Long Live the Royals

Long Live the Royals (also known as The Royals) is an animated television pilot created by Sean Szeles for Cartoon Network. The pilot centers around a boy named Peter entering his father and king's Tournament of Games to capture the attention of a lady named Katherine (Gillian Jacobs). Along with AJ's Infinite Summer, both shorts were created by storyboard artists for Regular Show, and were produced at Cartoon Network Studios; they were released concurrently onto the network's online video streaming service on May 16, 2014. It will be made into a miniseries for Cartoon Network.

Plot
The short follows Peter (Jeremy Redleaf) entering his father and king's Tournament of Games to capture the attention of a lady named Katherine (Gillian Jacobs).

Production
Long Live the Royals was written and created by Sean Szeles. The pilot was produced at Cartoon Network Studios, with Robert Alvarez as timing director, Sue Mondt as art director and Phil Rynda as creative director. It was produced by Nate Funaro.

Voice director Linda Lamontagne indicated that she started directing Long Live the Royals as early as 2012 in her resume, under the title "The Royals". The short was later mentioned in a promotional video for Cartoon Network Studios, also given the aforementioned title. Furthermore, Scot Stafford was commissioned to compose the soundtrack for it, as well as various songs and theme music, as early as August 2013. He described the score as alternating "between spot-on 1978 punk" and "new wave recreations, medieval court music" and an "over-the-top, modern and epic" orchestral sound.

Release and reception
Both shorts were "quietly" released onto Cartoon Network's online video streaming service on May 16, 2014.

Amid Amidi of the animation entertainment blog Cartoon Brew and Jason Krell of io9 published articles praising both shorts together. While Krell found the plot for AJ's Infinite Summer "simple," he noted its premise to allow for "total freedom". He compared its "charming take" on summer vacation life to "an aged up Phineas and Ferb". Amidi posited that the short would not retain continuity between Toby's earlier film. Krell praised Long Live the Royals for its "immediately memorable" characters, summarizing them as "familiar without being redundant" while highlighting the dark wizard with the Cockney accent as "great." Amidi compared the series to Toby's short, observing it to also follow three children, while considering their "modern-age royal" status to differentiate it. Krell concluded his review stating that both were "amazing," and will be guaranteed his viewership should the shorts be picked up for full series. Both reviewers noted Szeles as well as Jones for their work on the network's other animated series, Regular Show.