment in elite institutions, arguing that its vision of inclusion affirms existing hierarchies rather than challenging them. Central to this fantasy is the novel’s mobilization of history as both personal legacy and national narrative. The chapter also critiques this historical vision as homonormative and neoliberal, transforming representation into a tool for legitimizing elite power. In presenting history as a teleological path toward US-led moral leadership, Red, White & Royal Blue offers not only a comforting romance, but also a political narrative that secretly desires the very systems it imagines perfecting.