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Intro
It’s late summer 2019. Alex’s mom, Ellen Claremont, was elected President of the United States in 2016, which means that 21-year-old Alex, his older sister June, and the vice president’s daughter, Nora, are all required to attend the royal wedding between Prince Philip and his bride, Martha. Alex is not excited. It means he’ll come face to face with his rival, Prince Henry, who has no personality and is also perfect. At the wedding, Alex can’t resist approaching Henry and taunting him. Drunk, Alex grabs for Henry’s sleeve when Henry tries to walk away—and the two tumble into the $75,000 cake.
“Cakegate” goes viral, and Ellen’s staff worries the scandal will negatively affect both international relations and Ellen’s 2020 reelection campaign. Ellen’s deputy chief of staff, Zahra, works with “royal handlers” to come up with a plan: Alex and Henry must pretend that they’ve been friends for years, and so Alex will fly to England this weekend for a bunch of photographed events. Henry will come to the U.S. for a state dinner in January. On Alex’s second day in London, he and Henry visit the cancer ward of a children’s hospital. Alex’s opinion of Henry begins to change as he discovers that Henry loves Star Wars and that he’s still grieving his dad, Arthur Fox, who died of cancer when Henry was a young teen. They exchange phone numbers at the end of the trip.
Henry and Alex begin texting a few weeks later. Before long, they’re texting all the time. The night before Thanksgiving, they have their first phone call—Alex sees no other way to convince Henry of how terrifying the turkeys his mom will pardon tomorrow really are.
Alex’s parents are divorced, but his dad, Oscar Diaz, a senator from California, is coming to Christmas at the White House. After Oscar and Ellen begin fighting over how Oscar can and should help Ellen’s reelection campaign, Alex loses his temper with them. With no one else to talk to, he calls Henry. Henry listens sympathetically and tells Alex he did the best he could.
As per tradition, Alex, June, and Nora throw a New Year’s Eve party at the White House for influential young people. June and Nora conspire to invite Henry, and Henry brings his best friend, Pez, as his plus-one. Like he always does, Alex kisses Nora at midnight (they’re just friends but like to throw off the press). Henry is clearly bothered by the kiss, and he excuses himself. When Alex joins him outside, Henry kisses him and disappears.
Though Alex had sexual experiences with his childhood best friend, Liam, he’s always considered himself straight. However, Henry’s kiss complicates Alex’s understanding of himself and his sexuality, and he agonizes over what it might mean that he liked the kiss. Ellen had offered Alex a job on her campaign a few months ago, and to distract himself, he convinces her to let him start immediately rather than after he graduates from college. Unable to find anything distracting enough, though, he approaches Nora, who’s bisexual, and tells her what happened. She’s not surprised—she knew Henry was gay and has figured for years that Alex was interested in him. Henry, she points out, is a prince, and he’s not supposed to be gay. This is why all his dates with women are photographed.
The state dinner rolls around, and with the help of a Secret Service agent named Amy, Alex gets Henry alone and they kiss. Later that night, Henry comes to Alex’s room, and they have sex. Over the next several months, they arrange to see each other at various international events and are often able to sneak away and have sex. Alex eventually comes out to June.
Finally, Alex graduates. At his graduation party, the news breaks: Ellen will officially run against Jeffrey Richards, a Utah Republican senator, in the general election. Noticing his dad slipping away with Rafael Luna, a gay, Latino Independent who Alex idolizes and has worked for previously, Alex eavesdrops. He doesn’t understand what he hears, but Richards did something to Luna and Oscar is clearly anxious about Ellen’s chances.
Soon after, Alex, June, and Nora join Henry, Pez, and Henry’s sister Bea in LA for a fundraiser and a night out. Alex realizes, to his shock, that he has friends. After this, Alex and Henry begin emailing in addition to calling and texting.
Privately, Alex is convinced that Ellen can win her home state of Texas this year. He’s compiled what he calls the Texas Binder, with voting and demographic data to support his view. But when Alex’s White cubemate, WASPy Hunter, finds the binder and mocks conservative voters, Alex is enraged. He wants to enter politics himself because he wants to help people—all people, not just reliable Democratic voters.
A week after Alex joins Henry at Wimbledon, it’s time for the Democratic National Convention. Just before it begins, the news breaks that Luna is joining Richards’s cabinet, leading Alex and his family to feel betrayed—Oscar mentored Luna, and Luna has always been an ally. Henry, who was in New York for a philanthropy project, changes his plans so he can visit Alex at the DNC hotel and comfort him. But they wake up in the morning to Zahra pounding on Alex’s hotel door—and she discovers Henry.
After the DNC is over, Alex tells Ellen that he’s bisexual and is dating Henry. While she’s not bothered by Alex liking men, she stresses that this getting out right now could harm both her reelection chances and Alex’s future in politics. As a precaution, she fires him from her campaign. If Alex doesn’t feel “forever” about Henry, she says, he should end things. Instead, Alex invites Henry to Oscar’s yearly getaway at the lake house in Texas. While there, Alex loves seeing Henry relax and have fun with his family—and he begins to wonder if he could have a future with Henry. But when he suggests to Henry that they consider going public with their relationship after the election and starts to say he loves Henry, Henry panics and leaves. He doesn’t respond to any of Alex’s attempts to communicate.
Desperate, Alex and SS agent Cash fly to London, where Alex makes a scene outside Kensington Palace until Henry lets him in. Alex insists he wants a relationship, while Henry fears his family won’t support him—his grandmother, Queen Mary, has already made it clear that she expects him to hide his sexuality and one day marry a woman. Ultimately, though, Henry agrees to try. He gives Alex his signet ring to put on the chain where Alex wears the key to his family’s house in Texas.
Not long after Henry comes out to Philip (which doesn’t go well), CNN posts photos of Henry and Alex at the DNC hotel. To make it look like she’s in a relationship with Henry, June posts a photo of them from the lake vacation and goes on a fake date with him (Alex goes on a fake date with Nora). After June and Henry’s fake date, Henry and Alex steal a few minutes alone in a car and kiss. Several days later, the Daily Mail leaks photos of the kiss, as well as Alex and Henry’s emails and other incriminating photos. Zahra gets Alex up in the middle of the night to attend damage control meetings. When Ellen and Alex speak privately, Alex says he does feel “forever” about Henry, so Ellen vows to support them.
The crown, meanwhile, has shut down all communication channels. Zahra, however, reveals that she recently got engaged to none other than Shaan, Henry’s handler, and she’s convinced she can get a meeting with the crown. Ultimately, she’s right. To everyone’s shock, Henry’s mother, Catherine, who effectively checked out of her children’s lives after Arthur died, shows up, ready to fight for her son. She threatens her mother, Queen Mary, with exposing Mary’s failing mental acuity if she doesn’t agree to let the crown publicly support Henry and Alex. She points out the worldwide support for the couple and advocates for making Alex an official royal suitor. Ultimately, Mary agrees.
After Alex returns to D.C., Nora, a data analyst, bursts in on Ellen, June, Alex, and Zahra. A hacker contacted her and offered a file dump of the RNC’s email servers—which proves that Jeffrey Richards’s campaign paid people to stalk Alex and then sold their findings, all to try to bring Ellen down. Alex realizes that the “hacker” was actually Rafael Luna. Soon after all this news goes public, Alex gives a speech, Henry by his side, officially announcing his and Henry’s relationship. He later visits Luna’s office, where Luna reveals that when he worked on Richards’s campaign decades ago, Richards tried to sexually assault him (and it was well known that he’d assaulted numerous young female interns, too). Luna joined the campaign to try and expose Richards as a sexual predator, though he had no idea Richards would target Alex like this.
In the month that follows, Alex is made an official royal suitor and has formal portraits taken with Henry. Philip begins making overtures toward Henry and Bea, though they continue to mostly reject them.
Finally, it’s Election Night, and Ellen is hosting her rally in Texas. Henry arrives to support Alex, and Alex reconnects with Liam. As results roll in, the mood becomes grim—eventually, the only way for Ellen to win is to win Texas. But ultimately, Ellen wins Texas, clinching her second term. Following this news, Alex and Henry sneak out of the rally and bike to Alex’s childhood home.
