During Royale’s development (the XP Media Center theme), the graphic artists also produced a black version of the skin, sans the overused “glass” effect. The result is an aesthetic black skin named “Royale Noir”, it even works with Office 2003.

Since the skin was never released (or reached final adjustments) there are a few issues with it: some of the colors don’t meet the overall “feel” (they’re too purple-ish compared to the greys of the bitmaps) and the inactive titlebars are a little too dark.

Later edit - modded theme

"This mod grew from a finishing Royale Noir project to encompass Zune bug fixing as well.

If you are a fan of Microsoft's Royale, this is the only Royale theme you will ever need.

The theme now consists of 3 color schemes, Royale, Royale Noir and Royale Zune.

For Royale Noir, Microsoft came 50% of the way, and I went the other 50%, a lot of work and bugfixes was done to finish the theme.

For Zune, work was done to better the distasteful orange and many bugfixes implemented that Microsoft messed up."

Download Now Click here to download Royale Noir Theme for WinXP