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bluedalahorse · 1 year

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Philosophies of Justice and Narrative Catharsis in Young Royals

Do you ever just have… conversations with yourself at 2 am?

Me: Wow. August did some bad shit. I want him to get therapy and help, but I also want him to face some kinda legal punishment.

Also me: Oh, self. You don’t trust cops or judges or prisons. The legal system would be way harsher on Simon about the drugs. Doesn’t that give you anxiety?

A third me, thousands of words in and possessed by a hyperfocus demon: Well fuck. We might be doing a meta about it. It’s okay, this can just be building blocks for our graduate school thesis on YA literature. Ahaha it’s fine.

The following meta looks at philosophies of justice, both retributive and restorative, as they appear in the worldbuilding Young Royals. This is a monster of a meta, like ~6500 words long, so be aware of that going in. Content note for discussion of all the usual crime topics in YR, as well as the injustices present in real world legal systems.

Intro: Shifting the Focus

Fandom loves discussing—and disagreeing about—the redemption arc. Who can blame us? As human beings, we’re wired to notice novelty, and redemption arcs involve a character experiencing some sort of dramatic transformation. This transformation could be gradually built up to for a series of chapters or seasons, or it could be sudden and jarring. It could involve one big dramatic gesture or a series of small changes. Whatever happens, fans end up debating what they see onscreen.

Now, I love a good discussion. I also love stories that poke beyond simple notions of good and evil, where characters are capable of change in multiple directions, And yet, as someone who has spent years in fandom, I increasingly find the discussion of redemption arcs unsatisfying and even boring. Everyone seems to have their own definition of what constitutes “enough” good deeds for a character’s redemption, and even their own opinions of who is worthy of redemption in the first place. It seems we can’t entirely agree on what the term means, and everyone gets bogged down in discourse.

At first, my dissatisfaction prompted me to ask what I considered a well-written redemption arc. Well, no, that’s not accurate. There was a little arrogant voice inside me telling me that I, the great bluedalahorse, who has devoted many hours of academic study to various literary texts and even made complicated spreadsheets to track ideas in my favorite books, could use my genius analytical skills to find out what a perfect redemption arc is supposed to look like and develop a formula for it. And then I stepped back and laughed at myself. Since when did good writing ever follow a formula? All the best writers know how and when to break the rules. Also, I am not as much of a genius as I think I am. I’m literally just hanging out here and overthinking my fictional faves like the rest of fandom.

A lightbulb moment switched on when I attended a workshop focused on restorative justice in schools, back in the summer of 2022. As I listened and processed the things I was learning, my storyteller brain kept poking me. Hey, it was saying to me. Heyyyy can we use restorative justice principles to write better character arcs? Particularly redemption arcs? I talked to my MFA adviser about this as we began to workshop ideas for a critical thesis in Young Adult literature. We started to explore the ways that restorative justice principles showed up in books like Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay and All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. I got a little further along in my theories, identifying techniques authors used to show characters confronting their privilege, unlearning old behaviors, and making amends for harm that they caused others. Still, something was missing. I just wasn’t getting where I wanted to with my analysis.

A few weeks ago I had a second lightbulb: what if we stop looking at justice in relationship to character arcs alone, and start looking at worldbuilding?

That clicked. Oh, boy, did it click! You really can’t talk about characters without understanding their world. Once I attended a panel on writing villains, and one of the panelists asserted that you can’t develop your villain as a character until you’ve developed your world. (Whether villains are outcasts hellbent on revenge, or oppressive tyrants at the top of their society, their world plays a role in shaping them.) Since what we call redemption arcs so often involves taking a character out of a villainous space and into a more heroic one, naturally worldbuilding has to be a factor in that kind of story. I also realized that the framing of the “redemption arc” frustrates me because on some level, it’s still tied to the Western Christian idea of individual salvation. I didn’t want to necessarily focus on what what one character does or doesn’t do individually without also focusing on that character’s relationship to other characters and their communities.

So I decided to experiment with shifting the focus of my thesis research. There were only two things left to do: come up with a framework for exploring my ideas, and test those questions out on Young Royals. Because it’s my favorite show, and it has a lot to say about justice. That said, a lot of what I say here and the methods I use could be applied to other shows as well. I’m curious to hear what it might have to say about your other favorite works of fiction!

The Framework

After some drafting during early morning bus commutes, I came up with three questions I wanted to explore when looking at Young Royals and other texts. These questions are:

What is the authorial philosophy of justice? What principles of justice are at play in how the author constructs the characters, world, and storylines?

How is justice enacted (or not) through the legal system(s) in this story’s setting? To what extent do the ideals of that legal system match up with its reality? To what extent should they?

What are the individual characters’ experiences of justice in their day to day life? What social norms do they end up creating in their smaller communities to enforce their ideas of justice?

What I like about this series of questions is that it allows a text to speak in multiple voices. There has been a lot of fandom discourse over the last ten years (and even longer, honestly, this shit goes back at least to Plato’s dialogues) about authorial intent and whether depiction equals endorsement and so on. I don’t think I’m going to end those debates today. Still, I do think it’s worth pointing out that a TV show or a book or a movie is able to tell a story and make a point in a different way than an essay or campaign speech does. You can have different characters own different parts of the truth. A particular setting can be positive for one character and negative for another. Fiction is really good at exploring paradoxes, contradictions, and tensions. I created these questions because they force me to tease out the tensions in a narrative and where there might be meaning in them.

Come on, Blue! you say. We know Young Royals has a lot of tension in it. When are you gonna start talking about your fandom? Okay. Fine. I’ll get to the sad teenagers now. Put on your school uniforms, everyone. We’re going to Hillerska!

No Good or Bad People, Only Good or Bad Actions

The title for this section comes from me paraphrasing Omar paraphrasing Lisa in an interview.

Two questions you may have about this section are: 1. What makes authorial philosophy (a term I am pretty sure I just made up for the purposes of this meta) different than authorial intent? 2. What’s the relationship between the author’s philosophy and their worldbuilding?

To answer question 1, I am defining authorial philosophy for the purposes of this meta as what the author intends + how effectively they convey that through their storytelling and craft. So like, authorial intent, but we’re also holding the author somewhat accountable for how their message comes across. Generally I read Lisa and the rest of the team as pretty intentional in how they craft their stories, and I can see how their ideas play out in practice, so I am more likely to give credence to authorial intent. I might not do that for other authors. As someone who reads heavily in the YA novel field, I’ve seen plenty of books with surface progressivism that end up being kinda reactionary when you scrape beneath that surface. Usually it’s a craft issue or the author not being intentional enogh. Young Royals, so far, has not been that kind of text.

As for question 2, authors can use their worldbuilding to reinforce their authorial philosophy, whether that’s through having characters in the story espouse said philosophy, or by using the story’s plot and character arcs to test their story, or by some combination of the two. Lisa is a writer who affords her characters a lot of grace, but I also see her as willing to test that grace and our her personal philosophy on trial. She’s very aware that ideals don’t always match up with reality, and those tensions are part of what she explores so well in her writing.

Now that we’ve addressed those questions, let’s address the authorial philosophy of Young Royal.

Young Royals stands out from other school dramas because it handles nuance so well. But how do Lisa and her team achieve that nuance? Part of it is the way their approach to characters resonates with the philosophy of restorative justice.

Restorative justice can be defined as “a system of criminal justice which focuses on the rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large.” This website has some additional information about what restorative justice looks like in theory and practice. (Plenty of other websites do as well.) Restorative justice is really hard to pull of IRL, but philosophically it does ask us to think about the ways in which more retributive and punitive justice systems are failing people.

Now, before I get too far into my explanation, I don’t know if Lisa chose a restorative justice approach to her writing on purpose, or how much she’s read about the subject. But a lot of what she prioritizes as a writer lines up with certain RJ principles anyway. For example, RJ practitioners believe that every human being has worth and dignity, and that leaning too far into a retributive justice model (more on that in the next section) can be dehumanizing for both victims and offenders. In Lisa’s writing, each character is humanized, there are no characters who are caricatures. Everyone in Young Royals has their own reasons for behaving why they behave—even when they make choices that harm others. There aren’t excuses, but there are explanations.

Two other important ideas in RJ are accountability and dialogue. Season 2 of YR deals a lot with the question of accountability. Wilhelm’s positive growth is signaled by his willingness to be accountable for his actions; August’s more tragic arc is characterized by his baby steps toward accountability followed by his dramatic backflip away from it.

Regarding dialogue, Wilhelm’s growth is fostered by important and vulnerable conversations with others. Sometimes these conversations are with the people he harmed or impacted in a negative way. He and Felice have to talk their way through the weirdness of that kiss, while he and Simon have to talk about… well, everything. TBH they’re not done talking yet. But they’ve started, and that’s where the progress and catharsis is happening. Other times, Wilhelm’s conversations with other members of the Hillerska community—Nils and Boris come to mind—help him to see things in a new light and clarify his ideals. When we cheer on Wilhelm as he comes to better understand his privilege in the world and the weight that his actions have, we’ve been enlisted by Lisa to support restorative justice philosophy.

No one character represents Lisa’s philosophy entirely, because she’s so committed to all characters being fallible in their own ways, but I would say that of the main cast, the Eriksson siblings and Felice are the most likely to express different parts of restorative justice philosophy. All of them strive to look for people’s human side instead of relying on stereotypes. They want the people close to them to be accountable for their actions. They talk things through. They recognize the needs of multiple people in a situation. This doesn’t happen all the time, with every person, in every instance. They get distracted and led astray. There may be times where it would benefit them to get outside help and they don’t. Sometimes their efforts blow up in their face. But they’re trying, and I think Wilhelm has definitely joined them by the end of season 2.

So sure, all the characters in Young Royals might brush up against the principles of restorative justice, but they still “live in a society” as we may or may not still say on the internet. In order to understand more, let’s talk about the legal system as it’s presented in the show.

Call Your Lawyer Stepdad

As a writer, Lisa may believe in restorative justice principles, and this likely guides how she depicts the characters in her story. The legal systems she depicts in her work, however, are not restorative. What’s more, they are applied unequally based on the identity of the person who breaks laws or rules. Young Royals is very clear about the distinction between the ideals of the law and how the law actually gets enforced.

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a law student or someone who’s studied much comparative politics, so I can’t say for sure whether Sweden’s legal system leans more retributive or more rehabilitative. I also can’t say whether the ideals of its legal system match its reality, but I am making a safe guess that they don’t entirely. (Sweden, my ancestral homeland, I love kanelbullar and ABBA, but your current right wing government and your response to the COVID pandemic and your history of colonization, among other things, shows that you are just as capable of bullshit as any other nation. Forgive me if I approach your legal system with caution. If anyone from Sweden or another Nordic country has more info and can weigh in, feel free to weigh in.) It’s also worth mentioning my own preconceived notions here. I live in a country with a massive mass incarceration problem and a legal system that was specifically created to reinforce white supremacy, so my trust in law enforcement and courts and the like is… not high.

What I can say about the legal system in Young Royals is this: the writing of the show primarily focuses on the retributive aspects of the legal system. In a retributive justice system, those who break the law are criminals, and they are punished for their crimes. Punishment is seen as a way of deterring crime and keeping it from happening in the future.

We see the impact of a system like that when legal consequences motivate characters and the choices they make. Simon is afraid of getting caught and prosecuted for bringing drugs into school, while August fears being put on trial and imprisoned for leaking the video. What’s interesting to me, though, is that it isn’t just that both characters fear punishment. They also fear the stigma that comes with being publicly convicted of a crime. Simon doesn’t want to be stereotyped as the poor kid who comes into school and pushes drugs on the rich kids. He knows how dangerous drug addiction can be from witnessing his dad, and he brings the drugs into school out of financial desperation. August, meanwhile, wants to think of himself as an untouchable elite who is discreet about secrets, and probably (more sympathetically) also wants to think of himself as a relatively helpful guy who showed Wilhelm around school and took care of him the way Erik would have wanted. I think it’s very clever how Lisa had Simon and August each break the law in ways that betray their respective core values, because it brings this issue with a retributive justice system to light. Once someone has committed a crime, how do they move past that stigma and make themself into the sort of person who doesn’t do a crime again?

This leads to another issue with retributive justice. We often equate legality with morality subconsciously, but these two ideas are not the same thing. In August’s case, leaking the video is easy enough for us to label—it is both illegal because it is against the law and immoral because it violates Simon and Wilhelm’s right to sexual privacy. Simon bringing in his dad’s drugs—that’s against the law, sure. But is it immoral? Simon is up against a corrupt teacher who rewards students who can pay more with better grades. He needs to pay for tutoring if he want to succeed. He’s at a disadvantage because of his socioeconomic status, and he also probably hasn’t had time to process trauma around his dad’s addiction. From the point of view of a Hillerska parent, however, they’re just going to see Simon as a threat to their kid’s well-being.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Simon’s reasons for breaking the law are absolutely more sympathetic than August’s reasons. I cannot stress this enough. We see the way the system screws Simon over, and how it drives him to do what he does. Simon gets drugs to students who consent to take them, but when August films him and Wilhelm it’s without their consent. Moreover, August is complicit in Simon’s lawbreaking because he ends up being the guy who sells drugs on Simon’s behalf. (Jesus, August, sell a painting or something.) But who is the legal system in the YR universe more likely to give grace to? August. Who is it more likely to come down hard on? Simon. Simon does not have the wealth to afford a trial. He doesn’t have a lawyer stepdad on speed dial. He doesn’t have an in with the media like the royal family does, so he can’t control the public narrative of his life the same way that they can.

On a purely literal level, August dangling the threat of the pill bottle in front of everyone is the most textbook example of August being a little shit. On the thematic, level, however, this reminds us who the justice system really serves. It’s a caution against relying on the justice system—or at least relying on the justice system alone—for narrative catharsis in this story. Instead, we should be looking for narrative catharsis elsewhere. And, we should definitely be looking at more than one character arc if that is the case.

The Only Person You Can Truly Control Is Yourself

While season 2 includes the retributive justice of the legal system as part of its worldbuilding, we also see Wilhelm embody the philosophy of retributive justice through his actions. Wilhelm starts his arc in a place where he wants to punish August for what he’s done by taking away everything he cares about. He justifies this by pointing out the problems with the legal system—rich kids never actually face the consequences of their actions. While Wilhelm is correct to call that out, he ends up transforming himself into a more extreme agent of the retributive philosophy in order to pursue what he sees as justice.

Now, this is a writing gambit that could have failed spectacularly. We’ve all seen versions of the “if we are awful to our enemies, we’re just as bad as them” story that end up reinforcing an icky status quo. But that’s not exactly what happens in Young Royals. The first thing to notice is that Wilhelm’s approach works… initially. August has lost a lot at the beginning of season 2, part of it due to Wilhelm’s efforts, and that’s made him more willing to reflect and be vulnerable and listen to Sara when she tells him he can preserve his self-respect by turning himself in. I actually don’t think Sara’s being entirely naive when she points out that January August would have turned himself over. The problem is that as January August becomes February And March August and starts to gain new things to protect (an in with the palace, a new relationship with Sara) he becomes afraid of losing everything again, and starts to go back to his old ways.

The other thing to notice is that Wilhelm mostly acts alone. Felice is his confidant, but she’s not working alongside Wilhelm, suggesting they swap out August’s hair products with toothpaste. (I kinda wish she would have, though.) In spite of the fact that the video probably hurt Simon even more than it did Wilhelm (reminder: Wilhelm has access to a press team and hired security that let him walk away at first) Wilhelm doesn’t center Simon in the process of doling out punishment. He does it with the best of intentions—he doesn’t want Simon getting hurt—but that moment where Simon’s like “You did ALL THIS TO HIM when we could have reported him together???” Yeah. That’s extremely valid. And it hints at one of the central ideas of s2—yes, dealing with August is important, but priority number one for Wilhelm is Wilhelm taking accountability for his own actions (denying that it was him in the video) and making things right with Simon in that way. With that relationship restored (see what I did there? restorative justice?) they can lean on one another as they slay their next monster. At the end of the day, the person who Wilhelm has the most control over is himself. That’s why we end season 2 on him making the speech and publicly acknowledging his relationship with Simon, not with the arrival of cop cars at Hillerska.

Speaking of the choices Wilhelm decided to make, I invite Young Royals fans to consider how Wilhelm’s role as crown prince give his actions symbolic weight. The royal family may not have real lawmaking power, but they’re still supposed to represent Swedish values and traditions to the general public. If Wilhelm starts pursuing a kind of justice, then he’s making a statement about what justice looks like in Sweden whether he wants to or not. If he had shot August in the field, that would have been more than a murder—symbolically that would have been an execution, in a country that banned capital punishment in the 1970s. (Then again, Stella and Fredrika would probably be okay with that.)

I want to make one more point here as I transition into the next section. I don’t think Lisa is necessarily saying that August shouldn’t be punished or face consequences for his crime. But I do think she’s being very clear that a retributive justice philosophy is going to hit marginalized people without the resources to defend themselves—people like Simon—a lot harder. And that opens up the question of where we’re supposed to find catharsis. Can we really exhale at the image of jail cell doors clanging shut, knowing that this same legal system can come for Simon using the same tools? If Simon somehow manages to evade prosecution, can he ever really find relief? How long will that last? What’s to say the system won’t screw him over in other ways, and what’s to say that other rich kids won’t get away with what August did, or worse?

It would be one thing if a crime only harmed the individuals involved, but restorative justice philosophy reminds us that this harm also impacts communities and involves communities. So, without further ado, it’s time to zoom in and examine how justice plays out (or fails to) in the Hillerska community.

Snitches, Stitches, and Scapegoats

In the microcosm of Hillerska, students have organized their own justice system in miniature. Conformity gets rewarded, while open nonconformity gets ostracized. While there is some understanding among the students that individuals will deviate from heterosexual, traditionalist, rich kid norms, this deviation is generally only tolerated when students do it in secret. In this climate, Hillerska students do a lot of self-policing. Stella and Nils cover up their sexualities in ways that may not work for them long term. Felice frets about her physical appearance and how people will perceive her if she pursues boys a certain way. You get the picture.

Because of the pressure to maintain a pristine image of the school (gotta make those admissions brochures look sparkly clean!) the student body as a whole sweeps crime and “deviant” behavior under the rug by closing ranks and agreeing not to snitch on one another. The elite status of Hillerska students allows them to get away with a lot their public school peers would not. While gossip flourishes within Hillerska’s walls, woe betide anyone who lets it escape into the outer world.

On occasion, there are crimes that can’t be covered up, and it may be that more than one student is involved. We’ve seen what happens in this case. Hillerska students do not collectively assume responsibility, but instead agree upon a narrative about what happened and choose a scapegoat to pin the problem on. We see this most clearly in episode 1.5, when Alexander is found with the drugs that the Society used for their party. August suggests they pin the drugs on Simon, while Wilhelm breaks with tradition and says Alexander should take the fall, because Alexander can easily bounce back from an accusation like this. Sure enough, Alexander is back at Hillerska next season, far less innocent than before and far more likely to engage in political intrigue. Wilhelm’s considerations about how Alexander can more easily absorb the blame for the drugs are well thought out and in some ways compassionate—and we’re happy to cheer him on for defending Simon and to some extent we should. However, Wilhelm’s willingness to participate in the scapegoating system backfires on him nonetheless, and also entrenches him in one of the most toxic parts of Hillerska culture. He’s cut off one hydra head and two new ones have sprung up to take it’s place.

One obvious danger of scapegoating is that innocent people are often blamed for things they have nothing to do with. We’ve seen this negatively impact Simon on the rowing team and elsewhere. Vincent makes Simon the scapegoat for the rowing team’s loss in episode 2.3 and uses it as an excuse to bully him. Simon doesn’t get to sing his solo because people will recognize him from the video and that will affect the school’s image and the royal family’s image. Simon is innocent in these areas, but he’s being made to take on blame for situations that are a lot bigger than him. Of all the individual students at Hillerska, Simon’s probably getting the shortest end of the stick, and that’s directly related to the fact that he lacks privilege.

Feeding the Myths

There’s other ways to make people symbols of crime or deviance, however, that can damage the fabric of social groups in other ways. Since scapegoat isn’t quite the right term here, because it tends to presume innocence rather than superlative guilt, I’m going to borrow some season 2 language and refer to this as the Worst Person in the World Phenomenon. Now, this is where I’m going to go out on a limb a bit and ask a question the show might not engage with in season 3. They might do it. They might not. It may be beyond the scope of the story Lisa feels she is able to tell. I’m going to ask this question all the same:

If August faces public consequences and punishment for leaking the video, what impact will that actually have on the culture of Hillerska students? Will it prevent such a thing from ever happening again? Will it at least encourage self-reflection?

You could argue that a high profile case like August’s could deter his classmates from engaging in harmful behaviors. He may affect some students that way. I mean, what he did is Very Bad on the Bad scale. You might even call him… the Worst Person In The World. Who would want to be like the Worst Person In The World?

The flip side of the Worst Person In The World phenomenon is that can actually discourage people from taking responsibility and holding themselves accountable. Because gosh, what I did isn’t that bad. It’s not serial killer bad, or Vladimir Putin bad. Do we realistically believe that other students at Hillerska aren’t doing problematic things? That the rowing team has zero boys who will show a topless photo of their girlfriend (without her consent) to some of his bros while they chuckle over it? That some of the girl groups aren’t spreading wildly inappropriate and homophobic rumors about classmates that seriously damage reputations? That kids aren’t paying one another for test answers or putting pressure on one another to unsafely experiment with alcohol and drugs, even when students express boundaries and don’t want to? That kids don’t collectively work to bully teachers at times? And generally the kids aren’t getting in trouble because they’re the children of rich, elite parents, who will grow to be the rich people who run the systems and structures in society for the next generation.

Now, none of the Hillerska kids (that we know of) are doing bad things on the scale that August did when he leaked the video. This is important to stress. But it’s also important to stress that this “getting away with bad behavior” culture of Hillerska and rich people in general is part of what made August who he is. Are the other participants in that culture willing to reflect on that and actively work to change the culture in question?

Again, this does not mean that August shouldn’t face consequences or punishment, or that he shouldn’t go to prison and undergo some sort of rehabilitation. There are excellent reasons for him to face consequences. He did revenge porn FFS. But I think it’s worth acknowledging that the punishment of a very obvious, high profile offender can feed the myth that the legal system is finally working toward justice when in fact the system is continuing to perpetuate injustice. We can see how this works when only a few select predator men were convicted to placate the #MeToo movement, we can see how this works with corrupt cops when only a few who kill are ever convicted but most get away with it, and we can see how this works with political parties taking advantage of the fact that other political parties are, well, worse.

And yes, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, no ethical consumption under capitalism, etc etc. I think we can keep that in mind while also keeping in mind that we still bear a responsibility to Do The Work in whatever way we are able. This is wandering off of Young Royals a bit. But I’ve given a lot of thought to the way we point at glaringly bad examples of human behavior and say “at least I’m not that guy” while not really doing the reflective work about what we can do to be better and how we can change our culture and systems. This kind of rhetoric is what allows people, especially people like the Hillerska kids who are at the top of society and the peak of privilege, to sleep at night. And maybe they shouldn’t be sleeping so well.

I think a lot about how the scene with Sara warning August that Simon is going to call the police (which is about Sara giving August one more chance to embrace accountability) is followed by a scene of Henry showing up to his group project meeting with no work done. Henry might not have done his work on a literal level, but as a symbol, he’s doing a lot of work. Not only is Henry foreshadowing that August isn’t going to do the right thing and turn himself in, he’s also lampshading the broader culture of Hillerska itself. For all the fancy plaques about responsibility, the students use their privilege and power to avoid doing what’s right and keep the status quo going. This is who they are. This is what they are going to have to overcome to be ethical humans who make their world better.

Working for Catharsis and Healing (A personal opinion section)

I don’t make predictions. The idea of making predictions for season 3 is in fact pretty stressful for me. But what this intellectual exercise has opened up for me is a question of where I would find catharsis and healing in the narrative. It’s not in the sound of police sirens. Maybe that’s different for you. That’s okay. I think we can learn a lot from the discussion in question.

Let’s start with the obvious jerkface himself and the question of him facing punishment. I think it’s worth separating August from other people for a time, to prevent him from doing additional harm to others. If we’re going to call that prison, then sure, let’s call it that. But let’s unpack what that separation looks like. In order for Wilhelm and Simon (and Sara and Felice for that matter) to heal, they’re going to need to be away from him. They should not be the ones responsible for his rehabilitation. As a restorative justice nerd deep down (at least, mostly, but fictional teenagers are well within the broad spectrum of people I’ll offer grace to) I still think he deserves a chance to heal from at least his drug addiction and his eating disorder and his trauma over his dad’s suicide. I also think he needs to understand accountability and the impact his actions have on others, and needs to learn to act in ways that repair the harm he’s done and prevent future harm. This is what he owes the world. There’s not time enough for us to see that whole journey, but I feel like the writers could show us the first few steps.

I’ve seen some people try to argue that August can’t change because he didn’t respond enough to Sara treating him like a person. I can see their point, and I can see the show using the Sara subplot as a shorthand for the idea that August can’t change. Writers often have to use that kind of shorthand to make a point about a character. (The relationship between redemption arcs and romantic love is one of my ongoing problems with redemption arcs in fiction, just for the record.) The way I see it, though, Sara is just one neurodivergent girl with a family history of abuse experiencing her first romantic love. She’s not a team of trained mental health professionals and social workers and other help-minded adults who’ve studied up on how to de-program systemic nonsense. After all, we can accept that although Simon loves Wilhelm very much, Simon’s efforts alone weren’t enough to fully dislodge Wilhelm from his place of privilege. Wilhelm needed Boris and therapy, and a mom who made him go to therapy (Kristina often does more harm than good, but her making Wilhelm go to therapy is the broken clock being right twice a day), and Felice as a friend and confidant, and Nils as a different sort of confidant, and a literature teacher like Fröken Ramirez who’s assigning him books with queer representation. Wilhelm’s journey is still ongoing. Romantic love may be transformative, but individuals in love don’t change people on their own. Communities change people. I am an aromantic relationship anarchist and I will die on this hill.

Speaking of the Eriksson siblings, I want Sara and Simon to have a chance to repair their relationship and build it anew. This would be another point of catharsis for me. I’ve seen a lot of people saying “Sara needs to do xyz tasks…” like we’re in a confession booth and a certain number of Hail Marys will save the day, but step one is that Sara and Simon just need to start communicating again, and communicating honestly. I think it’s easy to point to August as being the root of their relationship struggles, but there were a lot of unspoken tensions between the Eriksson siblings long before he entered the chat. They would have had some other falling out even without Hillerska. Simon’s been led to believe he should parent his sister, and Sara’s been convinced she’s a burden to her brother forever. They both are still reeling from trauma related to their dad, and it may need that they need different things to heal from that. Even without all that, they’re both maturing and defining their values and exploring romance for the first time, and Sara’s getting friendships of her own without always tagging along with Simon and Rosh and Ayub. Simon and Sara are getting to the age where they may not always be the most important people in each other’s lives, and they need to learn to grow up without growing apart. That doesn’t always happen automatically; it takes self-reflection and commitment and listening. I don’t think we’ll ever be back to the innocent days of Sara teasing Simon about his fairy tale prince. But I do think they can move their relationship forward in a new direction, and bounce back stronger.

I also think both Eriksson siblings need to come to terms with the fact that they violated their own values. Sara didn’t do anything illegal, but she did do something that violated her own morals, and you can tell that she feels pretty awful about that when she’s alone on the bus and driving away from school in 2.6. As for Simon, I don’t know if he’s fully gotten a chance to sit with the fact that he violated his own values when he brought his dad’s drugs to school. Again, I don’t want Simon to have to go through legal trouble, or deal with the prison system. The legal system is stacked against Simon in ways that are not fair. But Simon values accountability, and Wilhelm basically rescued him from being held accountable in season 1. I imagine that’s caused cognitive dissonance for Simon he’s still sorting through. I wonder what that’s going to be like for him.

On Wilhelm’s end, I’d like him to continue growing in the ways he’s grown in season 2. He’s learned not to be a symbol of extreme retributive justice. What would it look like for him to model restorative justice practices instead? (Note: this doesn’t mean that he personally has to forgive August. That’s entirely up to Wilhelm.) How can he encourage his community to act differently?

For Felice—well, one of my few issues with season 2 was how they handled Felice, and how they made her ancillary to others’ arcs instead of having her own, but that’s a post for another time. All the same, I think Felice is learning to trust her instincts, push past her biases, and take a unique point of view on things. She’s able to look at the video and see the broken pixels rather than the scandalous gossip scene everyone’s talking about. She can sense Sara’s hiding a secret from her and knows Sara needs to talk. Even if the conversation they end up having is deeply upsetting for her, it brings truths to light that need to be shared. Felice doesn’t have every tool in the toolbox yet, but what she observes and how she interacts with people can be helpful in delivering justice.

I don’t have meta space to consider every parent and adult on the show and things they can do differently. But I expect in season 3 we’ll start to see some adults (I don’t think it’s likely that we’ll see all of them) consider the roles they play in perpetuating systems and cycles. At least, I hope so. It shouldn’t be all on the young people to achieve change in society.

As for the Hillerska culture, it needs to change too. It’s worth asking if a place like Hillerska should even exist. Every secondary Hillerska student is going to act a little bit differently in response to the events of the plot, and I don’t know if I’d buy it if the show tried to tell us the Hillerska culture changed overnight in a magical ripple of self-consciousness. We might see individual students taking baby steps toward responsibility and liberation here or there. We might just see status quo as usual. I think of all the threads in this story, this is the one I would be okay with seeing Lisa Ambjörn leave things unresolved or in a place of tension, as long as that tension feels intentionally placed. Because changing the world is hard, and not everything changes all at once.

Young Royals doesn’t have to tie up every loose end by the last episode of season 3, but I do think it’s already raised a lot of questions about the relationship between justice and storytelling and where we find catharsis in fiction and our own lives. These questions are worth us considering, even if the answers point toward all the work that still needs to be done for the future.

#young royals #young royals meta #my meta #simon eriksson #wilhelm young royals #august young royals #sara eriksson #felice ehrencrona #long post #holy crap this is long thank you if you read it

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