Royal Seduction begins when a prince comes to town looking for the lover of his murdered brother. He wants to ask her some questions. Unfortunately, he thinks that Angeline is the girl he's looking for, when in fact her cousin Claire is the former prince's lover. When Angeline insists that she's not the right person, Rolfe refuses to believe her, or even ask anyone else at the party where they meet if she is who she says she is. Rather than try to verify her story, he kidnaps her and rapes her. Then, having realized that Angeline is the wrong girl on the basis that she was still a virgin, he refuses to apologize or release her, and continues raping her periodically as he drags her about the countryside in search of Claire. Along the way, Angeline is kidnapped by other people several more times, and is nearly raped by other men on at least three occasions, while falling in love with Rolfe in a dazzling display of Stockholm Syndrome. Apparently we're supposed to think that Rolfe's rapes are romantic, while the other near-rapes are horrendous.Rolfe never apologizes, merely displays a tremendous sense of entitlement that makes him think he's entitled to take whatever and whoever whenever he wants. He drinks copiously and displays extremely violent tendencies. This might not be historically inaccurate; of course, horrible things like rape did occur in "courting" and in some places probably still do. But that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make it romantic. Portraying it as so only presents a twisted vision of a severely traumatizing experience and lends itself to the culture of blaming the victim. It's because of shit like this that people say women are responsible for rape, because hey, they never explicitly said no. And it's romantic. Stop crying, bitches.
Hey, Blake, I have news for you. Rape is rape is rape, and it's not sexy.
1 star out of 5.
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