American Royals

Nina Gonzalez is the only main character in American Royals who is a commoner with no royal titles. As the longtime best friend of Princess Samantha, Nina has practically grown up with the Washington twins. Nina loves the Washingtons, but after spending years in their world, she is enjoying her freshman year at King’s College, creating a life for herself outside of Washington Palace. For Nina, “college [is] supposed to be her fresh start, a chance to figure out who she really [is], free from the influence of the royal family” (15-16). Nina has kept her relationship with the Washingtons under wraps, and she looks forward to having a normal life “without the private planes and court galas and protocol” (21). However, Nina learns that separating herself from the royal family is easier said than done.

When Nina and Samantha met as children, Nina’s life became “interwoven into the lives of the royal twins” (18). Although Nina and Sam are best friends, Nina has always felt overshadowed by Sam’s buoyant and somewhat abrasive personality. Because Sam “had enough personality for two people,” Nina always felt like she “needed to back down a bit, to compensate” (254). As a result, Nina loves Sam, but after months of being away from one another, Nina starts to realize that “absolutely nothing about [their] friendship has ever been equal” (255). Nina’s relationship with Jeff is just as complicated: Nina has loved Jeff for years, and when they start dating after the Queen’s Ball, Nina feels herself “falling for Jeff all over again, and far too fast” (157). Nina worries about her status as a commoner compared to Jeff’s title as Prince of America, and although she desperately wishes they could have a quiet, private relationship with just the two of them, she knows deep down that there is an “inherently public nature of their relationship” (345), and she worries about losing herself in the process of dating Jeff and being forced into the spotlight.

Nina’s proximity to the Washington family has caused Nina to feel unworthy, as if she will never measure up to them. When she’s with Samantha, Nina feels like people “look straight through [her] as if she [is] invisible” (66), and during photo calls, she is accustomed to being “shuffled to one side and asked to wait until the interview [is] over” (149). Nina is caught between two worlds, and her situation becomes even more complicated when word gets out about her relationship with the prince. Amid the media backlash and hateful comments about how unworthy Nina is to date the prince, Nina compares herself to Daphne Deighton, who is polished, perfect, and “the girl Jeff would marry,” while Nina is “the girl he’d snuck upstairs at a party, then sent home in a hired car before anyone found out” (74). Daphne warns Nina that her relationship with Jeff will be like “living in a goldfish bowl—constantly on display, and on trial” (356). By the novel’s end, Nina hits her breaking point and starts pulling away from Sam, Jeff, the whole Washington family, and the world she knows she will never fit in.

Samantha Washington is the younger sister of Beatrice and one of the main protagonists in American Royals. Unlike Beatrice, Sam has little concern for what is proper or socially acceptable for a princess, and she is described as “unpredictable and irrepressible and laughing and mischievous” (254), but also “too clever for [her] own good” (42). Whereas Beatrice has been held to a high standard since her birth, Sam and Jeff have the freedom to do whatever they want since they are only the second and third in line for the American throne. Sam is not conventionally beautiful, but she decides that “if she [can’t] be beautiful, she should at the very least be interesting” (34), which has led to a history of wild antics and partying that has attracted the criticism of the American people as well as the rest of the Washington family.

Behind Sam’s big personality and cavalier attitude about propriety, she secretly feels irrelevant and unable to live up to her parents’ expectations, especially when she considers how perfect Beatrice is in comparison. Sam refers to herself as “the extra child, an insurance policy: a living, breathing backup battery” (32) in case anything happens to Beatrice before she has the chance to have children. After years of being forced to the side while Beatrice was prioritized, Sam decided she didn’t want to be like Beatrice: Instead, she tried to become the opposite of Beatrice. Sam feels that the only way to get attention in her family is to misbehave and attract negative attention because she doesn’t think she has anything of value to offer that would compare to Beatrice. Next to Beatrice, Sam feels “utterly pointless, while [Beatrice] [is] literally the point of everything” (299). However, the king tells Sam that she is passionate, relatable, and “a force of nature” and the Washington family’s “secret weapon” (309). Kind and empathetic, Sam sees people for who they really are rather than their ranks or titles.

Sam’s jealousy of Beatrice extends into her relationship with Teddy. When Sam meets Teddy Eaton on the night of the Queen’s Ball, she basks in his attention until she learns that Beatrice intends to date him. Samantha laments that she can never “keep hold of anything once Beatrice [has] decided that it should be hers” (104), and throughout most of the novel, there is more friction than normal between the sisters because of Sam’s feelings for Teddy. However, after their late-night conversation in the kitchen about their father’s illness, Beatrice notices “a new maturity to Samantha” and that she “[isn’t] the same princess who’d laughed her way blithely through high school” (347). By the novel’s end, Sam begins to mature and accept her new and changing role in the Washington family and decides she wants to be a better sister to Beatrice. Sam still has feelings for Teddy, but once she understands Beatrice’s motivations, Sam becomes her sister’s fiercest ally and friend.