Last night, I watched the series finale of Young Royals. For those of you who do not know about Young Royals, it is (was?) a Swedish show on Netflix about a prince (Wilhelm or Wille, played by Edvin Rydings) who meets a half-Swedish/half- Latin American student named Simon (played by Omar Rudberg) at Hillerska, a fancy boarding school. Omar is Venezuelan and Swedish, but the never specify (that I can find or remember) where Simon's mom is from, so Latin American is the best descriptor I can think of. Simon is very much a common person, he and his sister Sara (played by Frida Argento) are only at the school because they have scholarships. He is often referred to as a Socialist, but that seems to be a disparaging remark aimed at his not being rich and his more egalitarian views.
In the first season, Simon and Wille meet and quickly develop feelings for each other. BY the end of episode 3, they are secretly together and then Wille's brother Erik (the crown prince) is killed in a car accident, so Wille becomes crown prince. At the end of episode 4, they have sex and are filmed by August (played by Malte Gardinger), Wille's second cousin. At the end of episode 5, August releases the video online. Under pressure from the Royal Court and his mother, Wille says that the person in the video wasn't him. He also tells Simon that he wants them to be together secretly, but Simon says no. Near the end of episode 6 (the finale), Felice (played by Nikita Uggla), a student at the school who had a crush on Wille, figures out that August released the video and tells Wille, who is incensed. He gets even angrier after he learns that his mom already knew and decided to say nothing to protect the family.
Season 2 focuses on Wille trying to get revenge on August by systematically taking away everything he cares about, Wille adapting to his role as Crown Prince, and Wille and Simon trying to figure out their feelings in the midst of everything. The Royal Court decides to make August Wille's backup after he goes off on his mom and the Court because he was forced to deny his feelings for Simon and he threatens to no longer fulfill his royal duties. August and Sara also start a relationship, with him telling her that he wants to make up for what he did. The season ends with Simon telling Wille that he wants them to be together even if it is in secret and Wille revealing to the world (in a speech being broadcast on live TV) that it was him on the video tape.
Season 3 focuses on the aftermath of this revelation. Simon and Wille are openly together and Simon is being harassed by people online and his house is damaged when someone throws a rock through the window. They realize that there are some pretty big differences in view that they hadn't really thought about. Wille gets worried about becoming the king too soon because his mother's health and mental state have taken a turn for the worse due to everything that has happened. At Wille's 17th birthday party (just Wille, Simon, and Wille's parents), Wille goes off on his parents for not supporting him and not being the parents he needed. After this, Simon breaks up with him because he can't be trapped in the troubles that are going on in the Royal Family. In the finale, Wille decides that he really doesn't want to be King and that August would, in fact, make a better king, so he abdicates his position as Crown Prince and decides to be with Simon.
So that's 18 episodes (each season has 6) summed up pretty quickly. In terms of time, the show takes place over the course of a single school year. Wille comes to Hillerska during the fall term and the first season ends right before their winter (Christmas?) break. Season 2 starts in January and goes for a month or two. Season 3 ends with the school year ending. Now, let's talk about characters.
Wille is the central character of the show. It really is his story that is being told and his actions that move things along. He was sent to Hillerska after he got into a fight which was taped and posted online. His position as a member of the Royal Family is what causes the tension between him and Simon. His fighting with August has consequences throughout the second and third seasons which makes his abdicating in favor of August surprising. That being said, I think his abdication makes sense. I was surprised at how unprepared Wille was to be Crown Prince. Granted, he had an older brother who was Crown Prince, but you'd think they'd prepare him just to be safe. But they didn't and it shows. Wille is decidedly uninterested in being Crown Prince, he does it because he feels that he has to and because he wants to honor Erik's memory. In the third season, August reveals that Erik was one of a group of people who hazed him (and others) by making them watch gay porn while naked and disciplining them if they got an erection. This shook Wille's memory of Erik and was, I think, one reason why Wille was able to choose to abdicate: he no longer felt that he had to live up to the image he had of his brother in his mind. Wille could be quite impulsive, which is also not the best quality in a prince.
Simon is not the central character, but he is right there next to Wille. After Wille, he is the one who has the biggest storylines throughout the series. I really don't think he seriously thought about what it meant to be the boyfriend of a member of the Royal Family until near the third season. Don't get me wrong, he obviously knew that Wille was a member of the Royal Family, but it doesn't seem that he actually realized or thought about how that would affect him or their relationship. Wille keeps trying to tell him that there are limits to what can be said or done online, but Simon just does not get it until the fifth episode of the third season. Before that episode, I think he had an idea because the Royal Court has to step in to protect him after his house has the rock thrown through the window and they tell him that he will need to curb his online presence for safety's sake. And when Wille yells at his parents, Simon is completely shocked because he didn't get that Wille was really angry because he wasn't getting the parental support and love he needed. In the finale, he told Wille that he wasn't breaking up with Wille, but that he was breaking up with the Royal Family. And yes, I think this was also part of what got Wille to stop being Crown Prince.
And now for August. He is proof of the idea that abused people abuse others. He is a distant part of the Royal Family and his family had wealth, but it was lost and he ends up needing Wille's help (although he doesn't know it at first) to stay at Hillerska. He is prefect and captain of the rowing team and a star student. He loves having power and status, so much so that when Wille threatens that power to protect Simon, he releases the video Simon and Wille having sex. For the record, non-consensually taping 2 underage people (or any two people for that matter) having sex is horrific enough, but to then release it into the world is even worse. I would deem it unforgivable, and I know Wille agrees. I liked that August, in the finale, actually apologized for what he did. He had said something before that, but it didn't really seem sincere to me. I also loved that Wille told him he appreciated the apology but didn't forgive him or accept it. I thought that was the right thing to do. This was another part of Wille deciding to abdicate. He managed to let go of what August did and realized that August would enjoy being Crown Prince when Wille would not, making the choice incredibly mature.
I love Felice. She is newly rich and part of the modern nobility, who are looked down on by the families who have been around for longer. She really is a wonderful, loving girl and great friend, especially to Wille, who really needs a friend who is more familiar with his world than Simon is. Once they become friends partway through the first season, she and Wille only have one blip in their friendship. That is when Wille kisses her in the second season because he is trying to see if he could make a relationship with a girl work. She is hurt because he knew that she had a crush on him. Once he realizes what he did (he forgot about the crush), he instantly apologizes for what he did and they hug it out. I really do not think he could have asked for a better friend. Felice is also friends with Sara and that becomes fraught (for reasons I'll get to in a bit). She also had sex with August, who likes her, but she doesn't like him at all.
Sara is a very interesting character. She has ADHD and is on the autism spectrum (she says she has Aspergers), which leads her to not be the best with people (although she is great with horses) and towards a certain amount of social awkwardness. She becomes good friends with Felice (because Felice has a horse that Sara helps take care of) and eventually starts a relationship with August, which causes problems with Felice because Felice finds out Sara knew what August did and started a relationship anyway. She broke off the relationship after she realized that he wasn't going to admit to what he had done, so she turned him in, which caused a ton of problems on its own and caused a rift to form between her and Simon. Sara was separated from everyone else for most of the third season, but she and Felice eventually made up. She is a little snobby at first, wanting Simon and their mom to have sparkling manners, but became better relatively quickly. At the end of the fifth episode of the third season, she and August kissed, which he thought meant they were getting back together un
Overall, I really loved this show. I was really surprised at how similar Swedish is to English. There were a whole bunch of words which were close enough to English that I could have understood them even without the subtitles. And the actors' English was remarkable, for the most part pretty accentless. I could not stand August and almost wish he had been exiled at the end of the series, but (on reflection), I like the ending. Wille gave up the crown of his own free will rather than having it taken from him, which makes all the difference in the world. I do feel sorry for August because of the "hazing" he endured, but I also can never forgive someone who tapes other people having sex and then releases it. And to add to everything, he outed Wille (Simon was already out to people), which is equally heinous. So he did something unforgivable three times over. He only escaped punishment because he had dirt on Wille and Simon, both of whom did things out of character because of August's influence.
I'm going to talk about the show on the April 11 episode of Queerly Popular. Please tune into it if you are interested. You can also see all my past episodes including reviews of Heartstopper; Love Victor; Love Simon; and Red, White, and Royal Blue (book and movie).
