The Heir Apparent

“It’s not so much that he was a diva. But every day since he was able to eat toast, it had arrived on a tray alongside a bowl of three creamy pearls of butter. He simply couldn’t bear to have it any other way.”

Lexi’s description of Frederick’s eccentricities and precise breakfast requirements characterizes him as fussy and privileged. Lexi and Frederick’s estrangement contributes to her negative opinion of him, but her view of him grows more nuanced as the novel progresses and she herself grapples with the pressures of royal life.

“I told myself this violation of her privacy was necessary so I knew how to help her. Being a doctor gives you an almighty shield with which to justify some pretty abysmal behaviour.”

Lexi’s identity as a doctor plays an important part in her characterization. She clings to this role because it is the first thing that she’s achieved on her own, without royal connections. Her desire to help Amira illustrates her dedication to her field and to her friend, even though her methods are dubious.

“The ‘Villiers droop’ was an affliction no man in the family could avoid, no matter how handsome they had once been.”

Lexi notes that Richard has lost his good looks with age, and the “droopiness” she describes is a Villiers family trait. The passage evokes the novel’s broader interest in The Burden of Legacy and Public Expectation, as physical traits are not the only things passed down through generations. The framing of that inheritance as negative—something family members cannot “avoid”—reflects the novel’s contention that the Villiers legacy is largely a corrosive one.

“This was the first time in the decade since I’d left that a family member had asked me a single question about my life. Once Papa had realised I wasn’t coming back, he’d settled into an icy silence that lasted the rest of his life.”

Lexi’s isolation from the other members of her family has been complete; Frederick encouraged Louis, Amira, and the others to shut Lexi out. Thus, when Amira asks Lexi about Jack’s dog, the simple question means the world to Lexi, as it indicates Amira’s interest in Lexi’s life.

“When Mum and Papa had divorced, she was allowed to keep her title, but they stripped her of her HRH. ‘He wants me to have to curtsy to my own children,’ she said with big wet eyes. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Louis said, wrapping his skinny arms around her. ‘I’ll be able to give it back to you one day.’”

Armitage borrows from the real British royal family for this scene. After Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced, the palace took away Diana’s HRH title, forcing her to curtsy to William and Harry. William promised to return the HRH title to Diana when he became king, but Diana passed away before the promise could come to fruition (Burchfield, Rachel. “Prince William Once Made a Promise to His Mother Princess Diana That Brought Her to Tears.” In Style, 28 Aug. 2025). In the novel, the episode illustrates the power plays and abuse that characterize royal life behind the scenes and shaped Lexi’s childhood.

“The tiara put the Shankars in an impossible position: accept it, wear it in public and risk upsetting one billion people, or politely ask the Queen if there was another option and likely cause her great offence.”

The Shankar family suffers at the hands of the palace often, as the royals keep Amira and her relatives at arm’s length. Even after Louis proposed to Amira, the palace showed the Shankars disrespect by offering Amira a wedding tiara featuring a diamond stolen from India. The press collaborated in these racist microaggressions, demonstrating the toxic interplay between public image and the monarchy as an institution.

“She was the arch villain in my mother’s story, my father’s obsession, and the unspoken bogeyman of my and Louis’s childhood. Even as I buried what remained of my family, I couldn’t help but steal glances at her. There was a hard, haunted look in her eyes I’d never seen before.”

Annabelle is a complex character. Because of her affair with Frederick, her presence in Lexi’s life has been negative, leading Lexi to view Annabelle as a one-dimensional character—a “bogeyman” who sought only to harm Lexi’s family. However, as Lexi rejoins royal life, she sees another side to Annabelle and gains empathy for her as someone who has similarly suffered the impact of the monarchy’s rules and traditions.

“I thought about Kris and Louis, who deserved an apology from me, and would never get it. I thought about Amira and her boxes of pills. I thought about the snow cloud swallowing Papa whole. I thought about Mum, the love of my life. It all felt like a tangle I had no hope of ever undoing. I could only try pulling things straight and living with the knots that remained.”

The use of anaphora (the repetition of an introductory word or phrase) underscores the extent to which Lexi is haunted by guilt; she feels responsible for the loss of all the people she’s loved most in the world. Much of Lexi’s character arc revolves around letting go of her guilt.

“Somewhere in the Swiss Alps, flurries fell on a steep slope, snowpack quietly accumulating.”

Armitage builds tension by beginning Part 2 with a flashback to Lexi’s life shortly before the avalanche that kills Louis and Frederick. Those deaths are the novel’s inciting incident, but their impact also looms large over the rest of the novel’s events. Here, the reference to the snowfall creates dramatic irony, as Lexi is unaware of how significantly her life is about to change.

“I thought of Mum, who had spoken endlessly of the ‘grey men in grey suits’ with paranoid fervour. At the end, she had insisted they were tapping her phone and using location trackers on her car, though I was never sure whether to believe her.”

Lexi’s connection to Isla grows as the novel progresses and as Lexi begins to fill Isla’s shoes in the royal family. Both women are notable public figures who struggle with disordered eating and experience unfair treatment by the media. Lexi once doubted Isla’s suspicions, but she now realizes that they were justified.

“I wanted to shake her. Everyone wanted to join the swirling nebula of our family. No one seemed to realise there was a gaping, insatiable black hole at its centre.”

Lexi finds it incomprehensible that Vikki would want Amira to join the royal family. Her two metaphors juxtapose the family’s glamorous image (a beautiful “nebula”) with the ugly truth; the monarchy is a “black hole” that destroys everyone around it. Lexi tries to warn Amira and Vikki about the inevitable heartache a relationship with Louis will cause, which Amira only realizes toward the end of the novel.

“In reality, a groundsman was called to complete the job, but Papa had told the story so often and so vividly that I could almost picture him crouched beside me on the floor with a chisel. I could almost believe he wasn’t irritated, but instead had given me a gentle lecture on the importance of respecting other people’s treasures.”

Frederick’s recollection of Lexi dropping his signet ring under the floorboards differs from Lexi’s memories. Yet Lexi clings to Frederick’s narrative, desperate to have a moment of tenderness with her father, even if it’s imagined. Her desire for a “real” family echoes her mother’s and speaks to The Challenges of Identity Formation Under Institutional Constraints; even a relatively tender memory is bound up in Frederick’s official role, as symbolized by the signet ring.

“For her entire life, Granny had been the woman on the banknote and the portrait in the government building, but there was no one more adept at making herself a flesh-and-blood human when she encountered her subjects.”

Queen Eleanor’s characterization is complex. Lexi acknowledges that the monarchy has not yet swallowed all of Eleanor’s humanity; Eleanor can charm people (if sometimes for her own purposes), and she makes Jack feel welcome in Scotland. Her speech to Lexi about the queen’s maternal role similarly implies sincere belief in the monarchy’s function, even if the novel ultimately implies her views are misguided.

“‘I still have to do this,’ I snapped. ‘It was meant to be Louis, but now he’s gone, and I have to do it for him.’ It was the first time I’d ever said it out loud, and the first time I realised it was true. I would never go back to Tasmania. I would never practise medicine again. The throne was waiting for me, and when my time came, I intended to take it.”

The core of Lexi’s conflict surrounding becoming heir or returning to Australia rests on her feelings of obligation to Louis. Louis died, and Lexi feels that she must continue his legacy, even if it means giving up her dreams. The novel thus complicates the theme of Duty Versus Personal Freedom by showing how a sense of personal responsibility can blur into institutional obligations.

“He was heartbroken over her. I just wanted a family—any family, really. And I think we believed that we could offer each other a semblance of what we were missing.”

Isla describes her marriage to Frederick as an arrangement that promised, but failed to deliver, the things that they were missing. Frederick wanted to recover from his relationship with Annabelle but did not stay faithful to Isla, and Isla wanted a real family but found herself trapped in a family where appearances mattered more than connection, echoing the broader dynamics around the royal family.

“James had always suspected there was more to the story of how his sister died. He knew in his soul that we weren’t telling the whole truth. But he said that I was a child who did what children do when they’re frightened and alone. I knew he blamed Papa entirely, and he would not allow me to share the responsibility, no matter how much I’d insisted.”

James has immense empathy for Lexi, whom he views as a mirror for Isla. For that reason, he is the first person to help Lexi begin to let go of her grief, guiding Lexi on her path to self-forgiveness and encouraging her to remember that she’s not to blame for Isla’s death or the way it was covered up.

“If everything worked out, our first son would be the heir to the throne. And then we could arrange things so his younger brother becomes the Duke of Hereford and manages the land holdings […] It would solve every problem your family has ever had with the second-born child.”

Colin’s pragmatic proposal to Lexi signals a turning point in the narrative. Lexi realizes that a royal life isn’t what she wants, and she doesn’t want to have to consider appearances and inheritance for the rest of her life.

“I feel like I never got off that boat […] I’ve been drifting out at sea on my own for years. Every time I close my eyes, I’m rocking on the waves in the middle of the night. I should never have left you and Louis on your own.”

Lexi’s words to Amira serve as an apology for leaving years ago as well as a confession of Lexi’s own loneliness. Though Lexi made a life for herself in Australia, her loneliness and guilt eat at her, as she cannot forgive herself for Isla’s death, leaving her trapped in the memory of the night of Isla’s death. The passage illustrates the novel’s use of water as a motif, as Lexi expands on the literal circumstances of her mother’s death to describe herself as figuratively “at sea” amid the ensuing trauma.

“In every portrait of Barbara, there is always a shadow behind her gaze: the dark bird of ambition that guided her extraordinary life. I saw now that Demelza might also possess the ability to train this wild thing.”

Lexi realizes that there is another alternative heir besides Richard if she gives up the crown. Lexi compares Demelza to Barbara and sees tenacity within both of them. Like Barbara built the current royal family, Demelza has the opportunity to remake the modern monarchy into a force for good instead of an institution built on pettiness, selfishness, and conservatism. The figurative description of ambition as a wild bird adds nuance to the novel’s portrayal of the trait, suggesting that it is not an inherently negative quality but rather one that can be turned to good ends.

“[Y]spent the last year chasing the approval of a bunch of strangers, people who don’t know you and never will. But at some point, you need to forgive yourself. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to accept it from anyone else.”

James reminds Lexi that she must forgive herself to be able to let go of the past and create a brighter future. Instead of searching for external validation in approval numbers, Lexi must find internal validation by letting go of her guilt. The novel suggests that the constraints of royal life make this kind of self-certainty inherently challenging, but Lexi’s character arc brings her to a point where she possesses it.

“My name could have been Alexandrina, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Queen, Defender of the Faith. I could have worn gold and had my face etched into coins and believed myself to be divine. But it would have been a lie. What made me special was that I was Isla and Frederick’s daughter and Louis’s twin. It was time for me to become Lexi Villiers.”

Lexi lists her entire regnal name if she were ever to become queen and compares it to who she wants to be: Lexi Villiers. She posits that her relationship with her family is what makes her unique, but not because of their royal status—rather, because of who her parents and brother were as individuals. This illustrates her firm grasp of who she is, independent of her public role.

“I see you in the magazines, and I remember when I found you on that boat, looking at me with your big eyes—so young, so afraid, just a girl who lost her mama.”

Davide’s empathy for Lexi also helps Lexi forgive herself. Lexi criticizes herself for her decision to call Frederick, which delayed the search for Isla, but Davide reminds her that she was a child who didn’t know what else to do. This description of her as a child like any other underscores the role that distancing herself from royal life plays in Lexi’s character growth, including her ability to show herself compassion.

“You shouldn’t do this alone, she wrote. If you go with plan A, I will speak in support of you and your father. If you go with plan B, I will tell them everything I know, and everything Richard has done. Either way, I am with you.”

Annabelle’s text of support to Lexi illustrates the growth in the relationship between the two women. Annabelle promises to speak on Lexi’s behalf regardless of what Lexi decides to do, showing Annabelle’s character growth and complexity. She’s not the simplistic villain of Lexi’s childhood but a complicated person with positive and negative elements.