Hallmark Channel movies transport viewers into a different world, and the network’s royal-themed films bring a whole different level of fantasy.
While fans expect to suspend reality, when it comes to Hallmark’s royal rom-coms — there are almost too many tropes to count. The main culprit? Boy meets girl — and girl is blindsided by the revelation that her partner is royalty.
Take A Royal Queens Christmas, which focuses on Dee Dee (Megan Park), who unbeknownst to her, meets Prince Colin (Julian Morris) while delivering sweets for her cousin. Colin’s off-the-grid country of origin makes it possible for Dee Dee to fall for the prince before knowing his true identity, a trope that is in almost all the royal Hallmark productions.
Another cliché, which is Us-approved, is the story of an American who is hired by the royal family to help the king — or his child —and ends up finding her own happily ever after.
A Royal Runaway Romance, meanwhile, flips the script a little bit with the princess being the hopeless romantic and her suitor a seemingly normal American bodyguard. The 2022 film leans into the trope of boy falling for girl while trapped in a car for days only to learn when their road trip comes to an end they are each other’s perfect match.
Although Hallmark does stick to a formula of sorts — the queen always hates the foreigner, but eventually comes around when her son threatens to give up the throne — each royal movie does give the viewer a mini fairy tale that is wrapped until in two hours or less.
Cliché or not, riding in a one-horse open sleigh with a man who turns out to be next in line for the throne of a small country is a trope Hallmark fans want to see. And, lucky for viewers, it doesn’t appear that the network is stopping their rinse and repeat style anytime soon.
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Scroll down for Us’ unofficial ranking of the Hallmark Channel’s royal catalog — and see which tropes stand out in each rom-com, good and bad:
