She begins the game again and focuses on locating the ring. Nigel disappears, and Giannine is assassinated by her own guards, who are upset that she let the criminal boy go free. He urges her to win quickly, offering advice on how to do so, insisting she must retrieve a magic ring. As a result, she cannot exit the game other than by winning it-and if she takes too long to win, she will suffer brain damage from being hooked up to the game too long. He identifies himself as Nigel Rasmussem, CEO of the company, and informs her that the CPOC protesters have broken into the arcade and damaged the equipment, disabling the failsafe. She meets the queen, who is very unlikable and obnoxious, and the three princes: Kenric, who is very handsome and whom she crushes on immediately Abas, who is very muscular and violent and Wulfgar, who was raised outside the kingdom and has odd manners. Without thinking, Giannine sets the boy free. At the castle, the guards bring in a young peasant boy who has been caught stealing, and ask the princess to pass judgment. Her mother suggests she should visit her father before she leaves, but Giannine, thinking of her own father, refuses, setting off for the castle with Sir Deming. She encounters Sir Deming, a knight who informs her of the king’s death and his desire that she be crowned. The game begins, and Giannine finds herself called down a hillside by her mother. Every time she dies in-game, she will start over at the beginning. She must survive the three days until her coronation in order to win the game. The king’s wife, Andreanna, and his three legitimate sons, Kenric, Abas, and Wulfgar, wish her dead. Jehan, the illegitimate daughter of the recently deceased King Cynric, who has named her heir to the throne. The premise of the game is that she is a peasant girl who discovers she is really Princess Janine de St. She is hooked up to the game and the basic rules are described: she will be playing for just a half hour, but it will seem like three days to her.
Inside the center, Giannine is shown a video catalog of the available games she selects one called “Heir Apparent” in part because she finds the male characters to be attractive.
At the Rasmussem Center, Giannine encounters a protest organized by Citizens to Protect Our Children (CPOC). Giannine is upset because once again her father has failed to make an appearance, instead, sending a gift: a fifty-dollar gift certificate to the Rasmussem Center, where she can play total-immersion virtual reality role-playing games (RPGs). It’s Giannine Bellisario’s fourteenth birthday. Although set in the same universe and sharing some characters with her other novels User Unfriendly and Deadly Pink, the book is not a formal sequel and can be read as a standalone novel.
Heir Apparent is a 2002 Young Adult science fiction-fantasy novel by Vivian Vande Velde.
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