Welcome friend! I finally bring you the long awaited review of The Heir Apparent today. I interviewed the author, Rebecca Armitage, on the blog back in January. With the bustle of the holiday season and returning to work, I hadn’t had a chance to read the book then. I had put a hold on the audiobook at my library and it was lovely timing when my friend, Michelle, told me she had just finished the book and I happened to get my copy ready to borrow.
Encountering this book first through the author then through the story and my friend made for a unique reading experience. Read on for my thoughts.
They would always choose the Crown over their family. It was the pact they made for the honour of wearing it.
Lexi Villiers is a 29-year-old Englishwoman doing her medical residency in Hobart, working too hard, worried about her bank balance, and living with friends. It’s a good life, and getting even better, because as the dawn is breaking on New Year’s Day, Lexi is about to kiss the man she loves for the very first time.
But by midnight, everything will change. Because Lexi is in fact not an ordinary young woman. She is Princess Alexandrina, third in line to the British throne – albeit estranged from the rest of her family and living in voluntary exile on the other side of the world. But following a terrible accident, Lexi – the black sheep of her family and, until this moment, always destined to be the spare – is now the heir apparent, first in line to the throne once her grandmother, the elderly Queen, dies. Called back to do her duty, she arrives in London to a Palace riven with power plays and media leaks, all the while guarding painful secrets of her own. Palace waters are treacherous, rumours are rife, and selling each other’s secrets is a family tradition. And with the Crown just within her grasp, Lexi must choose what bonds she will keep … and what she is willing to leave behind.
The Heir Apparent – Review
The Heir Apparent is a contemporary fiction set in an alternate timeline. It is a story about the British monarchy. I found it smart to root it in a different queen figure as it allows parallels with the royalty we see without actually talking about them specifically. I have found the life of royals interesting and I enjoyed following someone fictional.
An heir who wasn’t supposed to be
The story follows Lexi, a princess. She is second born and hence doesn’t have a claim to the throne. For some years now, she has been distanced from her family. Her mother’s death shook her world and as soon as she could, she escaped her duties as a royal and went on to pursue a career as a doctor. She has made friends and home in Tasmania and is out of touch from the everyday royal dramas.
A brutal accident brings her back home. Her father, heir to the throne, and her brother, next in line, pass away.
She now has a chance to become Queen. Lexi isn’t simply unexpectedly given a crown. The Heir Apparent takes place over the course of a year in which Lexi is given the opportunity to come back into the royal circle and figure out if this is what she wants.
This is the perspective of the heir who wasn’t supposed to be.
My first impressions of the story were that I liked the characters and the plot. There is a lot to learn about Lexi and her choice to move to Tasmania and it all gets revealed in time.
A fictional monarchy built from a real one
I rarely read alternate timelines in contemporary fiction and I was curious how Rebecca came to this story. Before we dive further into the plot, I want to return to two questions I asked Rebecca all those months back.
Question — As a journalist, you’ve written about major royal milestones. Were there any stories that sparked an idea or theme in this novel?
Rebecca —The very first idea for The Heir Apparent was planted in my brain in 2018 during Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s wedding. They were obviously in love and thrilled to be together, but I kept catching glimpses of something in Harry’s face that left me wondering if he was stressed or upset. Now we know that there was a lot of tension between him and his family, but at the time, I had no idea what was going on. Even then, I was left wondering – what happens when you’re born royal, but you don’t want it? From there, the novel grew inside me until I simply had to write it down! By the time I did, Harry and Meghan had withdrawn as senior working royals and moved to California, so I got to see the way the world reacted to that decision, which also really informed Lexi’s journey.
Another question from the interview which is relevant here is:
Question — You’ve covered real-life royals for years—how did that shape your creation of the British royal family in The Heir Apparent?
Rebecca —I used the scaffolding of the House of Windsor – which I’ve written about a lot as a journalist – to build the fictional House of Villiers. In this story, the characters will initially feel a little familiar, but I then take them in an entirely fictional direction. It feels like a world you know, but one that’s occurring in a slightly alternate universe.
I also used my experience as a journalist to give the reader an insight into the media ecosystem in which the British Royal Family lives. It’s such a strange existence – giving the public access to their lives is crucial to the institution’s survival, and the line between reality and perception can easily become blurred. I think the reason modern royals can sometimes be prone to leaking against each other is because their media persona becomes more important than their real lives. The way the public sees them takes priority over their relationship with their own relatives. It’s a totally bizarre way to live. Despite all the privilege, there’s a lot of pressure and the stakes are high, and it just felt like the perfect setting for a novel.
Looking back at these questions after finishing the book, I think about all the places where inspiration lives. Rebecca keenly observed life play out for royals and used that as inspiration to create a story and its characters. To see what the withdrawal of royals from their family looks like in real life gives way to the story about a woman leaving her family responsibilities behind to become herself.
Royals live a complex public life and through Lexi, I got to see the personal challenges of it. Rebecca’s imagination allowed me, and every reader who picks up this book, to be in the shoes of royalty in a relatable manner.
Three relationships that make the royal story personal
Lexi’s relationship with her family has long been strained and The Heir Apparent does a great job of unfolding all that happened that led to her initial departure. There are three relationships that I want to highlight from the book.
Lexi and her mother
First, Lexi’s relationship with her mom is a huge part of the story and I was surprised by the depth of it. The baggage that comes with being a royal – using media to make each other look bad, the leaking of personal information, the weight of constantly being the centre of attention, every move and facial expression scrutinized by the public.
Lexi and Amira
Second, Lexi and her childhood friend, Amira. The sacrifices that Amira made for her family were beautifully portrayed. She was Lexi’s brother’s wife and as someone who married into the family and didn’t yet have children, her status is in jeopardy. Lexi is the only one who can be her confidant but after years of silence, their relationship is quite strained and, appropriately, takes a while to get better. The tension of their best friendship is one I adored.
Lexi and her love interest
Thirdly, The Heir Apparent has a love angle. In Tasmania, Lexi was falling for someone. They try to keep up their connection long distance but as Lexi becomes more immersed in royal duties and obligations, the relationship becomes quite strained. Whatever Lexi decides will impact them. The story does a good job of showing this tug of war.
Each relationship asks Lexi to consider a different version of herself: daughter, friend, and partner, while the monarchy asks her to become heir/queen.
The Queen, the Crown, and the Rules
I listened to the audiobook and the narrator brought the characters to life, particularly the Queen. She reminded me of Queen Elizabeth II from The Crown.
Though the Queen doesn’t say a lot in The Heir Apparent, she won my respect with the little she did say.
Lexi and the young people she is surrounded by had some new ideas about what the monarchy should be doing and though the Queen was not outright dismissive of them, she has an understanding of legacy and the role the monarchy plays in people’s lives that young people might find hard to relate to.
Though Lexi was a natural at meeting her public obligations, the pressures of looking a certain way, maintaining a certain weight, saying only what was approved by the Crown, showed how a position of immense power – that of the next heir – still comes with living within the rules.
That even if the Crown sits on someone’s head, their moves have to work within the big picture of the family and the nation itself.
The Queen understood this as a long-ruling monarch. Though she stayed out of Lexi’s way and, perhaps, could have offered more guidance, she was in a tough position too: it was either her son or her granddaughter taking the throne.
“For some monarchs, the moment the crown is placed on their heads feels like a death, as if they have lost themselves forever,” she said. “For others, it is the moment the crown lands that we are finally, finally our true selves. It’s not always easy. But we would never give it up, no matter how much we might be tempted, because that would be giving up who we really are.”
The Heir Apparent
I love how these lines give a glimpse into what getting the crown meant for her identity.
On the role of the monarch, she said, “We are meant to be solid and stable as the nation shifts around us. We’re the thing they grasp on to.”
If I could reach out to Rebecca again, I would ask her how she came to write these powerful lines that have found a special place in my brain. They project a self-confidence that I would love to be able to effortlessly carry. Did any of the Queens say something along these lines or did Rebecca see this in her time as a journalist, watching the world change around the monarchy while it stayed steady?
Loss, secrets, and the person Lexi became
I initially saw Lexi’s story as being about an unexpected inheritance but as I read, I loved that it was a lot more nuanced. There was a fundamental event that shaped Lexi and her distance from her family. Her reasoning and clinging to it came from a young mind who has witnessed loss, even if I couldn’t fully get behind it. There were years of shame and conditioning, secrets that only gained more weight as they were left undiscussed.
Loss is a big part of The Heir Apparent. Lexi’s many choices stem from losing her mother. Like I mentioned above, I had not expected that and I really like that Lexi remembers these events and their impact on her.
What I understood differently after rereading my interview
There are three more questions from the interview that I want to dive into.
On Growing up at 30
Question — Lexi’s life changes overnight. What part of her journey felt most emotionally resonant for you?
Rebecca —I won’t go into too much detail so as not to reveal any spoilers! But there is a moment towards the end of the novel when Lexi chooses to grow up and take responsibility for herself. We’re told that we become adults at 18, but I think it takes us a while longer to do the hard, unforgiving work of growing up. For Lexi, this doesn’t happen until she’s on the cusp of turning 30. It was certainly a scary but empowering realisation when I hit my 30s that I was the captain of my own life and it was time to start steering the ship in the right direction.
I look back at Rebecca’s comment about how we are told that adulthood is at 18 years of age and yet, like Lexi and Rebecca herself, I too believe that the 30s bring a sense of independence and purpose that the early years are lacking. The level of insight and self discovery, life and experiences that I have accumulated by the time I reached my 30s have a gravity that teen experiences do not.
On Tasmania: distance, nature, and another kind of inheritance
Question — Lexi has chosen a life of medicine far away from royalty. What inspired the contrast between her grounded Tasmania life and her inherited role as heir?
Rebecca — I liked the idea that Lexi grew up in the heart of her family’s empire, but when she rethinks the monarchy, she flees to its very outer edges. Tasmania is about as far south as you can go before you hit Antarctica, so that physical distance would help her get some perspective on everything she’d left behind.
Tasmania is also a very haunted place. The legacy of colonialism feels present all over Australia, but in Tasmania specifically, entire nations of Indigenous people were slaughtered with genocidal intent. You can feel the loss here. So it felt like a fitting location for Lexi to reflect on the very real consequences of her institution’s actions.
It also felt like a perfect setting for her ‘normal’ life because it stands in such stark contrast to the place from which she fled. Her palace life is full of order. Everything has been conquered and brought under human control. But Tasmania is rugged and wild. Nature still rules here. The winds howl off Antarctica. Old growth forests are just moments from town. Whales leap from the water. A river roars through Hobart. I thought that would be a very healing home for her, as it is for me.
Drawing on her life in Tasmania, I felt that Rebecca brought it alive. She situated Lexi away from England into Tasmania where she is surrounded by its history and nature. Where no one really knows who she is. Knowing what royal life looked like in England, Tasmania offers a contrast. Lexi wasn’t just geographically far from the monarchy. Tasmania gave her a place where she could experience being unknown, which is almost the exact opposite of royal life.
On having a year to decide
Question — What made you choose a one-year deadline for Lexi to decide her future?
Rebecca — I had this idea that the timeline reflects the loop of the Earth around the sun. It starts on January 1 2023 and ends on January 1 2024, and during that year, Lexi sometimes reflects on where the world is during its annual loop through the solar system.
For someone who was raised to believe that she is better than every other human being, that she is special, that her grandmother is chosen by God to rule, I thought it would be humbling for Lexi to occasionally remember that, ‘oh yes, I am just a clump of cells hurtling through the space on a floating rock’.
I also think that as someone who has experienced a lot of loss, anniversaries would take on a special significance for Lexi. A year after losing her mother, she flees the monarchy. What will she do a year after her losing her father and brother?
I initially thought of the year in terms of the calendar. But looking back at this answer, the timeframe of the year does so much more. It was no ordinary year for Lexi. She integrated back into family politics, the aspects she liked and didn’t like, while also figuring out how to remain the person she had become by leaving.
Meeting The Heir Apparent twice
As I mentioned in my article about interviews, it is rare for me to host authors before reading the book. The Heir Apparent is a special book because I not only talked to the author but I also got to revisit that interview and understand the book better through it. Lexi’s character, her choices, her geography are intentional, well-thought out and researched and it makes the story so much more powerful to me.
It is a mystery for most of the book whether Lexi would wear the crown or not. As the reader, I have my opinions, hopes and guesses and I enjoyed seeing how the story actually ended.
Thank you for reading this unique style of review. I loved writing it!
If you enjoy audiobooks, this was very well done!
Let me know your thoughts on the book or the review. Read the complete interview with Rebecca here.
Many thanks to the publisher for a review copy of the book for my honest thoughts. I am forever grateful for the books that meet me in my mailboxes.
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