Welcome friend! It’s always a particular pleasure to welcome a debut novelist to the blog, especially one whose professional life has already been shaped by storytelling in another form. Rebecca Armitage is a journalist who has spent years covering royalty from the front lines — from coronations and abdications to exile and loss — and The Heir Apparent marks her transition from reporting on royal history to reimagining it through fiction. I saw multiple people on Instagram reading the book when it first came out, and today, it is my please to bring you an interview with Rebecca.
In this interview, Rebecca and I talk about writing her debut, the influence of journalism on her fiction, and what it means to imagine royalty not as spectacle, but as deeply human. Take a look at what the book is about if you don’t know yet and then read on for our conversation. I hope you enjoy!
The Heir Apparent
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.
Get to know the author: Rebecca Armitage
Hi Rebecca! Congratulations on your debut and welcome to Armed with A Book. Please tell me and my readers a bit about yourself.
Hi there and thank you! I’m an Australian journalist who covers a lot of things, but my favourite stories are about royals. I helped cover Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s wedding and withdrawal as senior working royals, I covered the abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the endless scandal surrounding King Charles’s brother, Andrew. I live in the Australian state of Tasmania (the little island down the bottom) with my husband, and our German shorthaired pointer, Chino. I swim in the river here all year round and love baking in my spare time.
Was there a moment that made you feel, “Yes, this is a book I’m meant to write”?
I did not have much faith in myself when I first started writing this book. I’d only ever written news stories before, so the idea of a project that would be at least 100 times longer seemed very daunting. But fairly early on in the novel, there is a scene in which an avalanche kills three characters. I did a lot of research before I wrote it, watched endless avalanche videos on YouTube and read interviews with people who had survived them, and that scene was the first time I really enjoyed myself and didn’t worry about the outcome. When it was done, I was very happy with that chapter, and it gave me a little burst of confidence to keep going.
As a journalist, you’ve written about major royal milestones. Were there any stories that sparked an idea or theme in this novel?
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.
You’ve covered real-life royals for years—how did that shape your creation of the British royal family in The Heir Apparent?
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.
Do you have a favorite member of royalty, either present or historical, who first sparked your interest in the monarchy?
I adore Barbara Villiers, who is actually Lexi’s fictional ancestor in The Heir Apparent. In reality, Barbara was King Charles II’s favourite mistress, rather than his queen. They had many children together and Barbara wielded a lot of power in his court. While she eventually fell out of favour as his attention turned to younger women, she was very savvy in negotiating for herself a title and lands for her retirement.
I find those women on the fringes of royalty so interesting. They are usually only remembered for their sexuality and looks. But they were political animals just like the men. They knew how to keep themselves safe and climb the ladder of power. Not all of them succeeded, and their paths to privilege were limited, but I find it so fascinating that Barbara figured out how to stay rich and comfortable for the duration of her life. I can only imagine what she would have achieved if she’d been born a few centuries later.
Lexi’s life changes overnight. What part of her journey felt most emotionally resonant for you?
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.
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?
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.
Jack and Finn are wonderful anchors in Lexi’s life. What do these long-standing friendships represent for her?
Jack and Finn are the two people who love Lexi unconditionally. They don’t care about her titles. They accept her for who she is – secretive, traumatised, emotionally closed off and a little bit imperious – and don’t abandon her if she disappoints them. She hasn’t experienced that kind of love since losing her mother. Lexi’s biggest obstacle in The Heir Apparent is her fear of being loved unconditionally. If she allows that love into her life again, she might risk losing it, and she doesn’t believe she could survive that a second time.
With Finn, things are easier because their relationship is platonic and they’re practically siblings. She knows they’re in this friendship for life and she has little to fear. But with Jack, the temptation to take their friendship to the next level terrifies her, because it makes the stakes so much higher. She doubts her ability to be in a proper, stable romantic relationship so she resists her feelings for Jack and keeps them safely within the bounds of friendship, thinking that’s the way she can keep him forever.
What made you choose a one-year deadline for Lexi to decide her future?
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?
We meet a grieving sister-in-law with a secret, a determined uncle, and a skeptical public. Which secondary character was your favorite to write?
Vicki, the mother of Lexi’s best friend, is definitely my favourite character. She’s so much fun. I love that she’s an outsider – a working class girl with unbridled ambition to become a high-class wife of a millionaire who pushes her children into the aristocracy. She seems quite ruthless at the beginning of the novel, and she’s willing to sacrifice everything – her dignity, her privacy, her children’s autonomy – to climb the social ladder. But I think she really grows as the novel progresses and you begin to understand her, and maybe even like her.
What do you hope readers will hold closest to their hearts after finishing The Heir Apparent?
My main message in this book is that grief is the price of love. I wish that was my line, but it’s actually something Queen Elizabeth II used to say, and I think it’s a very wise, beautiful quote. We are put on this Earth to love each other – as friends, as romantic partners, as siblings, neighbours, colleagues, parents and children – but the price of those connections is inevitable loss. Lexi spends most of her time trying to elude love so she can protect herself from grief, and she eventually must realise that this is no way to live her life. I hope readers can carry this message with them. Even though grief and heartache awaits us, we must love with abandon anyway.
I’m curious about your writing process. Did your journalism background affect the way you approached drafting a novel—pace, structure, research, or emotional arcs?
I was very intimidated when I started because I’d never written a book before, but I knew I could write 700-word news stories. So I promised myself I would write 700 words a day. After six months of this, I had a fully complete first draft. I was a total amateur when it came to structuring a novel and making sure I hit those emotional beats that are necessary to this kind of storytelling. But I think journalism is similar to fiction in a lot of ways. I am ruthless about cutting boring passages because this is when a reader would click out of my article. I am used to researching topics I know nothing about and trying to make them accessible and interesting to others. I still think I have a lot to learn about writing novels, but I’m definitely grateful for my journalism background for giving me some of the tools I need.
If you could shadow a royal for a day purely as a novelist (not a journalist!), who would it be and why?
I’ve got to go with Princess Catherine aka Kate Middleton! Despite being so famous for so long, she remains an elusive and fascinating figure to me. She’s also a rare creature who has lived in the real world (or at least an upper middle class version of it) as well as the royal world, so she has a unique perspective that her relatives do not.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
No, thank you for your very insightful questions, it’s been an absolute pleasure x
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me!
Thank you Kriti!
Thank you, reader, for joining us! Add this book on Goodreads.The Heir Apparent is now available wherever books are sold! Be sure to check your local library too.
Many thanks to Melanie F. at Hachette Book Group Canada for the review copy and interview opportunity! Stay tuned for my review! 🙂
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