Playing the Palace by Paul Rudnick

Paul Rudnick is perhaps best known for his 1993 play, Jeffrey, and for writing the screenplays for Addams Family Values and In & Out. He also contributes humorous pieces to the New Yorker‘s “Shouts and Murmurs” page. I didn’t know he had written a few novels. This is his latest.

Playing the Palace is a gay rom-com, and it is very much all three. I laughed out loud throughout the book. I got misty-eyed over one chapter late in the book. And I rooted for the couple and hoped for their happy ending.

The two men are Carter, an Associate Event Planner living with two roommates in Manhattan and still attending the pity-party he threw for himself after he broke up with his sexy, cheating, actor/model boyfriend six months earlier. Edgar is the Prince of Wales.

This is a slightly alternate royal family where the Queen of England is named Catherine and where both her daughter and son-in-law were charming and progressive and beloved. They died together in a plane crash when Edgar and his brother Gerald were boys. Edgar is the elder and is next in line for the throne but seems more of the charming “Harry” type, while Gerald, married and the father of twins is the plainer and more conservative “William”. Edgar is handsome, his perfect hair and smile are noted repeatedly, and out, and that’s not a big deal for the Queen, nor mostly for England, and is a positive for LGBTQ people around the world, which adds its own kind of pressure on the Prince and his love life.

The meet-cute is at an event Carter’s employer is setting up at the United Nations for Prince Edgar’s charity organization. The men fall in love quickly and improbably, but that’s the way these stories go. Complications ensue. The affair is on then seemingly off then on again and off again through several iterations in the less than a year between the beginning and end of the novel. Roughly the first half takes place in New York and New Jersey; the second half moves to London. Supporting characters adding color and commentary are Carter’s Jewish family and his New York friends, and Edgar’s family, and his security detail. Cell phones and face-time and Matt Bomer and Brexit are mentioned to confirm the contemporary setting. One scene takes place at a fictional version of the Great British Bake Off.

It was a pleasure to have all the rom-com tropes grafted to a gay story. The “gay best friend” role is assigned to Carter’s sister. The friends obligingly pile on the “he’s not worthy of you, the bastard” when the affair is off, and the “you deserve to be happy/stop fighting this” when it seems to be on again. There are pretty clothes and a private plane, an actual palace, and an actual prince. Although homophobia is mostly absent there are just enough reminders of that reality, especially the historical reality, to keep the stakes high.

I couldn’t help imagining the story as a film, although the complications would have to be streamlined quite a bit to make it work. Every time Carter’s Prince smiled at him and melted his heart I imagined looking up at the big screen with some handsome actor smiling at the camera and wishing for my gay heart to share the same thrill, then grab a handful of popcorn and go back to squeezing my husband’s hand.