Randomwilmonfan - Whimsical Longings

For everyone going through everything we're all going through right now...

here is a break from doom scrolling in the form of my cat teaching herself fetch. Enjoy.

they chose each other, finally.

but it's so much more than that.

in my opinion the underlying reason simon and wilhelm have always been drawn together, though of course they celebrate each other's strengths, is in the way they gently encourage each other to confront what might be holding them back from happiness and healing.

simon is a thinker - he's a top student, always intellectualising his next step. thinking for himself, thinking about what's best for sara, about his mum, about taking care of his friends. he feels so deeply - we know he does - but this is always secondary to what his brain tells him about a situation. and what his fascination, attraction and love for wilhelm stirs in him is a depth of feeling. he's not thinking when he's leaning in to kiss the prince at movie night! he's not thinking when he stumbles back to school with wille after the football field. he's not thinking when he abandons marcus to find wilhelm at the ball, when he agrees to keep things secret between them, when he tries to toe the line of the royal court so they can be together. and not that these feelings always lead to what's best for simon, but they start to be something he listens to and follows. he shifts from giving second chances because he thinks that's what should be done, to embracing his loved ones in their full selves because he feels a deep love for them and a love for himself that deserves them in his life.

and wilhelm? wilhelm is a feeler - wille does not for one second stop and think in that first season, hardly in the second and nigh on zero in the third, until that very last episode. wilhelm feels it all - anger, frustration, boredom, pride, arrogance, grief grief grief, loneliness, attraction, lust and love. he acts without second guessing why. he screams without caring who he pierces with them. but then ever so slowly, he starts listening to others and his brain zips online. he's taking note of those cleverer and wiser than himself. he's listening to his feelings and decoding them into the language of words, and most importantly, of considered action.

so we have a simon whose patient questions and careful soul encourages wilhelm to begin thinking for himself, and we have a wilhelm whose unyielding heart, affection and devotion encourages simon understand the value of his feelings, his understanding of himself and others.

thus wilhelm's last choice of the series - to consider simon's words, and those of others around him (boris, my man), and come to a considered decision to reject the institution he was raised in because it's harming everyone he loves - displays the enormous growth simon's catalysed in him. he's finally listening to his head.

and of course then simon's last choice of the series - to choose to let wilhelm in, to choose to stop the car, to once again let himself be vulnerable in the face of dizzying emotion - displays the depth of feeling wilhelm has helped him uncover within himself. he's finally listening to his heart.

they both had a choice, and they both chose themselves, and in choosing themselves, they chose each other.

but they never would have chosen themselves if they had not first chosen each other.

Oh, we meet with open hearts of everlasting bonds take part.

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.

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 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.

So like, I saw the YR teaser. I saw Wille gazing lovingly at his BOYFRIEND. In the PALACE. I saw them FLIRTING. And having to deal with the consequences of being publicly AN ACTUAL FUCKING COUPLE.

And now I have to, what?? Get on with my life?? Wait for season 3???

Are you fucking joking???

ok but the way they've been on again off again for three seasons specifically shrouded in the colours of the swedish flag - showing us the monarchy has intruded on their relationship. even the good, even the private, and always, always the bad and the ugly.

💙💛

makes this white flag moment of surrender even more powerful. they're stripped of this blue and gold brushed over them by society, colourless and allowed to create their own existence - together, a blank slate. themselves, again and only - forever.

🤍🤍

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i didn't mean i'm hoping we'll get a 10 minute kissing montage, just that i'm hoping we'll get lots of happy wilmon in s3

I think we will get happy moments for sure. It's very much needed at this point and I feel like we need to see them be happy together for their relationship to deepen further.

Even if I also expect angst and drama I hope we get to see them being very carefree too. And that they get to comunicate more and support eachother.