Mar. 25th, 2024

heliza24: a bird with a rust colored breast and a grey back sits on a branch with its beak open mid-tweet (Default)
In an effort to keep cross posting my old meta, here's some writing about Simon's season 2 arc. This was actually the first Young Royals meta I ever wrote (originally posted on my tumblr), and I'm posting it again because my first post about season 3 will go up shortly, and is also about the way that the show embraces radical storytelling. Since I've created an accidental trilogy, I wanted to make sure that Dreamwidth had part 2 before I post part 3. Part 1, about Wilhelm and radical quitting, is already on this blog here.

There's a lot of discussion about Simon's character arc in season 2 floating around in the tag over the last few days, so I thought I would add my 2 cents.

I actually love Simon's arc in season 2, because to me it is a journey towards radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is something I think about a lot as someone with chronic pain. It means "ability to accept situations that are outside of your control without judging them, which in turn reduces the suffering that is caused by them." Simon starts the beginning of season 2 doing everything he can to deny his own feelings. And by the end he has admits that he is in love, that he cannot control the fact that he is in love, and that being in love might lead to him getting hurt. The fact that he radically accepts his emotions, regardless of the possible consequences, is an act of incredible vulnerability and bravery.

In the beginning of the season, Simon tries so hard to move on from Wilhelm. In my mind, Simon's season 1 arc was largely about him learning to establish boundaries. He learned to stick up for himself, and of course I was cheering him on as a viewer. So he starts season 2 with these firmly established boundaries, and he's trying to figure out how to live with them. He tries so hard to move on with Marcus. He listens to his friend's advice and agrees that he needs a rebound. He tries to pursue a physical angle with Marcus (hooking up with him at his house), and then a more romantic angle (relying on him for emotional support, inviting him to the dance), but it never quite works. Meanwhile, during this early part of the season, Wilhelm is constantly testing his boundaries and Simon is constantly defending them. Simon has to tell Wilhelm that he doesn't want to talk in episode 1, that he can't continue to be his confidant. He relents a little in episode 2, when the royal family tries to remove Wilhelm and Simon tries to come to his defense. But Wilhelm immediately tries to leverage this slight crack in Simon's armor and asks him, once again, to be his secret boyfriend until he turns 18, when his family has assured him he will be allowed to come out. (I love Wilhelm to bits, but this is not his brightest hour). Simon, rightfully reacts negatively to this.

So Simon doesn't have a chance to consider how he really feels because Wilhelm doesn't give him space to do so until late episode 3/early episode 4, when Wilhelm decides he has to let Simon go. And that little bit of breathing room allows Simon to gain some startling clarity.

The other thing I love about Simon's arc this season is how imperfect it is. I think a lot of times as audience members we want our heroes' journeys to always leave them wiser and more mature than where they began. But Simon is a teenager, and the way he learns about himself in this season is messy and immature. At first I was a little disappointed that he let his boundaries drop so quickly and kissed Wilhelm at the dance. If I had a friend who kissed someone who had treated them the way Wilhelm had, I probably would say something like, "girl (in a gender neutral way) WHAT are you doing?". But here's the thing: Simon figures out something about himself in that moment, and that self discovery is valid. He's not ready to move on. Wilhelm tells him earlier in the evening that he's figured it out; he has to let Simon go. I can practically see the cogs turning in Simon's brain, the thoughts "how DARE he tell me that I want him to move on. I don't want that!" sparking behind his eyes. The irony, of course, is that Simon wouldn't have admitted to himself that he's still in love with Wilhelm if Wilhelm hadn't made an effort to move on.

Simon has always had little sparks of impulsivity and ferociousness that make this move feel totally in character, so it's one of my favorite writing choices of the season. The Simon that will call the royal family out for tax evasion in class is the same Simon that will kiss Wilhelm half out of desperate desire and half out of spite, and I love that about him. It's also the Simon who feels the need to hold the system that wronged him-- the Hillerska class system and August in particular-- to account.

So after the dance, Simon is left with two irreconcilable facts. He is in love with Wilhelm, and being in love with Wilhelm isn't going to lead to a healthy relationship (at least as far as he knows at that time). Wilhelm might be willing to give up the crown for him, but is unwilling to sacrifice his family and the royal system as a whole for Simon. Dating Wilhelm would mean allowing August to go unreported and sacrificing some of Simon's moral code. So Simon is torn, unsure of what matters more to him.

So much of Young Royals is about the struggle to live authentically. It's about the battle between what you feel in your heart and what other people are telling you is the correct way to live. It's also about the systems that keep us in our place, and whether we choose to defy them or not. I think other marginalized people can relate to the fact that sometimes you just can't fight all the battles. You can advocate and protest as much as you can, but sometimes you have to walk away in order to keep your heart intact. (I feel this way a lot with disability advocacy, especially in the time of covid as an immunocompromised person.)

At the end of the season, Simon's attempts to defy the system have been defeated. August has trapped him, eliminating his ability to report August's crime to the police (or so Simon thinks, until Sara does it for him). Everything has been taken away from Simon except for his heart. And he knows what his heart is telling him. His heart is telling him that he's in love with Wilhelm. There's defeat there, but there's also victory in realizing that his emotions are still real and strong and undeniable even after everything he's been through. So he radically accepts his emotions and gives in to them. He tells Wilhelm he'll be with him. Forget about August. They'll cope with the secrecy. None of it is ideal. But Simon is prepared to deal with the unideal if it lets him live truthfully. Even though this decision is about his relationship with Wilhelm, the journey he took to this decision is about his relationship with himself. So I don't agree with people who say that Simon's season 2 arc is only about his love life.

To me Simon's final decision is like taking a step off a cliff with your heart exposed, and hoping the new wings you just bought will allow you to fly instead of letting you crash to your death. It's so brave. It's so vulnerable.

And then Wilhelm returns that bravery and vulnerability, and Simon's wings are working after all. They're flying, and I can't wait to see where season 3 takes them..



heliza24: a bird with a rust colored breast and a grey back sits on a branch with its beak open mid-tweet (Default)

This is crossposted from my tumblr and is the promised third installment of my Young Royals and Radical storytelling series! Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

I’m ready to start talking about season 3, which I loved, and specifically about the theme of radical forgiveness, which I thought was laced throughout the whole season beautifully and drove Wilhelm’s arc specifically.

Before I jump in, I want to pause and really define the concept of radical. When I’m using "radical" in this context, I’m talking about something that challenges the nature of what we assume to be true. I’m talking about embracing an idea that may not seem logical at first, but feels emotionally true and necessary. And I’m talking about ideas that are revolutionary, that have the potential to change people and societies.

When I went in to season 3, I assumed from the beginning that it would end with Wilhelm leaving the monarchy. I have always seen this as the fundamental question of the show (will Wilhelm stay and fulfill his predetermined destiny, or leave and find his own path?). Wilhelm’s relationship with Simon is a catalyst for that decision and their ability to stay together depends on its answer. (There’s no world where Wilhelm remained prince and Wilmon was still endgame.) But during the gap between episodes 5 and 6, I realized that even if you could sum up Wilhelm’s overall series conflict as crown vs freedom/Simon, that was not the major thing driving him in season 3. Or rather, there was another dramatic question he needed to answer, or internal conflict he needed to solve, before he could decide to walk away from the throne and fix his relationship with Simon.

Season 3 starts with the private arbitration/settlement negotiation, and immediately establishes how inadequate legal and financial reparations are at mending the divide between Wilhelm, Simon, and August. Instead this setup pushes Wilhelm into more conflict with August, making him feel like he has to defend his family from August’s incursions. At the same time, the season also opens with the initiation reveal, and the immediate implication that Erik was one of the perpetrators of the sexual abuse that occurred and that August was one of the victims. Suddenly the audience is able to see that the perfect family Wilhelm thinks he is defending— including Erik’s memory— is so much more complicated than Wilhelm realizes. And at the same time, the supposed threat that August poses is also much more complex. No one is as black and white, as good or as evil, as we would like to believe. And Wilhelm’s arc this season is all about understanding this.

There’s one more component to Wilhelm’s arc this season, and that’s his relationship with Simon. As the season goes on, we see Wilhelm become more and more complicit in the abuse Simon suffers. As the season progresses, Wilhelm becomes an enforcer of the palace, asking Simon to give up more of himself, to compromise more of his values, to be with him. By episode four he is saying some pretty homophobic things (“do I have to represent all queers just because I’m in love with you” feels like a slap in the face) and by episode 5 he is subjecting Simon to a violent outburst, even if it’s not directed at him. Wilhelm says almost the exact same thing to Simon that Erik said to him in season 1 (“everything you do now represents me and the royal house”/“everything you do reflects on us as a family”). Kristina is explicitly asking Wilhelm to step up and fill Erik’s shoes this season, and Wilhelm obeys in more ways than one. Wilhelm begins to pass on the same cycle of abuse that is currently affecting him to Simon. The same cycle that has affected Kristina, Erik, August, and Wilhelm is affecting Simon now as well.

In order for Wilhelm to break this cycle, he has to be able to see what he is doing. And he cannot do that until he recognizes and accepts the nuances in both Erik and August. He can’t move on until he has made some sort of peace with both of them.

I think it was a genius idea to trap Wilhelm and August in Hillerska’s version of couple counseling (lol) and force them to talk to each other. (As an aside, I really do love how this show treats therapy as a thing worthy of being dramatized. It’s so powerful.) I also think it was important to see August begin to make some steps of his own, both in therapy and in the way he begins to give Wilhelm and Sara more space. We don’t really see the end of August’s arc of slow self improvement— by the end of the show he’s still very much trapped in the royal cycle and dependent on Sara in a way that’s problematic— but that’s ok because he isn’t the protagonist, and the important thing is that we notice that he is beginning to change, and so does Wilhelm.

The scene at the end of 3.4, when August tells Wilhelm about what happened during the initiation, is so important. August delivers that information genuinely, and not as a threat. And in that moment Wilhelm’s perception of his brother (and secondarily, of August) is flipped upside down. I think even more important is the kind of unspoken question lurking under this new information for Wilhelm: if I idolized Erik, and I detested August, and my image of both of these people was incomplete, then what does that say about me?

I think we can see Wilhelm questioning his perception of his family and of himself in a lot of subtle ways over the last two episodes. We see him put on nail polish and take it off. We see him afraid to ask his dad for more information about Erik on the phone, and then screaming at his parents for the way they abandoned him. We see him struggling to integrate this new information, and he completely neglects Simon because of it, leading to the breakup.

By episode 6, Wilhelm has lost Simon, reached a sort of catharsis with his parents, and maybe most importantly seen Hillerska itself— the setting where the abusive system seems to be baked into the very walls— crumble. All of the things he though were untouchable (his love for Simon, his parents’ authority, the everlasting nature of Hillerska) have completely changed. And I think all of that instability is what allows Wilhelm to finally accept that his understanding of both Erik and August doesn’t have to be permanently fixed either. I love the scene where August and Wilhelm meet at the party, August apologizes, and Wilhelm accepts his apology. And I also love the scene where Wilhelm throws out the broken frog prince snow globe, the one enduring symbol the show has associated with Erik and Wilhelm and their shared role over and over again. I know different fans will have different arguments about how Wilhelm feels about August at the end of the series, but for me their last interaction symbolizes radical forgiveness. By this I don’t mean that Wilhelm has to forget about what August did to him, just like he doesn’t have to forget the bad things Erik has done to others. But he does have to accept them as they are- full of flaws, but intricately connected to him. As part of his imperfect family. And he lets go of the violent anger that has plagued him through much of the series in that moment. That’s a type of forgiveness that makes a real change. It opens up a whole new avenue of possibility for Wilhelm. Because in extending that radical forgiveness towards August and Erik, he’s also able to forgive himself for the way he too has failed the people he loves.

Actually, I think there’s one more component necessary for that self forgiveness, which is Simon telling Wilhelm that he never gave up on Wilhelm himself, only on the Royal family and its rules. That one line is such a gift to Wilhelm. It allows him to see himself as an individual who is separate from his family and able to make his own decisions for the first time. It allows him to fully forgive himself, and to make the decision to leave for his own sake. It allows him to save himself. And then because he has saved himself, he and Simon can be together again.

So in the end Wilhelm ends up answering the driving dramatic question (crown or freedom?) but only after he extends radical forgiveness to his family members and to himself. I think it’s so beautiful, it makes me cry every time I think about it.

This theme of radical forgiveness is everywhere this season, not just in Wilhelm’s arc. It’s in Sara and Felice’s reconciliation, and in Sara and Micke’s relationship, and in the ways that Sara forgives herself and moves beyond shame (expect another meta from me about Wilhelm and Sara season 3 parallels soon, because there are many and I love them). It’s in the way that Linda and Simon forgive each other, and the way that Simon forgives Wilhelm, and the the way that Simon forgives Sara. It’s even in the ways that August grows in fits and starts this season too. I feel like I learned so much from this season. It challenged my assumptions about characters I thought I knew and reminded me to that there is beauty in acknowledging nuance in the world. And I think it will serve as an ongoing reminder for me that even when I mess up and do not live up to my ideals, I am still worthy of radical forgiveness. Growth can’t happen without that compassion towards ourselves and others. And if that isn’t the most perfect message to take away from this beautiful show that I have loved for so long, I don’t know what is.

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