Would Like To Gently Remind Everyone That In Less Than A Year Wille Had To Transfer Schools Against His

I kind of love the use of dirt in S1E4? 

When the episode starts, Wille is laying his head on Erik’s casket. He reaches out for some dirt on it as the last conversation they have when Erik leaves Wille at Hillerska in episode 1 plays in the background. The words' dual meaning becomes obvious.

Wille touches the dirt, feels it. The dirt is real. There's not much of it, but it's real. And he's losing it. He's lost the one thing in his life that is real--his relationship with his brother, Erik.

For most of his life, I’d imagine that Erik was the only person in the world with whom Wille could be fully real. And Erik was probably one of the only people who was real with Wille back.  The only person with whom he could have a real relationship.  Who didn’t expect a polite, respectful prince and nothing else. Who would tell Wille to run on the count of three during a boring photoshoot and slip down the muddy hill with him.  

And then Erik dies. The only real connection that Wille can ever remember having in the world is gone. And Wille is realizing that he pushed the very last glimmer of a real connection away.  And nothing feels real any more. So Wille goes to the football field where he was with Simon, a place where he felt truly normal, looking for something that will make him feel real. And all he finds is astroturf—no real dirt. He realizes that without Simon, there’s nothing real left in his life. No one who sees him and accepts him for who he really is. No one who knows the real Wille, who is messy and dirty, and still cares for him regardless.

And it sinks in. Without Erik, there’s nothing tethering Wille to this earth any more. The rest of the world seems further and further away.  Fake, as Wille discovers the astroturf on the soccer field is.  So, Wille reaches out for Simon, the one person who can ground him again. 

The only real thing that Wille has left in his life is Simon.  He’s the only person left who would ever be fully real with Wille. Tell Wille that he’s actually the country's biggest welfare recipient. Give Wille shit when he tries to hide from August. Discreetly laugh in August’s face with him. Dare him to evade the cousin he hates for an evening to experience something totally normal with real people.

And not only that, but Simon is the only person left in his life who Wille can be fully real with at this point. No one else has any idea about the sexuality crisis that Wille is going through or how that plays into any of his feelings about ascending to the role of Crown Prince.  No one has any idea about what happened between him and Simon.  No one knows that he doesn’t really like August, or the school, or his role.  Except Simon.  Simon is the only one left who sees Wille for himself—a real person rather than a personification of his title.  

And, as Wille points out, what he and Simon have—what he feels for Simon, at the very least—is real.  Wille has tried to fight it, but the sheer reality of it rips through the paper-thin fake layers with which Wille tries to shield himself. “I’m not like that” and “I can’t do this any more.” But alone, out on the field, where Wille expected to find the normalcy he felt when he went to Rosh’s game, he’s surrounded by only reminders that nothing left is real.

So Wille reaches out for Simon—the only one who can ground him again. Because unlike the astroturf on which Prince Wilhelm's life is built, dirt is real. What they have is real.  And real life is messy, it’s dirty, and you can pretend otherwise, but you’ll end up falling down in the mud either way.  And Wille is choosing to grasp at the only thing left that he sees in his life that is real. Simon.

These men just stole the personal information of everyone in America AND control the Treasury. Link to article.

Akash Bobba

Edward Coristine

Luke Farritor

Gautier Cole Killian

Gavin Kliger

Ethan Shaotran

Spread their names!

simon and wille went straight from ignoring the fact that they shared a singular kiss to having full on sex with the window open

and tbf i love that for them and also mood

My reheated s3 take is that August not getting a scene to apologize to Simon and Wilhelm not getting a scene to build a relationship with Sara (beyond exchanging one line) are letdowns in a way that feel deeply interrelated to me.

To be clear: my intention is not to draw a false equivalence between the harm August does to Simon in releasing the video, and Wilhelm’s failure to build a relationship with his boyfriend’s sibling. Instead, I’m struck by how the show tells us that Wilhelm/Simon and Sara/August are both important, formative first loves. The writers also emphasize Sara and Simon’s bond, especially in terms of how they need one another to navigate Micke’s abandonment of them, and likewise stress the need for Wilhelm and August to grieve Erik’s death together. Therefore, it makes sense to close the loop on the Wilhelm-Sara and August-Simon undercurrents running through the series, especially when Simon and August’s conflicts drove a lot of season one and Sara and Wilhelm’s arcs were so paralleled early on.

Maybe I’m biased? As much as I enjoy characters who will move mountains for their love interests, I fall ten times harder for a character who will engage significantly with a third character who means a lot to their love interest. Jane Austen rocks this trope, honestly. I wish we’d seen it play out a little more in Young Royals.

TANGENT: This trope certainly guided heliza and I’s writing when we started Heart and Homeland. In our fic Wilhelm deliberately tries to make sure he learns things about Sara and wins her over because he cares for Simon so much, and he ends up forming a queerplatonic bond with Sara in the process. I’m so invested in their relationship, honestly! Meanwhile, August’s near-reform followed by a dramatic fall from grace (into villainy, even, because I do write a decent villain August if I say so myself) hinges on a vow he makes to Sara—one where he’ll patch things up with Simon—that he later breaks. And much earlier in the story, August does save Simon’s life while Simon’s in the process of saving Wilhelm’s, something that Sara witnesses and remembers.

Anyway, not everything needs to be like my fic. I know I’m being a little ridiculous here. Cough END TANGENT.

At the same time, it was truly surprising to me that the writers of YRS3 didn’t pull on those Sara-Wilhelm or August-Simon threads more. Especially since the creators are on record as saying they assumed the audience would assume that August would apologize to Simon and attempt to repair his harm someday. And based on Sara’s reaction to Wilhelm in the car, I guess we’re also supposed to assume they’ll be friendly and develop a deeper bond someday.

Sometimes it feels like there was meant to be more on the August-Simon and Sara-Wilhelm fronts though. There’s little hints here and there in earlier seasons. Wilhelm being a former rider when Sara loves horses. The fact that the production team cut a line from Wilhelm to Sara in the s2 field scene (the only line that they’d really exchanged thus far) as if they were saving their interaction for something big in s3. The time when August defends Simon against Vincent after the whole rowing team drama. The fact that August has a father with addiction issues in common with the Eriksson siblings. Like. Were there storylines or sequences of dialogue that got cut? What’s the behind the scenes story there?

I specifically wanted to talk about this as an issue of the choices the writers made, rather than an issue of what good or evil innately lurks in a character’s heart. Again, the writers assumed the audience would know that August has become the kind of person who will apologize to Simon and repair the harm he did. Malte talks about August’s growth in interviews—not overstating it, but being honest about how the character’s changed. And I can see plenty writing choices that support that idea of August’s growth! I think there’s a lot that fanwriters can play with and expand upon! Yet those writing choices are undermined by the writers’ choice to not close the loop on August and Simon’s earlier conflicts, and differentiate those as separate from August and Wilhelm’s conflicts. I personally tend to see this as a reflection of the writers’ failure-to-communicate rather than a reflection of the eternal evil of August’s corrupted soul or whatever, and approach my fanfic accordingly. Yet I still see some analyses argue that he’s “canonically” a villain and… it just doesn’t quite mesh with what I’m seeing from the show.

Meanwhile, maybe it’s just me who has this arbitrary goalpost that Wilhelm should have had more meaningful interaction with Sara beyond the one line they exchange and her car being his getaway. But it still feels like their s3 interaction was meant to be more significant? Sara is the beloved-then-estranged sibling of the guy Wilhelm is in love with, she is the cried-over-and-missed other best friend of Wilhelm’s best friend, she is the girl who turned Wilhelm’s jerkass playboy cousin into a puddle of vulnerable enamored goo. She is Fröken Ramirez’s favorite Lucia FFS! (Okay the last one was me being silly, but you know.) If I were Wilhelm, I might be more curious about Sara, especially after she returns to school again and is ostracized by the school population at large. And maybe Wilhelm isn’t meant to be curious about Sara, but that still feels like a thread that got dropped given how it felt like Sara and Wilhelm were deliberately kept apart in earlier seasons. (Has anyone asked the writers about this? Does anyone know the official response? I’m dying to know, now.)

Anyway, this isn’t meant to be a “fuck the writers! fuck season 3 forever!” post because I genuinely did like some of the character arcs and some of the choices and I should probably rewatch season 3 over my upcoming time-away-from-work so I can post about that. But the dropped threads re: Sara-Wilhelm and Simon-August are what I ended up thinking about this morning. I really cared about how those relationships were gonna play out.

There’s a whole other post I could make about Felice but that’s for another day. Perhaps after a rewatch!

I’ve never broken down so hard seeing a shot. Simon’s face here broke me (in a incredible sad and happy both way).

And then…

That happened.

And I will always forever be in love with the way Simon looks at Wille. His forever prince, not by title anymore, but because he is his 💜

S3 ending is basically putting a bandaid on a gunshot. The entire 5 episodes were built to show how bad they are for each other. I mean yeah monarchy was a big part of it but Wilhelm's problems are his problems alone. It's not gonna go overnight just because he will abdicate, neither will the scrutiny on them. Wilhelm will still be privileged, out of touch, someone with anxiety, impulsive urges and anger issues. Taking away his title will mean nothing because now he will have to deal with the real world which he has no experience dealing with and no support or protection from the monarchy. Do you think he will cope well then and wont take it out of simon?

I feel like they wasted 5 episodes worth of time building plots with no payoff. They could have easily explored Wilmon's trouble and their eventual reconciliation in this time. Putting an abdication bandaid doesnt fix their problem.

We can be delulu but in the Wilmon universe, they don't last, they dont work out in the end because abdication doesn’t fix their problems, not really.

I'll just pretend the series ended in s2. Because S2's ending was actually perfect and that Wilmon may have a chance in the world.

Girls are like “I’m fine!” and then consume thousands of words of fanfiction to cope with their exhausting modern lives

The beauty of cinematography in YR s1

I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I can’t breathe. My anxiety and “always needing to know how things end or else I can’t truly enjoy it” is really kicking in. My heart genuinely has a faster resting rate this week than it usually does. I just need to know how it ends… And I need those boys to be happy (ideally together). Damn. Help me please.