Red, White & Royal Blue Movie: 5 things we love about Henry

Hands up if you can’t stop streaming Red, White & Royal Blue on Amazon! Like so many other folks worldwide, this story means a great deal to those of us here in the Q+ Magazine offices, and we just can’t seem to bring ourselves to stop watching Henry and Alex’s beautiful love story.

Nicholas Galitzine gifted audiences with a truly spectacular performance as Prince Henry, and really, we don’t think we could have asked for a better representation of this incredibly important character. Galitzine doesn’t just play Henry, he brings the man to life, giving him an essence and a place that will forever live on in our hearts. Here are 5 things we love about Henry in the Red, White & Royal Blue movie. 

1. Confident and Sassy

In the source material, Henry presents as far more introverted, shy, and troubled than Henry in the movie. Book Henry carries a lot of trauma in his body that is rooted in losing his father to cancer, coupled with the royal family essentially shoving the poor man into the closet. In the book, he isn’t confident in his initial dealings with Alex and he definitely approaches his life with a glass-half-empty mindset; he is an heir to the throne, and such is the confines of his life. 

While movie Henry also feels the constraints of the crown, he is more confident and sassy than the version of Henry that is immortalized in the pages of the source material. He doesn’t shrink into the background as much as book Henry does, and he certainly gives Alex (Taylor Zakhar Perez) a run for his money when the two first start interacting. 

He calls Alex ‘sweetheart’ in a sarcastic manner, which book Henry wouldn’t have done. When he and Alex hook up for the first time, Henry takes a forceful physical lead, teasing Alex about falling in love with him, and attempts to set ‘casual’ boundaries for them both, most of which falls on Alex in the book.

Henry also hesitates far less at the end of the story when he realizes he is going to have to go up against the crown in order to keep Alex in his life. While book Henry does eventually stand up and claim Alex as his own, movie Henry gets there much faster and with far more gusto than book Henry does. 

But these changes of a more confident and sassy version of Henry do suit him well. Some of Henry’s melancholy that readers fell in love with in the book has definitely been removed from the movie, but it just works. It makes for a joyful queer story, of which there are so few in existence. 

2. His fashion sense

In the book, Alex goads Henry about how boring his choice of clothing is, but we have to say, even though movie Henry still dresses more conservatively than Alex does, the man is impeccably outfitted throughout the whole film. 

Maybe it’s Galitzine, maybe it’s the costume department, or maybe it’s a glorious combination of the two, but movie Henry is a sight for sore eyes in every single frame he’s in. 

His clothing choices are appropriately conservative, as one would expect of a man of royalty, but fashionable enough that it’s impossible not to look at him when he walks into a room. 

We also kind of love that he has a penchant for stealing Alex’s clothes. We see you Henry and we 13/10 approve of this sneaky move. 

3. His love for Alex

It goes without saying that we are all here for the love that Henry and Alex share, but we love the way that movie Henry just seems powerless against Alex. His love for Alex is in his eyes, on his lips, and written all over his beautiful face. There is definitely a heat between them that is driven by young sexual desire, but Henry carries something much deeper for Alex right from the start. 

Alex sort of blindly stumbles into Henry in the beginning, but Alex already seems burned into Henry’s soul right from the start. The frustration that Henry expresses as he kisses Alex for the first time on New Year’s Eve, the way in which Henry lets Alex take whatever he wants from him in the Red Room, the passion which he gives Alex, despite the notion that they ‘need to keep it casual’ on the first night they hook up all show just how intricately attached to Alex Henry already is. 

Alex Claremont-Diaz is one hell of a lucky dude, but something tells us Alex already knows this!

4. Beating down the closet door

His place in the royal family may have forced Henry to live a closeted life, but the man does an excellent job of queer coding his life. 

He is clearly infatuated with British queer icons – he named his dog David, after Bowie, for goodness sake! He knows Queen intimately, he is able to parrot queer British history to anyone who will listen, as if it is his own history instead of centuries of oppression to others. 

Despite the fact that he isn’t ‘allowed’ to be gay, it’s clear Henry hasn’t denied himself the experiences of being gay. He has a sexual history, and he’s had formative experiences like Grindr (it’s the 21st century, so this counts as a formative experience now). The only thing he hasn’t let himself have is love. 

So while Henry might not be allowed to be gay, he certainly isn’t very quiet about it. 

5. His intelligence

There is nothing more sexy in a person than a big, beautiful, intelligent brain. It’s one of the things that we love about Henry the most: the man is just so incredibly smart. He is soft and sweet, and gentle and absolutely bursting with love, but it’s definitely Henry’s brain that Alex falls in love with first, and we’re right there with him!

He doesn’t just know a lot of things, he is an avid seeker of knowledge, and the way he wraps his brain around Alex’s – desperately wanting to become one – is so endearing it makes us want to cry into our morning coffee just thinking about it. 

Henry George Edward James Hanover-Stuart Fox was, and will forever be such a special character to millions around the world. We didn’t think it was possible to love this man much more after we finished reading the book, but that was before we met Nicholas Galitizine’s version of him. Now he is immortalized on our screens as well as in our hearts!

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Red, White & Royal Blue is available to stream through Amazon Prime Video now. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!