Ok But The Way They've Been On Again Off Again For Three Seasons Specifically Shrouded In The Colours

FIRST LOOK AT YOUNG ROYALS SEASON 3

They’re scared because they know that the public is with Luigi.

They’re violating his rights because they need to maintain capitalism.

Keep talking about Luigi.

I'm sorry to everyone out there that hates kissing

Real talk though has anyone else just thrown away a whole Tupperware container bc you left food in there for way too long and now you’re afraid to open it?

simon + playing with wilhelm’s hair

Inspired by this post (thank you for reblogging it @andthatisnotfake ):

Pirate AU where Simon is a pirate or privateer captain on a ship he owns together with his childhood friends Ayub and Rosh. One lucky day they manage to capture the previously capered flag ship of the Swedish Royal Navy, and its handsome pirate captain.

What he doesn't know is that its captain is none other than the Swedish Crown Prince in disguise.

None of them knows what the Crown Prince looks like (no cameras for another century or so) when he's not dressed up as the Crown Prince.

Simon falls for the handsome pirate captain he's captured. Wille is a revolutionary like him, who hates the monarchy with a passion as strong as his own. Add lots of steamy sex in the captain's quarters - pirates are hot, sue me.

Simon slowly realises Wille isn't who he says he is. His manners are too posh, his behaviour too strange. And then maybe Simon finds his signet ring, or a letter from his late brother. Or maybe he gets it when he learns that...

...Crown Prince Wilhelm pirated his own ship, because he doesn't just want a revolution, he's planned a whole coup with his trusted friends Felice Ehrencrona and Alexander Bragé. A coup against the Queen and the court, and the Noble families led by the Horn af Årnäs family. With the goal to forcethe hand of the Swedish Parliament Riksdagen to abolish the monarchy in favour of a new Swedish Republic.

Felice becomes the first President of Sweden. Simon and Wille sails into the sunset, living happily ever after.

okay but imagine being Linda in this situation like: you got married a while ago but he turned out to be an alcoholic and just generally a bit of a loser so as soon as you aren't at risk of being homeless anymore you divorce him and it may be tough but at least you got your two wonderful children out of it and you decide you're going to raise them into good, responsible, polite and hard working people. They've always been a bit different, your daughter is neurodivergent and gets along with horses better than with people and your son is a really polictically active gay musician who probably wants to sing at some point in his life. Neither of those things are paying really well but you'll be damned if you don't support their dreams. So you make them work hard at school so you can get them into this really popular and renowned boarding school where they can follow their dreams. All of your good parenting and support pays off and they actually get into said school.

Within a year both of them get involved in a national sex-scandal involving the royal family, your daughter sets a building on fire and now owns a horse and a car apparently, while your son briefly dealt with drugs, fistfought a guy, changed the schools anthem and also made the current crown prince abdicate by being a bit too woke and cute at the same time. Also the school closed down due to all the shit your children were involved in and your son owns a lot of money now.

Like- Linda really just released two well raised children into the upper class and watched the system crumble. Queen behaviour nobody is doing it like her.

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 have endured:

Revenge CP sex tape

Online & in-person harassment (esp. Simon)

Homophobic hazings to terrorize, demean, & publicly humiliate 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 & relationships.

Of course, they're still responsible for their actions. Accountability still remains extremely 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 several 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 with 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, frustrated, & self-critical in his process of trying to figure out on his own how to listen to & validate others (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 mediation 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 *even 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 and fucking it all up.

WILHELM + SIMON YOUNG ROYALS | 3.06

To anyone who knows: Is there any chance Young Royals will get more international recognition with awards and things? Like are International Emmy awards for TV shows a thing? I want to see them really get proper accolades -- and yes I know winning awards isn't everything, but Lisa, Edvin, Omar, et al deserve it, damnit!