Red, White & Royal Blue: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Back at the White House, Alex awkwardly explains to Ellen that he’s bisexual. She laughs with relief—until he tells her that he’s been seeing Prince Henry for seven months. Pulling out her phone, she tells him she’s clearing her schedule and to meet her in an hour with “receipts and relevant documents.” An hour later, Ellen apologizes—she loves Alex and supports him, but this is a mess. Alex wishes he could die as she works through a PowerPoint with slides titled “EXPLORING YOUR SEXUALITY: HEALTHY, BUT DOES IT HAVE TO BE WITH THE PRINCE OF ENGLAND?” and “FEDERAL FUNDING, BOOTY CALLS, AND YOU.” Mostly, she wants to confirm Alex hasn’t used federal or campaign funds to see Henry, and they fill out a lot of paperwork.

When they’re done, Ellen says that she loves and trusts Alex. She won’t stop Alex from seeing Henry, but this could put Alex’s career and her campaign in jeopardy. He’ll never get past this if people find out, so Alex needs “to figure out if [he] feel[s] forever about [Henry]” and end things if he doesn’t. Also, she has to fire him from the campaign job. Alex hands over his campaign badge. Finally, Ellen says that since Texas’s sex ed is terrible and she didn’t cover gay sex when she spoke to Alex about sexual safety, she had Planned Parenthood send over pamphlets. Alex races out of the conference room.

Alex emails Henry and explains that now that he’s off Ellen’s campaign, he’s been watching cable news and going through his college papers. He found a paper on Alexander Hamilton, and he’s pretty sure Hamilton was bi—his letters to John Laurens are signed off as romantically as his letters to his wife. Maybe, Alex writes, he and Henry could make history like Hamilton someday. In his response, Henry takes responsibility for getting Henry fired from the campaign. He’ll understand if Alex wants to see less of him. However, Henry thinks about Alex and his body all the time, and he includes a romantic quote from Hamilton to his wife. Alex emails back, insisting he wants to see Henry again and asking where someone like Henry even comes from. He invites Henry to Oscar’s annual getaway in Texas.

In response, Henry responds with a story in which a prince is born and doted on—but the prince is born with his heart outside his body. Everyone says the prince will grow out of it. But when the prince’s father was killed in battle, the queen sent the prince armor so he could hide and protect his heart, and nobody said anything. The prince wore it—up until he met a handsome sorcerer who “made him feel alive.” The kingdom was shocked. In closing, Henry accepts the invite to come to Texas.

Alex is driving the refurbished Jeep while Nora and June fight over who gets to control the music. The Jeep drives alongside two Secret Service SUVs, but still, Alex feels freer than he has in days. He ruminates on Ellen’s question of whether Alex feels “forever” about Henry, but he decides not to think about such things on vacation. The convoy reaches a hangar to pick up Henry, and after exchanging hugs with everyone, Henry rides shotgun. An hour and a half later, they reach the house, and Oscar greets Henry.

Alex seasons the ribs while Oscar preps corn and June, Nora, and Henry play at the dock. Oscar asks if Alex wants to talk about Luna. Alex doesn’t know what to say; he doesn’t want to reveal his eavesdropping. But he asks Oscar why he chose to mentor Luna in the first place. Oscar reveals that Luna’s parents kicked him out when teenaged Luna came out, and Oscar could tell he was a “fighter,” like Zahra. And he sent Alex to work on Luna’s campaign because he thought Alex and Luna had lots in common. Oscar lets on that he knows Alex and Henry are involved. He doesn’t care if Alex is bi. Alex shares what Ellen said, about deciding if Henry is “forever,” and Oscar monologues about how much he loves Ellen still and how it’s worth it to take risks for love. Alex groans.

That night, kissing Henry, Alex feels “so in love he could die.” He tumbles out of bed in the morning and realizes that he’s spent years now falling in love with Henry. Alex makes an involved breakfast and kisses Henry deeply when Henry enters the kitchen. Nora and June arriving startles them apart. That afternoon, watching Henry and Oscar talk about sailing, Alex finds that it’s easy to see a future with Henry. Henry poses for a picture with Nora and June, cuddling both of them in their bikinis. That evening, Alex feels like a kid again. Suddenly, everything seems to make sense again, and he realizes that despite wearing the key to his childhood home, he hasn’t thought about himself as a boy in a long time. Maybe, Alex thinks, losing the campaign job wasn’t such a tragedy. Maybe he can still achieve all his dreams.

Alex whispers to Henry and invites him out to the dock, sneaking past the security team. At the dock, Alex strips naked and dives in. Henry strips and dives too, and they chase each other around until Alex catches Henry. They acknowledge that Alex tends to take on too much, and Alex suggests that next year, after Ellen is reelected, he and Henry could come out here, just the two of them, and they can relax. Henry deems this idea “nice, if unlikely,” and he looks suddenly uncomfortable. Alex tries to explain: he works so hard so that he never has to make peace with the present, with his anxiety, or his feelings. Now, though, he’s here, with Henry, and it seems like a better idea to just let himself be here and feel things.

Before Alex can continue, Henry pulls away and curses the mosquitos. He’s Philip’s “spare,” and he can’t get malaria in case Philip has a heart attack in the next decade. Alex feels helpless and like he’s losing Henry as Henry climbs out, claims he’s tired, and returns to the house. In the water, Alex feels his stomach drop. This is the risk, he realizes, of letting himself love Henry: it might hurt or end badly. And what if Henry is so earnest and kind with everyone? In the morning, Henry is gone. He’s left a note in the kitchen, insisting that he had to leave because of a “family matter.” This is the last note or message Alex gets from Henry.