Page 28 of The Heir Apparent
Some, like the House of Emanuele in Italy, were deposed and fled to the United States, where their descendants worked as graphic designers and bankers and TikTok creators. Most of the Scandinavian houses were clever enough to retreat into a largely symbolic presence. Only the monarch and the heir are visible. Everyone else lives in relative luxury, but they’re expected to have jobs and bank accounts. We, the British, sneeringly call them bicycle monarchies, because it’s not unusual to see a blood princess cycling around the Low Countries on her way to her job as an architect.
Whether it was a clever scheme or a catastrophic mistake, my grandparents transformed our family into tabloid stars. In exchange for millions of taxpayer pounds and a promise to remain at the centre of British life, we invited our subjects’scrutiny. Hours after we were born, Louis and I were presented to a pack of photographers, their camera flashes like a supernova. As toddlers, we learned to wave to crowds of strangers. Throughout our childhood, we were shadowed by security officers who intercepted frenzied, handwritten violent fantasies mailed to our homes. These days, we receive a world-class education and then spend the rest of our days cutting ribbons and planning our eighth vacation for the year. The curse of being a minor royal means slowly becoming addicted to attention and luxury, and then watching both evaporate with our youth and our beauty. My elders formed transactional friendships with shadowy billionaires who made them the guest of honour at every lavish dinner party and every yacht trip around Corsica. The great shame of minor royalty is that you become accustomed to a lifestyle that your taxpayer-funded allowance doesn’t actually allow, and you have neither the work ethic nor the family’s permission to get yourself a job.
The dark heart of our Faustian bargain was the hope that we could distract the British people with drama and intrigue so no one noticed they were paying for one family to cloak themselves with jewels and live in gilded palaces for free. Our lives became storylines, and there are no greater plot points than weddings, babies and funerals.
Amira and I were groomed and detoxed and lasered in preparation for our starring roles at Papa and Louis’s funeral. Four days left the palace with no time to foist injectables or starvation diets upon us. But the changes to our appearances needed to be subtle anyway. Every morning, the doorbell rang at Cumberland 1 and an army of beauty professionals traipsed into the apartment. Mary Williams arrived at 7 a.m. sharp to oversee their work and to shove a tumbler of hot lemon water in my hand. She declined my request for a croissant and double-shot flat white (“Ma’am, I’m sorry but your cleanse prohibits you from dairy, salt, caffeineandgluten”). For my part, I begrudgingly took part in the “cleanse” while complaining to anyone whowould listen that detoxing was a myth (“It’s literally what the liver and kidneys are for”). I submitted to the LED light facials and microcurrent treatments, but politely declined the offer of colonic irrigation.
After years of silence, Amira and I slipped back into the familiar routine we developed once we became suitemates at boarding school. We picked at our so-called veggie glow bowls on the couch while watching so many episodes ofLove Islandthat the TV occasionally asked if we were still there. We talked very little, but when we did, we stuck to old stories from our Astley days. Our reminiscences always stayed within the safe confines of the early years, before everything went wrong.
“Do you remember when Kris brought a screwdriver onto campus and then went around for months secretly unscrewing things?”
“Yeah, no one noticed for six months until locker doors started falling off and chairs were collapsing under people.”
“Do you remember when Louis changed Papa’s voicemail message?”
“Everyone thought they’d accidentally called Pizza Express in Primrose Hill.”
The morning of the funeral arrived. It was a typical January day in London with a heavy pewter sky slung low overhead. On my phone that morning was a text from Jack, wishing me luck (I’ll be watching x). In a show of austerity, Amira’s style team dressed her in a repeat outfit: a black, calf-length Catherine Walker coat dress with a bow neckline that she had worn to a Remembrance Day service two years earlier. Her lacquered hair was pulled into a low bun with a little black hat attached to the crown. Her eyes were obscured by a mesh net veil. Around her wrist looped the three-strand pearl bracelet that once belonged to my mother. Louis had given it to Amira as a wedding gift. Mum’s garish emerald engagement ring, also handed down to Amira, had soaked in a thimble of gin overnight so the moody stone glinted on her hand.
For my mourning clothes, Mary had chosen a Stella McCartney fitted dress with a matching cape coat. A seamstress stitched a thin fleece lining to the inside of the ensemble to keep me warm during the walk from Westminster Hall to the Abbey. Stockings lined with a flesh-coloured fleece to give the illusion of sheer black pantyhose were shipped express from Japan. It had been many years since I had worn anything but Blundstones or Crocs, so the ten-centimetre spires that Amira could balance on were deemed “high risk” for me. They found a pair of black velvet Emmy London pumps with a block heel instead. A cobbler attached thick rubber pads to the soles to prevent slipping. Once I was dressed, Mary presented me with long leather gloves and a black wide-brimmed hat, free of netting, bows and other flourishes she knew I’d hate.
“The brim’s wide enough so you can look down and have a bit of privacy if you need, ma’am,” she said, as if I’d been able to shed a single tear since this nightmare began.
The peach fuzz on my cheeks had been shaved away with a tiny razor. My brows were dyed. False individual lashes were trimmed and nestled among my own inferior lash line. Four separate lipsticks were blended on my mouth. My nipples were taped down in case they budded in the cold. Only about a third of the hair on my head was my own. From my neck to my knees, I was caught in the vice grip of shapewear. I looked in the mirror and saw the woman my family had always wanted me to be.
Five minutes before we were supposed to leave, there was another knock at the door. Mary went to answer it and came back with a velvet box.
“From the Queen, ma’am,” Mary said, holding the box with reverence. “She thought you might like to wear something from the family collection today.”
Inside was a platinum brooch set with dozens of tiny diamonds. At first glance, it resembled a sword. But when you studied it, you realised it was shaped like a thistle. Papa and Mum had commissioned a Scottish jeweller to make the broochfor Granny’s seventieth birthday. I had wanted the jeweller to use purple stones for its spiky petals but was overruled.
“We want it to be tasteful, mignonette,” Papa had laughed.
There were Instagram accounts and websites dedicated to cataloguing every piece of jewellery we owned. This brooch, which Granny had always worn to represent her love for Scotland and for her heir’s family, would be immediately recognised.
Vikki was sitting in a genuine Pierre Jeanneret rattan armchair dressed in a replica Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat. She stood up and came over to admire the brooch that Mary had attached to the breast of my cape.
“This is a good sign,” she said quietly and squeezed my shoulder. “She’s claiming you as hers.”
The family assembled in the courtyard, waiting to be shepherded by aides to the correct vehicle. The lower ranked royals were to be taken directly to the Abbey where they would have to make ninety minutes of small talk with Commonwealth politicians in the pews. Amira would be one of the last mourners to enter, so that all eyes would be on her as she made the slow march up the same aisle that three years ago had delivered her to her husband.
Mary and I climbed into a Range Rover headed for Westminster Hall. The roads around the palace had been closed for the day and we glided through central London’s empty streets. Mary looked out her window and sighed.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Surprised, she looked at me. “Yes, ma’am, thank you.”
“How old are you, Mary?”
“I’m twenty-four.”
“Have you ever worked for anyone but this family?” I asked, not quite sure why I had chosen this moment to quiz her about her life.
“This was the first job I got after I graduated.”
“What school did you go to?”
She hesitated. “I went to Astley.”
