Princes of Chaos

My original review after reading the teaser:
Pace is already it for me I swear to god.

After finishing the book:
I was young and foolish. Pace is, in fact, not it for me.

So I want to start off by saying I totally understand all of the people who didn't like this one.
However, I do think this is one of, if not my favorite book in the series, but at this part in the story I wouldn't consider it a romance.

From my perspective though, this is nothing new. In the Royals series so far, that there is always a point in each trilogy where this is true for me. For example I didn't think of Killian and Story's relationship as romantic until deep into the second book, if not later. A similar thing was true of Nick. So maybe in the past I would only feel this with one or two characters at a time, but I actually think the Princes, while none of them have a romantic relationship with Verity yet, have more going for them in this regard than previous heroes.

Let me explain.

What I think Sam and Angel did masterfully is show how deep the relationship is between the Princes themselves . Their relationship felt far more dependent, caring, and complex than any of the previous heroes. I think the three royal men always have a close brotherly relationship with one another, that always helps to shine light on their good character traits even when they're being shit humans more generally.

I think this is even more true in the Princes book than any other. They said multiple times like they felt like they “owned” one another, or felt like they were all parts of the same person, and I truly understood that by the end of the book. Protecting each other came first to them, even if they had to sacrifice themselves or Verity to do so. So, I think what may come across to others as Verity being weak and taking whatever the Princes through at them, to me just seemed like she was slowly becoming one of them. Thats what the Princes do. They would pay any price to protect one another.

The Prince's relationship gave me the clear perspective that these boys are capable of caring for someone and deeply. The whole “sleeping together like a nest of rats thing”, was perhaps the most endearing and sad metaphor that felt, at the same time, so true to the characters that I couldn't help but find them worth caring about on their own merit. This is also probably the first book that this has happened (at least so early on in the trilogy). Killian didn't have that for me. Nor did Nick. Or Sy, when he fucked up, or Remy. When these characters were, frankly, straight up evil, I couldn't extract myself from the heroine's pain to empathize with them. Most of the time I would just think about how the heroine deserved better.

In this one though, Verity played a bit of a background role for me, and for the Princes too. I think that this is the problem that a lot of people might be having with this book, which again I can completely understand. However, there were many small moments when they wanted to care for her, and wanted her to become one of them. Seeing the way that the princes care about each other, gave me this sense of anticipation that when the time is right, the Princes might have the most intimate and caring relationship of all the other couples.


As an aside:

I think this book really works because of the Prince's Dynamic. I would actually be really interested in seeing a Royals book where the heroes aren't close at all. Maybe they don't even know each other. Maybe they even play mind fuck games with each other and use the heroine to do so. I think it would be very interesting to see Sam and Angel develop this relationship from scratch, along with the heroine's relationship to them. Or maybe the heroine even has an advantage and is already in a romantic relationship/super close with one of the heroes but not the others.

I would really be interested in seeing if I could still come to love Royal men that don't even love one another yet.

As an aside II:
Sorry for the long rant like I could honestly write an entire essay about this book. The abundance of maternal imagery, even associated with Verity and the Princes. There's a lot to unpack with this one.