I didn’t know I had a daddy kink until Jonathan King walked onto the page and ruined my goddamn life.
There. We’ve established the important part.
After reading the Royal Elite books, moving on to Jonathan and Aurora felt inevitable. I already knew Jonathan as Aiden’s terrifying father, the man who could walk into a room full of already intimidating people and somehow make everyone else look like they needed adult supervision.
Then Rina Kent gave him his own duet.
Reign of a King and Rise of a Queen follow Jonathan King and Aurora Harper, and these books turned out to be very different from the Royal Elite stories despite existing in the same universe. The characters are older. The relationship carries a much heavier power imbalance. There is history connecting their families, and Jonathan comes into the story as a man who has already spent decades becoming exactly who he is.
He is not discovering his capacity for obsession. No, baby, no. Jonathan King has had time to professionalize it.
I gave Reign of a King five stars and Rise of a Queen four, which probably tells you where this is going. I loved the relationship. I loved Jonathan. I loved Aurora. I also finished the second book with enough unresolved questions to start questioning the plot like it owed me money.
So yes, spoilers for the entire Kingdom Duet ahead.
Reign of a King: Jonathan King Has Entered the Chat
My rating: 5 stars
Jonathan was already intimidating in the Royal Elite books, but seeing him through Aurora’s perspective changes him completely.
He is still ruthless. He is controlling to a degree that makes Aiden sound like a child (which, fair, he still is, I guess). He has money, power, status, and the absolute confidence of a man who has spent most of his adult life expecting the world to move when he tells it to.
Aurora does not move nearly as easily as he expects.
That is where the fun starts.
She enters Jonathan’s life with an existing connection to his late wife, Alicia, because Aurora is Alicia’s younger sister. Jonathan has very complicated feelings surrounding that entire family history, and Aurora walks directly into the middle of them while also carrying secrets and trauma of her own.
The age gap is significant, and the power imbalance is impossible to ignore. Jonathan has more money, influence, life experience, and control over the circumstances surrounding them. The book knows that. Their relationship would have fallen apart for me if Aurora had felt like someone Jonathan could simply overwhelm until she surrendered.
She most decidedly doesn’t do that. Nuh uh!
Aurora argues with him. She teases him. She calls him out on his shit and stays true to herself even after Jonathan decides he wants her.
And Jonathan wants things with the intensity of a hostile corporate acquisition. Which is angry and fast.
That combination worked surprisingly well for me.
Jonathan Does Not Know How to Love Normally
One of the things I liked most about Jonathan is that Rina Kent doesn’t turn him into Aiden with twenty extra years and a better suit.
You can absolutely see where Aiden got some of his personality. The control issues did not emerge from nowhere.
Jonathan is still his own character.
There is a loneliness underneath him that I didn’t expect when I first met him in Royal Elite. He has spent his life being useful, powerful, intimidating, and difficult to reach. He even talks about his mother being unable to love him in a way he could understand.
That detail stayed with me.
Jonathan doesn’t strike me as a man who has spent his life secretly waiting for somebody to cuddle him until his emotional problems disappear. He doesn’t know what to do with vulnerability when it arrives, and he certainly isn’t going to sit down and explain his feelings over a cup of tea. That’s for weak people.
No. His care and affection come out through his behavior.
He pays attention. He protects. He anticipates problems before Aurora knows they exist. He takes responsibility for things because that is the language he actually understands.
Sometimes that care becomes control, because of course it does. This is Jonathan King. The man could probably turn choosing a restaurant into a dominance exercise.
Aurora is one of the few people willing to tell him when he has crossed a line.
I loved watching that happen.
Aurora Is More Than Alicia’s Sister
Aurora could very easily have disappeared inside the history surrounding Alicia.
Her dead sister has an enormous presence in these books. Alicia was Jonathan’s wife. She was Aiden’s mother. Her death sits at the center of several mysteries Aurora is trying to understand.
Aurora spends much of her life in relation to what happened to Alicia, but she never felt like a substitute for her.
She has her own personality, her own desires, and her own relationship with Jonathan. She is warmer and more openly emotional than he is, but she is not naive. She knows exactly how intimidating Jonathan is, and repeatedly decides to engage with him anyway.
She also has a playful streak that I loved because Jonathan desperately needs someone willing to poke him.
Everybody else sees Jonathan King and thinks, perhaps reasonably, I should be careful.
Aurora occasionally seems to see him and think, I wonder how annoyed I can make him before dinner.
I thought that was excellent.
The relationship becomes convincing because she isn’t trying to rehabilitate him into a completely different man. She likes his intensity. She is attracted to his dominance. Once their feelings deepen, she understands that his possessiveness comes as part of the package.
Jonathan also has to recognize that wanting Aurora does not make her an extension of himself, and I loved that Rina Kent showed us how he struggles with this concept.
About That Daddy Thing
I’m forty-four years old and I have no shame. Sue me.
Jonathan King awakened something.
There is a specific kind of authority he brings to the relationship that works because it feels completely natural for his character. He is older, experienced, extremely confident, and accustomed to being obeyed.
Then that dynamic enters the bedroom.
Oh.
Well.
I had discoveries.
What makes it work for me is that Aurora actively wants that dynamic. She is not being dragged into something she doesn’t understand. There is an element of surrender that she chooses because giving up control to Jonathan sexually excites her.
Jonathan, unsurprisingly, enjoys being trusted with that control very much.
The whole thing could have felt gimmicky if the dominance appeared only when the clothes came off. It doesn’t. Power is central to Jonathan’s personality, so the sexual dynamic feels like an extension of the man we already know.
I finished Reign of a King thinking, “Well, that was educational.”
Five stars. No notes.
Okay, some notes, but they were largely enthusiastic.
Rise of a Queen: The Relationship Gets Better
My rating: 4 stars
The frustrating thing about Rise of a Queen is that the relationship gave me almost everything I wanted.
Jonathan and Aurora become much more emotionally intimate in the second book. The power dynamic shifts as Aurora understands him better, and Jonathan gradually loosens the iron grip he keeps on everything around him.
He still wants control. I mean, duh, he is Jonathan King.
But he starts making room for Aurora inside decisions instead of automatically deciding everything for her.
Aurora also comes into her own much more strongly here. Her past starts surfacing in ways she can no longer avoid, and the truth about her family forces her to reevaluate a lot of what she thought she knew.
Jonathan becomes one of the people she can rely on while that happens.
There is something very satisfying about watching a man whose love language is essentially I have already handled the problem meet a woman who occasionally needs him to sit down and let her choose how the problem gets handled.
He learns. Reluctantly, but still. I guess personal growth can be exhausting when you have built an empire around getting your way.
Jonathan Falling in Love Is Ridiculously Satisfying
Jonathan spends an impressive amount of time refusing to say the obvious.
The man is deeply, catastrophically in love with Aurora.
Everyone can see it.
Aurora can see it.
The reader can see it.
Jonathan could probably see it if he stopped treating emotional vocabulary as nazi propaganda.
When he finally says the words, he waits until almost the last possible moment.
Motherfucker.
Still, I loved watching his behavior reveal him long before his mouth caught up.
Jonathan is at his most interesting when affection makes him vulnerable because he hates vulnerability so much. He knows how to protect Aurora from external threats. He is considerably less prepared for the fact that caring this much means she now has the power to hurt him. That scares him more than he wants to admit.
Aurora does not exploit that fear. She understands what it costs him to give her access to parts of himself he has kept locked down for most of his life.
That is where the romance really landed for me.
Then the Plot Started Annoying Me
This is where Rise of a Queen lost the fifth star.
The emotional arc worked beautifully, but the mystery became much shakier once I started asking questions. Unfortunately for books, I am exactly the reader who asks questions. Once I notice a gap, my brain will stand beside it with a clipboard and refuse to move on.
I simply do not forget things. My sister owes me money from when I was in third grade, and I STILL haven’t let that go. You think I was going to overlook a plot hole involving a murder, a serial killer, and mysterious recordings?
Not a chance in hell.
Let me tell you about Margot and Tom.
Margot, the King household’s housekeeper, and Tom, the butler, are connected to Megan, one of Maxim Griffin’s early victims. Megan’s death was dismissed as drug-related, while Maxim later referred to her as “practice,” which tells you exactly what sort of monster we’re dealing with.
Oh, and Maxim is Aurora’s biological father. He had an affair with Aurora and Alicia’s mother, and Aurora, then Clarissa, was the result. Their mother gave the baby to Maxim to raise. After she died, Maxim transferred his obsession onto Alicia, which is where this family history gets even more disturbing.
Anyway, Margot and Tom infiltrate Jonathan’s household because they hold Alicia responsible for what happened to Megan and decide to destroy her. Their campaign against her is elaborate and horrifying. They move objects around the house, use recorded whispers, slip substances into her food, and systematically convince her that she is losing her mind. Everyone around Alicia eventually interprets her deterioration as mental illness, which is exactly what Margot and Tom want.
Years later, they use similar tactics against Aurora. They are also responsible for sending her some of the flash drives and recordings connected to Alicia.
That part makes sense. I have no problem following that part of the plot.
One recording, however, still makes absolutely no sense to me.
Who Recorded Alicia’s Death?
Aurora eventually receives an audio recording of Alicia’s final moments. Maxim is there after Alicia crashes her car while fleeing from him, and the recording captures their conversation while she is dying.
We know how Aurora gets it. Maxim leaves it for her through his solicitor.
Great. Sender identified.
What the book never explains, at least as far as I can tell, is how the recording was made in the first place.
Who pressed record?
Was Alicia secretly recording Maxim while he chased her? Was Maxim recording their confrontation for some reason? Was a device already running inside the car? Had someone else planted surveillance equipment? If there is an explanation buried somewhere in the book, I missed it, because the existence of that recording is treated as completely normal when it is anything but.
And this is the recording I need explained most.
It captures Alicia’s literal death. It contains information Aurora needs to understand what happened to her sister, and it also gives important background to Aiden’s understanding of how his mother died. This isn’t a random bit of evidence tucked into the plot. It helps connect the Kingdom Duet back to one of the central tragedies hanging over the Royal Elite books. The fact that such a convenient and consequential recording exists makes the lack of explanation for how it was created even harder for me to ignore.
I don’t need three pages describing the technology. One sentence would have done it.
Alicia had started secretly recording Maxim because she was afraid of him.
Done. Thank you. I can go home.
Instead, the recording exists because the story needs Aurora to hear it, and the mechanics behind it are never established clearly enough for me to stop thinking about them.
Those gaps matter because the mystery carries too much narrative weight for me to shrug them off. Alicia’s death shapes Jonathan, Aurora, and Aiden, so the evidence surrounding it needs to hold up when I start asking how it got there.
My brain hates that.
Why Didn’t Alicia Get Aurora Away From Maxim?
This is the other part of the backstory I still can’t completely reconcile.
Aurora, then Clarissa, had been given to Maxim as a baby by her mother and grew up believing he was simply her father. Alicia didn’t make that decision, so I don’t blame her for Aurora ending up in his care in the first place. My question is what happened later, once Alicia understood exactly what Maxim was capable of.
By then, Alicia had firsthand experience with his obsession and knew how dangerous he could be. She also knew Aurora was living under his roof. That should have created an enormous problem for her, especially once she understood that Maxim’s fixation on their mother had transferred to Alicia after her death.
I can understand why getting Aurora away from him might have been incredibly difficult. Maxim was controlling, dangerous, and clearly capable of manipulating the people around him. Alicia may have been afraid that confronting him would make things worse, or that involving the police would put Aurora in even greater danger. There could have been threats or circumstances that made taking her sister impossible.
The book just never gives me enough of Alicia’s reasoning to know.
Did she believe Aurora was safe because Maxim viewed her as his daughter rather than as another one of his “muses”? Was Alicia trying to keep his attention focused on herself so he would leave Aurora alone? Did Maxim threaten her if she tried to interfere? Was there some practical reason she couldn’t remove Aurora from his custody? I mean, once she married Jonathan, she had access to a fuckton of money that could have gotten her the best lawyers in the world, so I don’t think that would have been a problem.
Any of those explanations could work for me. I simply needed the story to establish one.
I mean, I get that Margot and Tom were driving her nuts, but still, it was her little sister!
Aurora spending her childhood with Maxim is a huge part of her history, especially once we learn that he is her biological father and understand what he had already done to other women. Alicia knew enough about him that I wanted a clearer explanation of why Aurora remained there and what, if anything, Alicia tried to do about it.
Those questions didn’t ruin Rise of a Queen for me because Jonathan and Aurora’s relationship still carried the book beautifully. They did keep me from giving it five stars, though. I finished completely satisfied with the romance while still mentally reopening the evidence folder on the mystery.
Jonathan and Aurora Still Won Me Over Completely
Even with my complaints about the plot, I love Jonathan and Aurora together.
Jonathan’s dominance works because it is simply part of who he is. He doesn’t suddenly become commanding when they reach the bedroom. This is a man who has spent decades expecting people to listen when he speaks, and he brings that same confidence into every aspect of his relationship with Aurora.
Aurora has enough backbone to keep all that authority from swallowing her whole. She argues with him, questions him, and continues trusting her own judgment even when Jonathan is completely convinced that his judgment should be sufficient for both of them.
Their age gap adds another layer to the imbalance between them, but Aurora never feels like a child standing beside him. She has lived through too much and developed too strong a sense of herself for that.
One of my favorite parts of their relationship is watching Jonathan slowly accept that loving Aurora means allowing her to make decisions he would much rather make on her behalf. His instinct is always to identify the problem and handle it before anyone else has time to participate.
Aurora has the audacity to want some control over her own life.
The nerve of that woman.
Watching Jonathan King adapt to this outrageous concept is extremely entertaining because flexibility is not exactly one of the man’s defining characteristics.
So Who Is My Favorite King?
Comparing Aiden and Jonathan feels unfair because they appeal to me for very different reasons.
Aiden was my introduction to Royal Elite and the reason I discovered that bully romance could work for me. Jonathan introduced me to a few other preferences I had somehow failed to identify before reading Reign of a King.
We can leave the specifics of that educational journey between me, my Kindle, and my husband.
The biggest difference is that Jonathan is older and completely settled into himself. Aiden is still figuring out what to do with feelings that seem to offend him on principle. Jonathan already knows exactly who he is, what he wants, and how he intends to get it.
That confidence is ridiculously attractive on the page.
It also makes Aurora’s ability to throw him off balance much more satisfying. Jonathan has spent decades building a life around control. Very little rattles him, and he likes it that way. Then Aurora enters his life and starts demanding emotional access to places he has kept locked down for years.
Seeing a man that composed become increasingly compromised by one woman is delicious.
Aiden losing his mind over Elsa feels appropriate for a young man experiencing that level of obsession for the first time. Jonathan losing his mind over Aurora after decades of believing himself nearly impossible to unsettle is another level of entertainment entirely.
Final Thoughts on the Kingdom Duet
Reign of a King remains an easy five-star read for me. Jonathan is one of my favorite dominant romance heroes, and Aurora has enough personality to make their relationship feel like a genuine clash of two strong people instead of one powerful man absorbing a younger woman into his life.
Rise of a Queen gave me the emotional payoff I wanted from them. Their relationship deepens, Aurora learns more about her past, and Jonathan gradually discovers that loving someone occasionally requires allowing that person to participate in decisions concerning her own existence.
Growth!
The mystery is where the second book lost me. I can follow what Margot and Tom did to Alicia and why the flash drives eventually reached Aurora. I understand why Maxim was present when Alicia died. What I still cannot explain is how the recording of Alicia’s final moments was created, and I wanted more clarity around Alicia’s decision to leave Aurora with Maxim.
Those gaps matter because the mystery carries too much narrative weight for me to shrug them off.
I would still happily recommend the duet. Jonathan and Aurora are strong enough together that I remained completely invested even while mentally cross-examining the plot.
Jonathan has also earned permanent membership in that prestigious category of fictional men whose behavior I would find intolerable in reality and thoroughly enjoy from the safety of a book.
Daddy King remains undefeated.
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