#ALSO the queen's thief is a v good contrast to the standard royal fiction | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

shmreduplication · 15 days ago

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i keep trying to reword this in different ways, lemme try bullet points

royal fiction is extremely concerned with who is next in line for the throne. It's on everyone's minds all the time and all the characters assume it's on everyone elses' minds all the time

Hamlet is v interesting because Ham seems to be the only person operating under the normal royal fiction mindset. He went from the king's son and heir to the king's stepson and heir-until-the-king-has-biological-offspring (presumably Gertrude hasn't had menopause yet) which is an extremely dangerous position to be in and nobody is worried for his life

Spare*, the prince henry memoir, is a really good contrast to royal fiction and a total flip from Hamlet. Everyone around Henry is aware of what being the spare in the modern age means and assumes he's as preoccupied with wanting to be the heir as everyone always is in royal fiction. Meanwhile Henry thinks his only job as spare has been the same job as all spares before him, just to stay alive

*i've posted about this book before and there are always notes about how it's ok for him to have been manipulated his whole life and have every mistake leaked to the press because he grew up as a literal prince, fuck off with that shit. Kids should be raised with love and kindness and respect regardless of the family they were born into

#hamlet #i've said this before but spare is primarily interesting as a contrast to royal fiction #and much less interesting as a celebrity memoir #but you do get to hear about how he picked up hamlet to try to get his dad to like him more #charlie is apparantly a big shakespeare nerd #but then since hamlet is about an angsty prince with a dead parent and a living parent who V QUICKLY remarried #he felt like he didn't really need to read it ykwim #you also get to hear about how he had frostbite on his dick at his brother's wedding #other than that imo the real meat is a reveal of the relationship between the modern british royal family and modern british media #ALSO the queen's thief is a v good contrast to the standard royal fiction #really really really interesting stuff Megan Whalen Turner does

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