Randomwilmonfan - Whimsical Longings

NOT THE CASUAL SEASON 3 CLIP????

Is it easier to empathise with Wille?

I have a LOT of empathy with Wille. His vast loneliness, his anxiety, and having less than stellar parents resonates deeply with me.

This post is NOT about empathising with Wille or not. It's about power, hierarchies and privilege, and what they do to our empathy and who we empathise with. The very themes of Young Royals itself.

We all live in hierarchical cultures. Privileges are unevenly distributed; some have more, most have less. Privilges are interesting because they shelter us from experiences, which in turn makes us less emphatic. We see it in August, Felice and Wille, all being blind to the realities of people outside their sheltered world of privilege. Right, "Simon would go to the police so he shouldn't know who posted revenge porn of him on the internet" Felice and Wille?

Prefering one character over another isn't wrong in itself of course!

On the other hand, to empathise with Wille while NOT noticing Simon's suffering, or disregarding it as less important indicates a certain amount of privilege. Not to mention not even recognizing Simon as a whole human being with his own needs and wants, but merely something Wille deserves, a reward for his suffering.

It's a mindset we've been brainwashed with through culture since the beginning of patriarchy (some 5-15K years ago). For gender reasons I was somewhat aware of it, but not explicitely until the #metoo movement of 2017. I've watched so many movies and series where the female characters is a reward for the hero.

It's what we're taught, so of course we normalise that one person can act like a reward or comfort for someone else's pain and suffering. Doesn't Wille deserve comfort when he's hurting? Don't I deserve comfort when I'm hurting?

The problem is the word DESERVE. When we feel like we deserve something from someone else, it's time to take a step back and check if the other person is okay with giving that comfort, and if we're offering comfort in return when needed. That was another lesson Wille had to learn. And he did! Very curious about season 3 and how well he learnt that lesson!

Living in Norway means on a global scale I have massive privilege. Yet on a local scale I barely have any privileges at all. It's impossible to ignore the class issue to cheer for the white boy, because my life is profoundly affected in a negative way by the very class systems that Young Royals is critical of.

To quote my fav indigenous Saemien/Sámi artist, actor, author, slam poet and activist Ella Marie Hætta Isaksen: "How do you endure, you ask? When the truth is that to live as a Sámi is a political act in itself. That just by breathing, I revolt."

It's impossible for me in any way, shape or form to empathise with Wille at the expense of Simon's emotions and integrity. I empathise with both; hierarchies hurt people in both ends of it. Wille is selfish for a long time, and though I empathise, I can't defend his behaviour. On the other hand, Simon had no one else to fight for him against the system of power and privilege so clearly rigged against him. It's the exact same system that is failing to protect disabled people from adverse health issues and social exclusion, perpetuates generational trauma and poverty, and continuing the massive ongoing cultural genocide of my own people in both Norway and Sweden.

Just like Simon, I lack the privileges required to shelter me from the realities of life at the bottom levels of the patriarchal hierarchy.

Emotional growth requires facing negative consequences for harmful behaviour. The older we are, the harsher the consequences need to be for us to learn. Look at August - on a path towards emotional growth, stopped dead in its tracks by the meeting with the queen. What he did was unforgivable imo, but I still hope he'll face the consequences required to learn and grow, because the alternative is so much worse for everyone else.

I much prefer emotionally immature boys to suffer the painful consequences of their actions, in order to mature into decent human beings - rather than being habitually coddled so that they never learn anything and continue perpetuating the patriarchy.

Wille wouldn't have learnt and grown unless Simon enforced his boundaries. The Wille who changed the speech wouldn't exist without having to face the painful consequences of his own actions, learning that other people's lives and emotions are just as important as his own.

Quietly losing my mind over the fact that Elon Musk has straight up orchestrated a coup of our executive branch and like....I don't even know what, if any, system we have in place to fix this. Like... He's just taken control of the money and locked out the actual appointed officials. What the fuck.

I JUST TOLD MOM, SHE'S FINE WITH THAT. | YOUNG ROYALS 3.06

Need minimum 12 hours a day of do my own thang time

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.

USA people! Buy NOTHING Feb 28 2025. Not anything. 24 hours. No spending. Buy the day before or after but nothing. NOTHING. February 28 2025. Not gas. Not milk. Not something on a gaming app. Not a penny spent. (Only option in a crisis is local small mom and pop. Nothing. Else.) Promise me. Commit. 1 day. 1 day to scare the shit out of them that they don't get to follow the bullshit executive orders. They don't get to be cowards. If they do, it costs. It costs.

Then, if you can join me for Phase 2. March 7 2025 thtough March 14 2025? No Amazon. None. 1 week. No orders. Not a single item. Not one ebook. Nothing. 1 week. Just 1.

If you live outside the USA boycott US products on February 28 2025 and stand in solidarity with us and also join us for the week of no Amazon.

Are you with me?

Spread the word.

I appreciate this addition from @raincitygirl76 so much - yes, there were many many things about S3E6 that felt majorly dissatisfying to me. Actually for me, the primary thing was a simple matter of timing: I don't understand how 1.5 minutes (2 minutes if you're being generous) of happy reunion is somehow supposed to magically fully counterbalance 3 seasons of anguish & trauma that Wilmon have been through? (Both with each other & with everything else in life). Like weighing 17-18 hours of pain against 2 minutes is... not sufficient for me??? Like, that doesn't achieve the goal of either intellectually making this make sense, or feeling emotionally true (or sufficient to just, as a viewer, not feel desperately broken anymore).

That's not to say that the Crown wasn't a major contributing factor, and that going more "low-contact" with the establishment won't help, but... yeah.

I remain very disappointed about:

a) Wille apparently not being in individual therapy anymore? Because I guess making a major coming-out speech on national TV proves to your mom that she can't use therapy to control you, so... why keep giving you access to therapy (since it wasn't intended as a form of emotional support). Maybe the queen even blamed therapy partially; I don't know. But I know all of the viewers can agree that Wille OBVIOUSLY still needs epic amounts of therapy. And it was starting to work, too! Which makes this even more disheartening.

b) Simon didn't go to therapy, that we're aware of. I had really hoped in S3, Wille would use his positive experiences with Boris to encourage Simon to look at his stuff as well.

c) Wille & Simon never discussing Micke, that we know of. Despite the fact that Wille is aware that Micke takes LOTS of medications -- enough for Simon to steal and sell.

d) Wille & Simon also never properly discussing anything about mental health... at all. Even though it impacts the two of them as individuals + as a couple SO MUCH. It is the giant giant giant elephant in the room. It really should be un-ignorable. Simon makes it clear he knows SOMETHING is up by suggesting a queer and/or mental health charity for Wille to spearhead, and with the whole "I've seen how the monarchy makes you feel like." But... that's it.

e) and still, Wille never actually comforts Simon. He asks him about Sara once. He apologizes a bunch of times. And he does hug him and (finally) get the Royal Court involved after the rock-in-window incident at Simon's home.

f) it never feeling (to me) like this really WAS a season of Wille & Simon learning to team up together to be "us against the world / against the Royal Court." That's realistic to many couples, sure. Especially after all the heartache they went through in Seasons 1 & 2 to get to this point. Well, I suppose this is more of a Wille problem, really. But still. Left me feeling discouraged.

DO they have the skills yet to be a proper, healthy couple? Hopefully they'll seek those out and work on themselves as individuals so they can get there. At the very least, Wille did start Episode 6 by saying he needs to take more responsibility for his life, so that is something.

I already wrote this on Twitter and Reddit, but I like what I wrote, so I’m posting it here too. Meh. So sue me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After sitting with Young Royals S3 for a few days, I have a new main takeaway, after letting myself feel the initial rage & grief & hurt & disappointment.

New takeaways:

While Seasons 1 & 2 were primarily a love story, S3 is a very serious, thoughtful, and important meditation on trauma + the impacts of abuse & neglect on kids.

I hate almost every single adult in the YR universe. They emotionally abandoned these kids in general life + during moments of severe crisis & trauma, both past & present. They set these kids up to fail. And when those children did inevitably fail, the adult washed their hands clean of responsibility and pinned the blame solely on the kids.

Very few of these children have any coping skills or communication skills at all. Even the ones who WANT to show up for each other properly, and who don’t want to hurt each other (one example being Wille), end up hurting others anyway because they’ve never learned any other ways of interacting.

Here's a "brief" list of some of the traumas (that we know about) these kids having endured:

Revenge CP sex tape

Online & in-person harassment (esp. Simon)

Homophobic hazings to terrorize & demean them

Violence (related to #3 above)

Grief & loss, including death (but not limited to death -- see #s 8 & 10)

Familial betrayal

Familial substance abuse & possible DV (related to #6)

CONSTANT invalidation, dismissal, minimization, & victim-blaming (esp. with the Royal Family)

Emotional neglect & abandonment (closely related to point #8)

Even being on the receiving end of outright contempt & disdain from one's own family

Control & surveillance from the Royal Court

It's no fucking wonder these children are so messed up & don't know how to navigate life.

Of course, they're still responsible for their actions. Accountability remains extremely still important. (Which is where introspection, taking corrective action, & pursuing repair come into play.) I'm in no way arguing that this excuses anything. *And* simultaneously, the adults in their lives have failed them so badly -- leading us to arrive here, at S3.

It reminds me of one of my favorite adages that I use in my mental health line of work all the time: "It's not our fault what happens to us. But it is our responsibility what we do next."

Realistically, I don't know how kids are supposed to manage this on their own. Being wounded so much, surrounded & overwhelmed by so many pressures, with very close to ZERO adult supervision, support, or help. It just wounds my soul to see the impact it's having on them.

I'm thinking about all of this in the context of many characters... but in particular (obviously) Wilhelm & Simon. And truthfully, especially for Wille, because I had such a hard time empathizing with him this season. I felt so deeply hurt by his obliviousness to Simon's pain, as well as both offended by and disappointed in his "all queers" comment and dismissing the opportunity to value Simon's politics or opinions on how he could use his position as Crown Prince to do good in the world. I was angry with the writers, too: like, how dare they? I wanted Wille to show up as a more evolved version of himself. I wanted his besotted-ness to translate into being a "better" person.

But, then I got to thinking... like, how in fact would he know to do that? Wille isn't trying to be cruel. In fact, I think he is in all actuality trying his hardest with the tiny amount of social skills he has to demonstrate the care he feels. (That does NOT excuse his actions, of course. I mean, poisoned cake, anyone??).

However, he is a child who is EXTREMELY overwhelmed and wracked with guilt... and no way to realistically handle this. He has ZERO parental or even adult support (the best he's got is Farima; he doesn't even appear to have individual sessions with Boris anymore). There are exactly zero adults helping him to navigate this. I actually don't know how a child should or could know how to do better with all this pressure, especially because it all comes back to decisions he's made (to not conform to family+royal pressure, to come out, to publicly challenge traditions, etc.). The overwhelmingness of it must be enormous.

Compounded with that, no adult in his life has ever modeled to him how to properly talk to another human being about emotions. When he had emotions, he was minimized, dismissed, shut down, ignored. He has zero idea of how else to handle it, even if he wanted to handle it differently. Where & when would he have learned these skills? So, of course when Simon brings up his online harassment, he really doesn't know what else to do besides sigh and say "ignore it." I don't think he's actively trying to minimize. I think he has absolutely no other language that he's aware of to use. He just has no skills, support, or role modeling when it comes to this. He's in WAAAAAAAAY way over his head and never previously learned how to swim. I do really think Wille is trying his absolute best. (Which is not good enough, and he does need to learn to do better -- not an excuse, just a building up of context.)

In an ideal world, someone at this point would hand him a book on Reflective Listening skills so he could learn to validate, normalize, and properly attune to emotions. I think he probably wants to -- I see how concerned his expression is every time he looks at Simon after the window-rock incident, and after they overhear their classmates mocking Simon's revolution love song. He probably feels totally helpless, confused, disoriented, & self-critical in his process of trying to figure out on his own how to listen to & validate other (I mean, he literally does say his attempts are always "clumsy.").

I imagine his internal shame at being terrible at attunement & communication must be immense. He makes it clear that he's aware he's terrible at all of this, but doesn't seem to know what to do about it. (And again, there are NO adults to help him figure this out! Except for maybe Boris's meditation sessions...?) I wish someone would hand him the Nonviolent Communication skills book & workbook. He'd probably be able to heave a big sigh of relief, knowing how to talk to & be there for the people he loves. He'd probably feel more empowered, too, as a result, and therefore less anxious. Win-win-win.

In summary: I just feel so freaking heartbroken for Simon, Wille, & a lot of the other kids, too. They are CHILDREN. Adults are supposed to be role modeling for them, guiding them, helping them cope & navigate the pressures of life. INSTEAD, they just heap on *more* trauma.

So... yeah. I think it's intriguing that the writers chose to shift to make Season 3 a meditation on trauma and its consequences. And now that I'm reframing the season through that lens in my mind, I'm able to sit with the content more easily and understand it better.

I really really wish everyone would get SHITTONS OF THERAPY in the YR universe (and also in real life, ha). Even better: go back in time and put all the adults in therapy, so their kids don't have to emotionally handle + figure out everything on their own! It's really not the kids' fault that they wound up with no skills or tools, and just confusedly trying to fumble their way through things in the dark. My heart really breaks for a lot of these kiddos, just trying their best.

Wilhelm looking at Simon ❦

By @/hsroyals on TikTok

FYI the national park service has removed the T from LGBT on the Stonewall Monument page

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