Your Majesty

So I kind of have this thing for randomly Googling the royal families of the world. I usually end up just reading their Wikipedia pages, but it's fun and probably really weird. Don't get me wrong - I like the democratic republic form of government in America and I don't want a monarchy. But I'm a dreamer at heart who loves the Princess Diaries movies and William and Catherine's love story and the like.

Yes that's the crown from the cover of The Heir.

I always want to read more YA books that feature royalty. Those books are often fantasy, which I enjoy, but...I'd like to see more historical fiction and especially contemporary (even if the royal families are completely made up in the contemporary novels). The glitz and glamour is fun, but I also like when books show the more political side of things. 

There are currently six female heirs to thrones in Europe (seven if you count Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden's daughter, Princess Estelle). There were seven (eight) until December of 2014 when Prince Albert and Princess Charlene of Monaco's twins were born, and they had a son.

Some of the crown princesses are very young. Belgium's heir apparent is only thirteen (almost the perfect age for a YA novel), the Princess of Orange is eleven, Norway's second-in-line is eleven, and Spain's crown princess is nine. 

As for the princes, there are many who are the eldest child or their countries still have male primogeniture laws (that means any male children have more right to the throne than older sisters). The United Kingdom will have at least three kings after Queen Elizabeth dies or abdicates (unless something should happen to Prince George, which I hope not). Denmark's heir is male, and his oldest child is a son. Liechtenstein's heir is male, as is his oldest child (who was born in 1995 and is still single, for anyone my age hoping to marry into a royal family...). Additionally, Luxembourg's heir to the dukedom is male. But he and his wife have no children yet.

So here's hoping some really good YA books about royalty and royal families will be written soon! There have been a few recently, I'm fairly certain, but I didn't like the main one that comes to mind.

One final note: I searched my Goodreads shelve for all books containing the words 'heir,' 'queen,' 'princess,' king,' and 'prince,' just for fun. Here are the results.

HEIR - 2

KING - 3

QUEEN - 12

PRINCE - 5

PRINCESS - 13

I'm pretty sure most of those books were fantasy, but it was still fun to see how much YA writers like royalty.