The Heir Apparent

The tension between duty and freedom lies at the heart of The Heir Apparent. Through Lexi’s experiences navigating her royal status, the novel suggests that obligation and fulfillment can coincide but that some attempts to reconcile them are dead ends.

At the start of the novel, Lexi’s life centers around her personal freedom. She lives in Australia and works as a doctor, unaffected by royal life and the burden of royal duty. She pursued this life because she felt suffocated by the expectations associated with being a princess, but Lexi is only third in line for the throne; particularly in the context of Louis’s marriage to Amira, which raised the possibility of children, she has no reason to think she will become heir. In fact, she is able to rationalize her very disengagement as a form of duty. By staying away, she lets Louis shine—a point underscored by her comparison of herself to Barbara Villiers’s twin daughter who died days after birth, her strength given in the womb to William, the heir and future king. Even amid her estrangement from her family, Lexi has thus found a way to reconcile her sense of obligation with her desire for freedom.

Frederick and Louis’s deaths upend this fragile balance, forcing Lexi to deal directly with the tension between what she wants and what she feels she ought to do. For one, Lexi must reckon with the fact that those around her have a very different interpretation of her choices. Amira calls Lexi “conceited” for leaving the royal family, saying, “You have always thought you were better than everyone else. You had to move to Australia to prove how much smarter and how much more special you are than the rest of us” (117). Amira cannot understand Lexi’s decision to leave, seeing it as an abdication not only of her role as royalty but also of her duties as a sister and friend. The public echoes Amira’s sentiments. Mary tells Lexi that the public describes her as “selfish” for “shirking her duty” (226). Simultaneously, returning to England clarifies the stakes of prioritizing duty, particularly as defined by others, above all else. Everything Frederick did as Queen Eleanor’s firstborn son was in service of his inevitable reign, as Lexi observes at the funeral: “[Frederick] had spent his life expecting that upon his death the Sovereign’s Orb and Sceptre would be placed on top of his casket. Instead he got a floral arrangement teased to perfection” (106). Frederick never became king; he died with the weight of duty crushing him without ever even becoming the reigning monarch. The implication is that a life of duty is often a life unlived.

Nevertheless, Lexi finds herself considering assuming the duty of heir. Loyalty to her brother is part of what motivates her; stung by Amira’s accusations, she sees taking his place as a form of atonement. However, she also believes she sees a new path toward reconciling duty and freedom. In noting the “small, stirring moments [she] had so far kept a secret” that inspire her to continue forward, she mentions “The day the obstetric fistula hospital in Nairobi had accepted the offer of [her] patronage” (272). Lexi’s patronage of the hospital is emblematic of her hopes to change the monarchy for the better—to create a “modern monarchy that would require members of the family to be loyal and true” (172). In this way, she could fulfill her obligations as a royal while also honoring her personal convictions.

Ultimately, however, Richard’s blackmail weighs too heavily upon her, and she realizes that the monarchy is rooted in traditionalism, secrecy, and oppression: “I could not believe I’d once had the gall to think I could fix those things” (283). Lexi recognizes it’s not her duty to fix a system that she didn’t break. She does satisfy her sense of moral obligation by going public with Richard’s actions, but she then steps away, ending the narrative with her freedom intact, home in Australia with Jack. The conclusion thus resolves the conflict between duty and freedom by suggesting that the most important form of duty is to oneself and one’s own values.