oh, TV, I'll never be able to quit you

If I were the type to say I had guilty pleasures in television watching as opposed to just being pretty upfront about having questionable taste at times, I might classify The Royals as a GP. Because let's be honest, this is not a show that is aiming for much beyond a string of OMG moments. It's on E! and really, that says just about everything you need to know.

However, I love trashy TV and I heard this one begins with a bit of a mystery and I love me a mystery, so I tuned in. And it was just about everything I expected and yet... not.

The basics: Imagine the British royal family much, much younger (well, the King and Queen, anyway) and far more scripted by E!
You've got King Simon who is a decent man. Good, even. He tries his best to do right by his people and yet seems to have lost control over his family because absolute power corrupts absolutely.
You've got Queen Helena who is Elizabeth Hurley being held back from tearing up the scenery for some odd-ass reason. She's cold and calculating and terribly over the top without actually managing to hit the heights of her particular brand of WTF-ery. It's hard to describe, truly, but I expected more of her. You've got the actress, use her, man.
There's Prince Robert who is the heart of our mystery.
Prince Liam and Princess Eleanor are the twin spares who are both pretty fantastic messes. Len parties up a storm and Liam, well, we meet him as he's playing darts and bedding the first chick the camera focuses on.
The chick in question is Ophelia, our head of security's daughter, so she lives at the palace along with our royal family but is, gasp, the help. She's supposed to be our entry into the lives of the royal family but the show doesn't actually need that. (But the book this is loosely based on follows her so whatcha gonna do?)
And then you've got Simon's brother, Cyrus, who is your resident bad guy. He's slimy and evil and there's a reason that when the camera lingers on him you can imagine hellfire and brimstone in the background: he's evil. He wants so much to be king but it will never, ever happen.

Anyway, the series opens with all that being set up and then, dun-dun-dunnnnnn, Robert dies. But we're never given any specifics, only that he's died and now Liam is next in line for the throne. But Simon has grown terribly disillusioned by the monarchy and the way power has destroyed his family, so he starts throwing around ideas like abolishing the monarchy.
We're thrown into the worst this family has seen, possibly ever, and it's interesting to watch how the show actually tries to follow that at times. Eleanor and Simon are especially shown to be actively grieving the loss of Robert while Helena is doing her best to bury the pain and deal with the responsibilities her title carries.
Liam is a bit of an odd duck because at times you can tell he wants very much to be the man his father hopes him to be, and the kind of King he always imagined his brother would be and yet... and yet he spent his life knowing he was free to fuck up left and right because his brother was going to handle all the heavy lifting. Which is an interesting set up, but it's compounded by his relationships with Ophelia (commoner!) and Gemma (his last girlfriend who broke his heart only to come back after Robert died. Not sayin' she's just sniffing around for a crown but... well, she is.) who bring out the best and worst in him. Ophelia inspires him to be a better man but he's so infactuated with her that he's blowing off responsibilities left, right, and center.
Gemma, on the other hand, has his number down cold and while this boxes him in, it also frees him to do the job he needs to do to convince his father he's not just an idle fuckup. It's an interesting mix because in any other show, Gemma would be nothing but toxic to Liam and Ophelia would be nothing but good and yet somehow the show avoids that.

Which is part of why I find myself liking this show far more than I probably should. There are glimpses of depth we will likely never explore to any truly satisfying length but they DO exist.

And then you have the walking personification of being better than the show has any right to be: Princess Eleanor. You didn't think I was going to seriously just give you "party girl princess" and call it a day, did you? No, of course not.

If, at any time, you are ready to write Len off as nothing more than the party princess, give her another two minutes and you'll find another layer to her. There's the aforementioned grief for the loss of her brother, there's the lingering suspicion that she's letting down everyone by giving the press what they want (party princess) and the absolute fear of actually trying to do better and having it not be anywhere near enough. She's petrified of being a smarter, more self aware version of her bumbling cousins and she hides behind this fear, using it to avoid doing more with her life.

Then there's the whole weird set-up with her mother who has Serious Issues and we won't even begin to touch the whole Jasper storyline because it's just... I don't even know, Bodyguard. I just don't know.

Clearly I have issues regarding broken princesses (in this case an actual princess) who are so much more than they appear. It kills me that if Len woke up tomorrow and kicked the drugs and 97% of the alcohol, she'd be a better queen than Liam would ever be king.


All of this is just to say I watched the latest episode and holy shite, I was not expecting them to put that particular move into play until the finale.



And that bedding is just fantastic.