“The Royal Heir” is a delightful piece of fiction that is loosely based on the very real royal family in England. Rebecca Armitage is a seasoned royal journalist, so her depictions of this alternate royal family ring not-so-alternate in many regards. The main character is Lexi, otherwise known as HRH Princess Alexandrina.

Because she’s the “spare” and her twin brother, older by mere seconds, is the heir to the throne, she has been able to abscond to Tasmania, an island off Australia, to pursue a medical degree and live in relative anonymity. Lexi is happy there, living in a vineyard with two roommates, Jack and Finn. Jack’s family owns the vineyard, and Finn is a fellow medical resident. She’s known them and lived with them for years, and they are her best friends.

But at the very start of the story, just before sunrise on New Year’s Day, when Lexi is about to kiss Jack for the very first time, they are interrupted by a helicopter. Sent from England, Stewart, the Queen’s faithful servant, is there to whisk Lexi back to London because her father and her brother were in a terrible skiing accident, and she is now the heir.

Lexi has never wanted to be the heir, and from the first, her brother wore the mantle of heir gracefully. It seemed second nature to him. Louis was likable, charismatic, funny, and charming. Lexi was not. Diving back into the sniping, the gossip, the treachery, and the back-stabbing of the royal family is not what Lexi really wants. But duty calls.

The Queen, her grandmother, gives Lexi a year to decide if she wants to be the next Queen or if she wants to give it all up and return to private life. And the novel is told in the current time (2023) with flashbacks to Lexi’s earlier years so that we can see the backstory that is influencing her decision. It’s a difficult one.

What makes this not just a delightful read but more delicious and real is that the fictional Villiers family, descended from Barbara Villiers who was the mistress of King Charles II, very much resembles the real Windsor family. Lexi’s mother Isla bears a remarkable similarity to Princess Diana, but instead of the Princess of Wales, Isla is the Princess of Scotland. Lexi’s father Frederick greatly resembles King Charles, and his brother Prince Richard definitely brings to mind Prince Andrew with all his very real Machiavellian tendencies and despicable character flaws.

Through Lexi’s first person narrative, we see the palace rules and arbitrary demands, sometimes common sense but just as often ridiculous. So in addition to the clever plot, we get to try to figure out just how much of the narrative is really what happened and what happens in the British Royal Family and what liberties Armitage took in creating this fiction. The novel is touching and it’s a fascinating read. It will make many of us glad that we are not part of that family, notwithstanding the money and power and glamor. I’ll take a loving family I can trust any day over that. But will Lexi?

This review is based on the final, hardcover book provided by Grand Central Publishing, the publisher, for review purposes.