- The Wedding Date, and The Proposal author Jasmine Guillory's latest book, Royal Holiday, was inspired by Meghan Markle's mom, Doria Ragland.
- The romance novelist explained the importance of writing a love story with a Black woman in her fifties at the center.
Jasmine Guillory is officially the reigning queen of contemporary romance novels. Her 2018 debut, The Wedding Date, was an instant hit, and her follow-up later that year, The Proposal, is now a New York Times bestseller and was the official February book club pick for Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine. Her third book, The Wedding Party, will be available July 16.
And this week, she announced her fourth release will be out October 1: Royal Romance, a novel inspired by Meghan Markle's mother Doria Ragland. Yes, you read that right: There's a romance novel happening that was influenced by the Duchess's mom. And it all started on Twitter.
When Guillory's friend, librarian Margaret Willison, tweeted last year "I NEED a charming romance novel about the mother of a new Duchess falling in love with an appropriately aged royal retainer while spending Christmas at Sandringham," Guillory immediately responded: "I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!"
A year later, and Guillory's novel Royal Romance will follow Vivian Forest, the mother of Maddie, a fashion stylist (Wedding Date and The Proposal readers might remember her as Alexa's best friend) who travels across the pond to style a British royal. When Vivian follows along for the adventure, she doesn't expect to find herself falling for Malcolm, the queen’s private secretary.
If October sounds way too far away to get your hands on this sure-to-be-juicy read (available for pre-order now), Guillory spoke to OprahMag.com about what we can expect from her latest.
For fans of your novels—which feature a common thread of friend groups between all three—how will Royal Romance be different?
This one is a lot more about family relationships than about friendships—the mother/daughter relationship between Vivian and Maddie plays a big role, and there are also significant family ties and struggles that Malcolm deals with over the course of the book. Family has always been very important to me, so it was really fun to write a book where it played such a big role.
How did you go about doing the research for this one? There's so much about the royals out there!
The funny thing is I’ve been accidentally researching this book for the past few years! I love reading stuff about the royals and have for a while, and as soon as Meghan was involved I dove into my royals watching even more! I’ve spent a LOT of time (both before and after I decided to write this book) reading my favorite royal jewelry blogs, all the Meghan and Kate blogs, and of course, Go Fug Yourself, which between their posts about the royals and their book The Royal We, has taught me a ton. I’ve also read a bunch of royal biographies over the past few years (and a few more over the past few months) and have learned a lot!
How much will the fictional Duchess play a part in Royal Holiday?
The fictional Duchess plays a relatively minor role, but she was a ton of fun to write, and I loved writing interactions between her and Vivian.
What drew you to Doria Ragland's real life story? You recently wrote for us about why it's important for you to feature Black heroines; was that part of what inspired you to draw inspiration from Markle's mother?
It was less important to me to tell the story of a Black woman involved with the royal family, and more important for me to write a love story with a Black woman in her fifties at the center. Vivian gets introduced in The Wedding Party (my third book, which comes out this summer) and as soon as I wrote her character I knew I wanted her to get her happy ending. But I’m not going to lie: the idea of giving her that happy ending at Christmas with the royals thrilled me!
Vivian was a single mom when she raised her daughter, she worked hard all of her life and never really had time for anything but her daughter and her family and work, and I wanted her to find love, and someone who values her for how great she is. In Royal Holiday, this is the first vacation she’s had in years, and I loved both giving her a real fantasy experience, and also exploring her emotions around relationships and work and family. And I really loved writing her love story with Malcolm!
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