I don’t write books about royals. These days the only contemporary stories I write are my sweet novellas for Roane Publishing. So it came as a surprise to me that I got swept up in Harry and Meghan fever. I didn’t expect it.

At first I noticed it in passing as Harry and Meghan became a couple and I was mildly interested. The last big royal wedding I paid attention to was Charles and Diana so that gives you an idea of my level of awareness.

Yet as the months went on I found myself paying more and more attention. I took note of the pictures of them and thought to myself “they seem in love” and wondered how such an unlikely pairing would last, or if it could last. I read about the woman who wore a brooch of a “Blackamoor” (which I didn’t know was a thing) and wondered how anyone could be so tone deaf. I am sure there were (and will be) a thousand subtle digs like that in the past and going forward. Yet they rose above all of it in this amazing romance that took my breath away. They rose above the paparazzi and the ugly rumors and the family tell-all book and all the while stayed the course.

The longer it continued the more I found myself interested and as the day grew closer was more and more excited. I didn’t get up at 3 AM to watch the wedding, but I did DVR the Lifetime move and I watched the highlights on BBC America this weekend. It’s a fantastic love story and one that could only take place now. I could not have imagined when Charles married Diana that we would be at a point like this.

I am a romance writer, after all, and this is the most Hollywood story you could hope for. It’s all those stories about the unlikely woman who meets the prince and they fall in love. Only this woman is, like Amal Clooney, a force in her own right and not just some woman to be swept off her feet and claimed. She is an equal, a partner. It’s a brilliant love story and one that resonated with me. Its love stories like this that make romance novels work. If we wrote this people would dismiss it as a fairy tale and yet it happened. Fairy tales can happen and not just between the pages of a book. I am happy for this modern day royal couple.  

Claire Davon