The Oxenburg Princes Books in Order

The Oxenburg Princes books take the fairy-tale thread already present in The Duchess Diaries and turn it up another notch. These stories bring in royalty from the fictional kingdom of Oxenburg, then drop those princes into Scottish settings full of clever women, disguises, house parties, and family interference.

The result is wonderfully impractical in the best way.

The Prince Who Loved Me kicks things off with Prince Alexsey Romanovin and Bronwyn Murdoch in a clear Cinderella-inspired setup. He thinks he can outmaneuver his matchmaking grandmother. She thinks a handsome prince is exactly the kind of trouble she does not need. Hawkins has a lot of fun with that imbalance, especially because Bronwyn is sharper than the role others try to hand her.

The Prince and I widens the mood from ballroom flirtation to Highland adventure. Max Romanovin meets a young widow living outside the usual rules, and the series suddenly has robbery, revenge, and a heroine disguised as the local outlaw. Mad for the Plaid keeps the family energy going by following Nikolai Romanovin into a rescue mission that turns into a secret partnership with a Scottish laird's daughter. Along the edges, The Princess Wore Plaid and Twelve Kisses to Midnight add short visits that deepen the world and its family web.

What ties these books together is the contrast between rank and reality. The princes arrive with titles, habits, and assumptions. Scotland, and the women they meet there, quickly strips away anything false. The heroines tend to be practical, observant, and completely unimpressed by royal self-importance, which keeps the series lively.

If you like historical romance that borrows a little from fairy tales without becoming overly delicate about it, this series is a good fit. It keeps the ballrooms and gowns, but it also enjoys mud, disguise, mistaken identity, and the fact that love is much harder to manage than diplomacy.