Given its intense media coverage and everything that seems to be on the line, I feel as though I have been anxiously awaiting the results of the 2026 US midterm elections for weeks, months – maybe years. Having lived in Central America in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential elections, I had become utterly disillusioned with the idea that shared identity could ever guarantee political solidarity. I had watched people around me sport MAGA hats and post AI-enhanced pictures of Donald Trump as Jesus on their Instagram stories; people with skin like mine, who spoke English with an accent (or not at all), people who joined me in holding up the passport queue at the Houston border. It made my stomach turn to think that the win had been secured with the help of people I considered my kin and, no matter what they had been led to believe, people I knew would be quickly alienated by Washington if they were to ever step out of line. The horrific acceleration of ICE activities across the country, but particularly around the Mexican border, had been a predictable, but nonetheless more upsetting development under the current administration, knowing what I knew. So, despite Zohran Mamdani’s landmark win in New York (which I saw announced in an A&E waiting room in Oxford at 2 am, heart beating out of my chest unrelated to any medical issues), I did not have high hopes coming into the midterms.
My political pessimism, however, has not extended to my taste in literature. I don’t know how many of my coursemates would admit this, but my decision to study English was partly propelled by my love of Young Adult literature. If I ever find the time in between reading lists, I am most likely to be found with my nose buried in some trashy Harry Potter fanfiction with the names changed for copyright purposes. I enjoy unadulterated fluff. I yearn for inconceivable happy endings. I don’t want realism in my YA – I want happiness against all odds, and refractory periods that bend the rules of biology. As such, Casey McQuiston’s 2019 novel Red, White & Royal Blue, with its queer romance and almost aggressively optimistic vision of American politics, has been my comfort read for many years.
For the uninitiated, RW&RB tells the story of Alex Claremont-Diaz, son of the US President, and Prince Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor (average Oxonian number of middle names), fourth in line to the British throne. Despite long-standing animosity, after an incident that could threaten the president’s re-election campaign, Alex and Henry are forced into a PR friendship that soon unravels into something more. The enemies-to-lovers façade is shattered, as the two come to realise they have loved each other all along. The fictitious stakes for their relationship are very high – Alex doesn’t want to put his mother’s career at risk, and Henry fears being estranged from his family. However, the story is sold on its lack of realism: though it’s impossible not to invest in Alex and Henry’s relationship, just a quick scan of the list of characters tells you that something like this could never happen, so it’s easy to infer that everything will work out in the end. Alex is half-Latino, and his mother Ellen is the first female President in US history. She is a divorced, middle-aged woman, and the Democratic candidate from Texas. She has one trans and one pansexual Secret Service agent on her security detail. One of her closest allies is Rafael Luna, an openly gay, Latino senator from Colorado. Henry’s older sister is a recovering cocaine addict. McQuiston imagines a true woke-gone-wild, blue-hair-and-pronouns takeover. In the final chapter of the book, Ellen wins her re-election. Her home state, Texas, is the last to be called: “Texas is gray for five more seconds, before flooding beautiful, beautiful, unmistakable, Lake LBJ blue.” It is utter nonsense, and the only conceivable end to a narrative filled with things going right at the last second for the most unexpected people.
The Venn diagram for literary scholars and queer activists overlaps when it comes to tangible prejudice against gay pop-lit. It’s not entirely uncalled for; there is a concern that people are writing about a community they aren’t a part of, in a manner that doesn’t provide an adequate depiction of queer lived experiences or isn’t conducive to relatability for those peering in from outside the bubble. The medium seems too flat to convey the varied lives of people within the community without making caricatures out of them. I sympathise – it is difficult not to perceive stories like RW&RB as indulgent and mocking, particularly at a time when it feels like stereotypes are being used to demonise and legislate against us. But I also think there is value in shameless positivity and, much like mainstream music, I charge the elites to approach the corny YA novel poptimistically. To turn a blind eye to the suffering we have long endured would be a disservice to the progress we have made in being unashamed of who we are and of the people we love, but part of that progress is also learning to be comfortable in the idea that we can be happy, in the same cheesy, tooth-rotting way as anyone else. We are not doing ourselves any favours by self-flagellating, and in the same way that we shouldn’t be expected to justify our identities to anyone else, we also shouldn’t have to justify any fantastical romances we revel in to ourselves.
The Democratic platform for the midterms was built almost entirely in reaction to the decreasing quality of life under the Republican administration. Candidates emphasised the cost of living and claimed unaffordability to be a direct result of corruption in the White House. For once, it was almost impossible to claim what the right always does, which is that liberal candidates sideline economic issues in favour of trivial social problems that affect only a small minority of people. Despite this, the character list for Democratic wins in the midterms rivals the diversity of RW&RB. Chris Pappas became the first openly gay man elected to the US Senate in New Hampshire; Abdul El-Sayed is the first Muslim man to win a seat in the US Senate in Michigan; Keisha Bottoms, in Georgia, is the first Black female governor of any US state. Hakeem Jeffries remains the frontrunner for Speaker of the House of Representatives, a position that is second in the presidential line of succession. And of course, as the prophecy of RW&RB foretold, James Talarico won the Senate seat in Texas, flipping the state blue for the first time since 1988. We now live in a world where deep-South, Bible-belt Texas is being led by a man who five years ago claimed that God is nonbinary. “The Lometa Longshot and a long-awaited blue Texas.” Who would’ve thunk it.
So, despite her cartoonish faith that the good guys will always win, Casey McQuiston has won this particular battle in the culture war this time. The ideological optimism that Red, White & Royal Blue upholds has been reaffirmed by real changes in the American political climate, and though there is still a long way to go and now is certainly not the time to relax our hold, I think that we have at least reminded ourselves that hope and solidarity go a long way. I’m embarrassed to say that I had forgotten. And if the next time you see me I’m reading a book with a bright pink cover, maybe you’ll hold off the ridicule for a couple of seconds longer.
