What the Crown Requires cover

What the Crown Requires

By Clara Rowe

Not rated yet

Series: THE SORVAINE SERIES (Book 1)

Release date: 17 Jul 2026

Julian Aldric is very good at not wanting. Imogen Hartley is very good at leaving. When a six-day diplomatic secondment to Sorvaine becomes something neither of them planned for, the obstacles are real — a political marriage, a regency that cannot afford scandal, a father's illness that must stay quiet. The crown has always known what it requires of him. Whether he has ever known what he requires for himself is another question entirely.

Visit author site


Book Description

Julian Aldric has been Crown Prince his entire life and regent for eleven months. He has the authority, the responsibility, and the particular exhaustion of a man running a country while his father's name remains on the letterhead. He notices the British diplomat the way he notices everything he wishes he hadn't — precisely, reluctantly, and without being able to stop.

Imogen Hartley has spent her diplomatic career in the space between arrival and departure — useful, charming, and gone before anyone looks too closely. A Grand Prix summit to Sorvaine — a sovereign principality on the Mediterranean coast — is exactly the kind of bounded assignment she does best: six days, defined scope, and a flight home already booked. She stays for reasons she files under professional development and does not reopen.

The warmth between them is not the obstacle.

The obstacle is real: an expected marriage to Isabelle Vauclaire, whose dissolution would destabilize the pharmaceutical alliances that underpin the crown. A regency whose legitimacy depends on appearing unassailable. A father whose illness is publicly acknowledged and privately catastrophic — and whose secret Imogen will come to share.

The crown has always known what it requires of him. The question — the one neither of them can stop circling — is whether he has ever known what he requires for himself.

Duty is easy. Want is the hard part.

A royal romance. Book 1 in the Sorvaine Series.


Explore the story world

Meet the characters, places, and story details connected to this book.

View all profiles

In this series

Reader ratings & reviews

Not rated yet

Sign in to rate and review this book.

No written reviews yet.

About the Author

Clara Rowe

Clara Rowe

Clara Rowe has always been fascinated by dynasties — the weight they place on the people born into them, the costs they extract, and the private lives that persist underneath the public obligation. She writes romantic fiction about what happens when duty and desire stop being separable questions. When she isn't writing, she can usually be found with a cup of mango green tea and a book she has been meaning to finish for three weeks.

Sign Up to the Newsletter

Get updates about this book, new releases, and recommendations.

Newsletter Signup

Interests