Songfacts®:

• After dating his former classmate Cherry Seaborn for several years, Ed Sheeran married her in 2018. This piano-driven ballad is an ode to the flame-haired singer's love of his life.
  
  And I know you could fall for a thousand kings
  And hearts that could give you a diamond ring
  When I fold, you see the best in me
  The joker and the queen
  
  Sheeran uses playing card metaphors to illustrate how his "Queen" married a "Joker" like him.
• Sheeran wrote the song with Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid and songwriter/producer Fred Again, the same day they penned "Bad Habits." The English pop star told Apple Music that after coming up with "Bad Habits," he thought they were done for the day. But when Fred Again played him a piano instrumental that Sam Romans (Clean Bandit's "Tears," Jonas Blue's "Rise") had come up with, he quickly got inspired. "It was probably 15 to 20 minutes of writing down metaphors and whispering them in," Sheeran said. "I had the line 'joker and the queen', then it was like, 'I fold, you saw my hand, you let me win, you put the cards on the table.'"
  
  For a while, Sheeran didn't like the song, as he felt it's "cheating when it's that easy." Then his brother, classical composer Matthew Sheeran, created a sweeping orchestral arrangement "and suddenly it sounded like this old classic that had been around since the '50s." He fell in love with the track and included it on Equals.
• Cherry has been the muse for several of Ed's songs, including "How Would You Feel (Paean)," "Perfect," "Hearts Don't Break Around Here," "Best Part of Me" and "Afterglow." On Equals, "First Times," "Love In Slow Motion" and "2step," are also about her.
• Ed Sheeran performed "The Joker and the Queen" at the 2022 Brit Awards.
• Sheeran recorded a remix of the song featuring Taylor Swift. The American superstar takes over the second verse, giving the female perspective of the love song with her own playing-card analogies.
  
  I've been played before if you hadn't guessed
  So I kept my cards close to my foolproof vest
  But you called my bluff and saw through all my tells
  And then you went all in and we left together
• Sheeran released the remix on February 11, 2022 as the fourth single from Equals. It marked the fourth collaboration between the longtime friends. Sheeran previously co-wrote and featured on Swift's songs "Everything Has Changed," "End Game," and "Run."
  
  "Me and Taylor first met and wrote and recorded our first song together in 2012, 10 years ago now,' said Sheeran. "I'm so, so honored to have her on this song."
• The Emil Nava-directed video for the remix is a sequel to Swift's "Everything Has Changed" clip. The same cast reprise their roles a decade later, with a teenage coming-of-age story showing Ava and Jack heading off to college.