'The Royals' TV Series Episode 3 Recap: Queen Helena And Princess Eleanor Butt Heads

In this week’s episode of the new drama series “The Royals,” Princess Eleanor digs up some dirt on her bodyguard Jasper but also finds a good side to him. Meanwhile, her mother Queen Helena is challenging her to become a better person by competing with her. Prince Liam on the other hand, is busy convincing the King that he deserves a chance to become worthy of the crown he stands to inherit.

After Queen Helena hired someone to filter Eleanor’s social media posts, the Princess decides to fight back by planting an outrageous story about the Queen. Apart from that, she decides to put up her own show during London Fashion Week to rival the Queen’s annual fashion show. Queen Helena decides to take on the challenge and continues to push Eleanor and provoke her by fighting her for every detail of the show. The two of them connive and scheme and try to sabotage each other’s event. The King thinks Helena is overdoing it by messing up Eleanor’s plans but the Queen says that Eleanor is at her best when she is challenged. They have different parenting strategies but in the end, they only want their daughter to work hard and be passionate about something other than drugs and partying.

While dealing with the Queen, Eleanor also has to sort out her blackmail problem with Jasper. She can’t do anything because he still has her sex tape but she’s enlisted the help of Ophelia to dig some dirt on him. Ophelia gains access to her father’s personnel files for the palace staff and she learns that Jasper has been lying about his background. Apparently, he grew up in a orphanage and not in Las Vegas with his father. When Eleanor tells him about her discovery, this shakes him a little but so far, Eleanor still has very little material to bring him down.

Since dating the prince, Ophelia also has a lot on her plate. She is now getting hounded by Paparazzi everywhere she goes. On one such occasion, she gets rescued by a guy called Nick who also goes to her school. Ophelia strikes a friendship with him and the two of them start to go on little Paparazzi ducking adventures. They become closer and begin to form a bond that could lead to something other than friendship.

Meanwhile, Prince Liam is also getting busy elsewhere. Now that he and Ophelia are no longer dating, he’s back to his womanising ways and also back to hanging out with his ex-girlfriend Gemma. On one such evening, they get drunk and as Gemma takes the wheel, she gets frisky with Liam and loses control of the car. She crashes into a phone booth and ends up with a small cut on her forehead. The Prince and his bodyguard Marcus remain unscathed. Liam refuses to leave her to deal with the accident but Jasper punches him out cold so that he and Marcus can carry him out of the scene. The extraction protocol ensures that the Prince isn’t embroiled in yet another scandal.

Upon returning to the palace, Eleanor admits to Liam that Jasper did the right thing by punching him. She says that it was prudent for them to exit the scene to avoid a scandal since they knew that Gemma was unharmed anyway. For the first time, Eleanor takes Jasper’s side but she tells him that she’s only protecting him so that she can take him down herself.

Liam is relieved that the King didn’t find out that he was with Gemma that night after he had just asked for a chance to prove his worthiness to be the next King. The King decides to take Liam out to meet with other heads of state as well as the Prime Minister. He also asks Liam to attend a meeting with anti-monarchists in order for him to have a better grasp on what he will be dealing with if he ever becomes King.

While Liam learns the ropes, the King’s brother Duke Cyrus continues to plot and scheme with the Queen. The two of them want to hold on to the Monarchy and want to do everything to stop the King from abolishing it. Even though Cyrus resents helping Liam, he knows that if he ever wants to become King, he will have to fight to keep the monarchy alive.

On the day of the fashion show, both the Queen and Princess Eleanor put up amazing shows. The newspaper reviews the next day rave about the shows but Eleanor is feeling particularly smug after she is called the new "Queen of Fashion." Helena bursts her bubble by telling her that she ordered the journalists to say all those positive things about Eleanor’s show and that she didn’t get good reviews on her own. Eleanor gets frustrated and finds an unlikely ally in Jasper who comforts him and tells her that the Queen is lying. More drama and intrigue comes with “The Royals” which airs every Sunday at 10 pm on E.

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