Playing the Palace

Carter Ogden is an American event planner who has given up on love after his ex cheated on him. A small part of him still hopes, but he never expects to end up anywhere near royalty.

Then he meets Prince Edgar, the Crown Prince of England, at an event his boss is organizing. Edgar is openly gay, and Carter has fantasized about him since he was young, like plenty of others. Carter assumes the sizzling chemistry between them is all in his head, until it turns out it may not be.

The romance that follows plays out in public. Newspapers and online commentators on both sides of the Atlantic seize on it, and everyone has an opinion about the prince and the guy from New York. Living under constant scrutiny puts real strain on the relationship, and the Queen of England disapproves of it firmly and persistently.

This is a romantic comedy with a humorous, light tone, built on a contemporary royal-meets-commoner setup with two men at its center. The question running through it is whether Carter and Edgar are in love or only a passing media sensation, and whether their private happiness can hold up as well as their very public start did.