Do I get inspired from the real-life royals? Short answer: Absolutely!
I talked a little about this in my post on research, but a question on a recent post prompted today’s post. Carla asked me: “Has the royal romance and wedding of Harry and Meghan given you any ideas for your series?” The answer is a resounding YES. FYI – This post does have MAJOR spoilers, so if you haven’t read the Royals books and want to be surprised, you may want to skip it.
Before I launched my Royals series, I did A LOT of research on real-life royal families. I have reference books full of the UK’s royal family, as well as others from Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg, Spain, and many others. I also have books on historical monarchies that no longer exist. I use those as inspiration for current plot lines, as well for moments in Vallerian history. For example, if you’ve read the Royals books, you may know the character of Gerald. He’s a cousin of our current King Gabriel. Gerald’s family line would have been the ascension line to the throne, had his ancestor not abdicated the throne to Gabriel’s family line. Gerald is none too happy about that (understatement, since he’s tried to kill multiple royals in my books). The abdication in real-life royal lines inspired that plot line a little (though not the evil parts of it).
Real-life royal events also inspire me, especially Harry and Meghan’s wedding. First – they are such an adorable couple! *Sigh* I hope I find someone who looks at me like Harry and Meghan looked at each other. Second – royal weddings are always inspiration. I took inspiration from William and Catherine’s wedding for Alex & Rebecca’s wedding in Royally Ever After, and other weddings for Arianna & Finn’s in A Royal Holiday. If you’re all caught up on the series, you know that we have two royal weddings coming up: Cat & Eddie’s and Lorenzo & Lily’s (no, I don’t know when they’ll happen yet). If you’ve read Permanently Princess (the latest Royals novella) then you know Marcello & Grace just got married and you learned that Charlie & Nate eloped. A couple that is still to-be-engaged is Sarah & Rio, not to mention the stories, engagements and weddings of the other couples I haven’t written about yet. (That’s not really a spoiler on future books; in romance, everyone knows the ending – the couple gets together – but it’s the journey that you tune in to read about.) I’ve saved a lot of notes and articles from Harry & Meghan’s wedding, and I’ll take notes at the upcoming royal weddings of Princess Eugenie and others.
What do you love (or dislike) about the royal weddings you’ve watched? Comment on this post and let me know (if you’re receiving the blog by email, just click “Read More” to navigate to the blog page to comment).
~xoxo Marianne
This is Post 76 of 100 as part of the #100DaysofMKAuthorLife.