Page 27 of The Heir Apparent
“A few days ago, my life was heading in one direction, and now I’m somewhere I never thought I would be,” I said.
“Yes, that’s true for all of us.”
Vikki was once the only adult in my life who refused to cut me any slack. She admonished me when she caught Amira and me drinking, and she made clear it was my job to always take care of Amira. But she was also kind. By the time we were getting ready for our school leavers’ ball, I was motherless. Vikki booked the private suite at Selfridges so Amira and I could choose our dresses. After two hours, she put both of our gowns on her credit card and took us to Home House in Marylebone for lunch.
“I haven’t really had a chance to think about it all yet,” I said.
“I understand. But I also don’t think you realise the danger you’re in.” She reached across the bed and took my hands in hers. “If you decide you want this, you’re going to have to fight for it. The table’s been upturned and everyone’s down on the floor, wrestling each other for scraps. This article is just the beginning. If you don’t want it, leave now. Otherwise they’re going to destroy you—and you’ll bring Amira down on the way.”
When Amira and Louis had decided to get married, Granny’s lady-in-waiting offered the bride a tiara from the royal collection. The gifting of a tiara is an elaborate affair, steeped in tradition, and entirely dependent on the monarch’s favour and mood swings.Sometimes a woman marrying into the family is offered a range of choices. Sometimes one is selected for her, and it’s up to the bride to make it work with her gown and hair. A wedding tiara is the bride’s to keep for the remainder of her life. Not even the Villiers know exactly how many tiaras we own, but I’ve heard it’s in the range of forty to fifty. From dozens of choices, the lady-in-waiting selected for Amira the Heart of India.
The dramatic headpiece is set with hundreds of diamonds and tipped with sapphires and pearls. But it got its name from the tiara’s fifty-carat centrepiece, a diamond that was stolen from an eight-year-old maharajah at the behest of our ancestors. British history books still claim that the jewel was handed over as part of a contractual agreement reached after the maharajah’s men could no longer hold off the advancing British troops. In reality, we held bayonets to the throat of a child and stole his gemstone. Now the reigning monarch expected the first British Indian woman to enter the royal family to pop it on her head and walk down the aisle.
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. In the end, Louis quietly intervened on the Shankars’ behalf and another tiara was procured for the day. But the awkward exchange was like an arrow placed in the family quiver for future use.
A year after the wedding, Papa was criticised for taking a twenty-minute helicopter ride to a Cambridge speaking engagement, at a cost of £4,000 to the British taxpayer. A train or even a chauffeured limousine would have had him on university grounds in an hour at a fraction of the price. As the disapproving news cycle stretched into a third day, Papa decided there was only one way to protect himself. He placed the arrow in the tabloid’s bow and allowed them to take their shot at his own daughter-in-law. I often wondered if it was his idea or someone at Wolseley House. Did he have to be talked into it? Did he callthe reporter himself? Did he feel any remorse at all? The story in theDaily Postwas written by Posey Habsburg-Mollard, Papa’s favourite reporter for planting stories. Posey cast Amira as a foot-stomping bridezilla whose fealty to her ancestral homeland was greater than it was to the British crown. The lady-in-waiting’s choice of tiara was not insensitive, but a loving nod to the bride’s ethnic origins. Papa’s chopper joyride was immediately forgotten. Amira’s pre-wedding “tantrum” never was.
The practice of selling each other out to the tabloids to distract from our own scandals was a family addiction we all vowed to give up. But we never did. It was our version of getting drunk and arguing at Christmas, our phones at the dinner table, our days and days of the silent treatment. But for Amira, the trading of secrets and the distortion of family squabbles always became a question of loyalty. Like the disastrous shooting weekend, the whispers about Amira rose to a steady drumbeat of one claim: she is not one of us, she will never be one of us.
I knew Vikki was right. As the widow of an heir, Amira’s future place in the family was always going to be uncertain. But as the House of Clarence sought to excise me from the line, they would relish the opportunity to snip out Amira as well.
“Okay,” I said to Vikki.
She nodded at me sceptically. “Okay.”
She went back into her coat pocket and produced a strip of paracetamol tablets.
“For your head,” she said. “I’ll go check on Amira. She’s been throwing up all morning.”
“Thank you—and sorry again.”
Once she was gone, I found my own phone under a pile of pillows and went to one of the American celebrity gossip sites that had pivoted hard to royal coverage since Louis and Amira’s wedding.
“Amira and Lexi played a couple of Beyoncé tracks last night and the old aristocratic crows who live at Cumberland Palace can’t cope,” the headline read.
I scanned the article and quickly made my way down to the comments. Americans, with their reality TV stars and Instagram influencers, were remarkably savvy when it came to parsing tabloid stories for the true intentions of the informant.
“Does Mommy’s precious little golden boy think this is how he’ll get on the throne? Ragging on a couple of young women who dared put some music on IN THEIR OWN HOME??” one commenter wrote.
“So sick of these racist ghouls. They can do whatever they want, but they’re pissed when Amira spends her allowance or plays music????” wrote another.
A long, 75-comment thread was dedicated to what went wrong between us.
“I’m so glad they’re friends again. Maybe Amira can be her lady-in-waiting when Lexi’s queen?”
“Girl, do your research. These two were lovers all the way through high school and Amira dumped Lexi and seduced Louis so she could be the queen. She’s not waiting on her ex lololol.”
“Can you IMAGINE when England has a Queen and her Queen? LEXMIRA FOREVER.”
“Wow you all have it SO WRONG. The royal twins are both so gay it’s RIDICULOUS. Kris and Amira were meant to be their beards, but Lexi got cold feet and bailed…”
I shut my phone off, pulled the blankets over my head and sought refuge from my hangover in a dreamless, death-like sleep.
CHAPTER NINE
9 January 2023
There are royal families all over Europe, but none fell into the celebrity trap quite like the House of Villiers. The Second World War came as a turning point for monarchies. Europeans no longer had to wonder what they were capable of, whether it was great heroism or utter barbarism. Royals who had enjoyed centuries of unquestioned power felt the winds shifting and made their choices.
