All the lessons Simon and Wilhelm learned to solidify their relationship
If you’re watching Young Royals it’s probably because you’re rooting for Prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) and his love interest, Simon (Omar Rudberg). It’s unquestionable that there is a lot stacked against them, and at the end of season 1, it could be argued that Simon and Wilhelm are just not ready for each other.
When Wilhelm leaves Hillerska at Christmas everything is a mess. He’d just told the entire country that he was not involved in the sex video that was leaked by August (Malte Gårdinger), even though he promised Simon he’d tell the truth. In direct response to this, Simon told Wilhelm in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t be together as a result of these actions.
But then Wilhelm returns to Hillerska after Christmas break and the pair of them are dancing around each other, clearly still stupidly in love. Even so, they are still not ready for each other yet. In season 2 Simon and Wilhelm endure many hard lessons before they’re able to emerge from their trainwreck of a situation victorious and together.
While there are a lot of external forces influencing what happens to Simon and Wilhelm, there are definitely issues between them that need to be resolved before any kind of healthy relationship can ensue. At the core of their issues is the fundamental idea that each of them individually thinks that their own problems are more important, and carry more weight, than the problems of the other.
There is no denying that Wilhelm has his hands full with the Crown. The monarchy would like nothing more than for Wilhelm to find some blue-blooded girl to settle down with as he assumes his royal duties. But Wilhelm doesn’t want that for himself. He loves Simon, for better or worse, and he isn’t going down without a fight.
So he is battling an institution (which also happens to be his family) that is centuries old. For Wilhelm, this feels like an insurmountable hill – and it is a lot – but he’s doing it anyway. He thinks that Simon doesn’t understand the huge thing that he is facing, and he’s right. Simon doesn’t understand – not for most of the season. However, Wilhelm’s downfall here is that he also thinks that because it’s the monarchy, his problems carry more importance and weight than Simon’s, and therefore Simon should probably show a little more understanding of Wilhelm’s predicament.
On the flip side, Simon is having some pretty intense trust issues when it comes to Wilhelm as he tries to process the betrayal he feels over Wilhelm lying to the entire country about their situation. And Simon clearly feels upset by the fact that he carried the burden of the sex video on his shoulders alone. Simon’s face was all over that video so he was unable to deny it was him, but the face of the second person is never revealed, and their identity was, therefore, able to remain a mystery. Wilhelm made Simon a promise that he wasn’t going to make him go through that whole ordeal alone, and then he turned around and did the very thing he promised he wouldn’t do.
Simon’s trust issues are understandable. However, it’s pretty clear that because it was his face plastered all over the internet, Simon feels like that bares more weight than anything Wilhelm – who got to protect his identity and his involvement – is going through.
Wilhelm doesn’t make this situation any better by continuing to lie to Simon about August’s culpability in the whole thing because it only serves to reinforce Simon’s fears. How is Simon supposed to trust Wilhlem if Wilhelm is always putting the Crown’s reputation and desires before Simon and what he needs?
Because Simon is so caught up in his own head, he is unable to see Wilhelm’s battle with the royal institution. And because Wilhelm is so busy trying to work out how to be himself and be what his mother (Pernilla August) and the monarchy want him to be, Simon’s problems seem less important to him. Neither of them is able to show true empathy for the other, and this is the core of all their problems.
The power imbalance this causes is next level. Wilhelm makes decisions for Simon that he shouldn’t. Although Wilhelm tells Simon – and Felice (Nikita Uggla) – that he keeps the information about August from Simon to protect him, that action really only serves to protect the Crown. Simon was an equal player in that situation with the sex video and deserved the right to make those choices for himself. By Wilhelm taking that agency away from Simon, he is demonstrating that he doesn’t understand that Simon is a human that might not always do things that please him, and that’s okay.
Throughout season 2 Simon and Wilhelm fight a lot about what they want from each other and for a good long while it looks as if they’re just not going to be able to work out their problems. But their individual love for each other plagues them so much that they persevere through all the tension and emerge on the other side of it all as better communicators.
They learn that they haven’t been listening to each other and that they’ve been talking at each other, rather than with each other. Finding themselves in Karin Boye’s novel allowed them to approach each other on equal footing and really talk about the inequalities that they were both bringing to the table. This moment is so crucial for their relationship and it’s unlikely that they would have ever been able to move forward had they not read this book.
It’s in this moment that Wilhelm is able to finally see that just because he is royal, doesn’t make his issues any more important than whatever Simon is going through. Likewise, Simon is able to see that he was being incredibly stubborn and wasn’t allowing himself to understand that Wilhelm does actually have the weight of the world stacked against him right now. However, Simon’s problems matter just as much as Wilhelm’s, and both of them needed to acknowledge that.
It’s during this discussion that they’re able to arrive at absolution and move forward together as equals.
There is absolutely no other way that season 2 could have unfolded if viewers ever want to see Simon and Wilhem moving forward together in a happy, healthy, long-lasting relationship. At the end of season 1, everyone desperately wanted Wilmon to come back to Hillerska and to see them both attempt the boyfriend thing. But they just weren’t ready. Although they’re only sixteen, they were (and still are) dealing with very adult things, and they needed to work out all of these issues before they could enter into any kind of relationship together.
Had they not spent season 2 doing this, Simon and Wilhelm would have destroyed each other in the process of trying to be together.
But now? Now, they’re ready for each other. Their issues haven’t disappeared, and probably won’t go away any time soon, but because of the place they are able to arrive at together by the end of season 2, navigating all of it as a unit is now possible for them. Do they have a fight ahead of them? Quite possibly. However, because of all the lessons that Simon and Wilhelm learned in this season, it’s a fight that they can tackle together without ruining themselves in the process.
Here at Q+ Magazine, we like to believe that love wins in the end, so we’re excited to see what the future holds for these incredible kids (and what the hell happens after Wilhelm steps down from the podium at the jubilee).
Young Royals Season 2 is available to stream on Netflix globally now. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!
