Alastair Carthew

Divine's Choice Alastair Carthew

Princess Divine, the sole heir to the English throne, wants to marry a guileless All Black rugby player and farmer from Proud (New Zealand).

Fearing a royal scandal, the scheming Queen Liliana and maniacal King Filip plot to marry Divine off to an English aristocrat. Divine flees with her lover, Joshua, in 2022, to Proud.

Led by the King to bring Divine home, English and Australian soldiers fight an epic battle at a Maori pa (fortress) against fierce M?ori gang warriors, elderly mercenaries, Afghan refugees, and even a replica of the extinct moa.

Divine returns to marry and become Queen, but disaster strikes when Divine cannot produce an heir to continue the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha's grip on the monarchy after the decades-old reign of the Windsor dynasty.

Will Divine abdicate? Who would replace her? Why is the British Commonwealth collapsing all around them? What dark rituals do All Blacks follow? Does Australia want to conquer Proud? Divine and Joshua are innocent pawns in an international power play between the Queen and her subjects.

Divine's Choice is a humorous, contemporary (2022) romantic adventure, a family saga with more twists and turns than the Hampton Court maze. It parodies the unique pressures facing the English monarchy and its rugby equivalent, the New Zealand All Blacks, in today's cruel social media age.