Television seems to have garnered an obsession with wealth in an age of expansive inequality. Shows like Billions and Succession have graced our screens and provided engaging case studies into how money, power, and status corrupt. This genre becomes even more intriguing and volatile when the majority of the characters are teenagers with everything at their disposal.
One of these shows is Young Royals, a six-episode Swedish Netflix original developed by Lisa Ambjörn, Lars Beckung, and Camilla Holter. The series revolves around the romance between Prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) and Simon (Omar Rudberg), who go to Hillerska, an elite boarding school. Though Young Royals initially appears to be a run-of-the-mill teenage romance drama, it does an exemplary job of highlighting the wealth disparities between the various students, under the guise of capacious teenage scandals.
After Wilhelm gets into a public brawl with another kid, his parents, most notably his mom Queen Kristina (Pernilla August), decide to send him to boarding school. Initially, he feels like an outsider, disconnected from the everyday musings of his classmates. Simon, on the other hand, has always been an outcast. He, along with his sister, is a working-class non-residential scholarship student. Despite their differing backgrounds, their unique standings in the Hillerska ecosystem allow them to gain a certain sense of camaraderie. Abruptly, August (Malte Gårdinger) asserts himself as an antagonistic figure trying to limit Wilhelm’s interactions with Simon. On a surface level, August’s behavior seems like adolescent bouts of jealousy. Only time reveals that August’s true cravings happen to be power and dominance.
Just one episode into the series, Simon starts selling bootleg alcohol. Later on in the season, Simon sells Adderall to August. August, thinking he can bulldoze his way around Simon, stalls on payments, believing his status and small favors can replace the money he promised. Eventually, Simon grows tired of this and confronts August, adamantly instructing him to pay what he owes. With August under duress, he’s forced to reveal that he and his family are destitute. For a second, it seems like August and Simon share a similar predicament setting them apart from other students. Yet, Simon and August’s lack exemplifies their differences. August and his family have a simple solution to escape financial ruin: they can sell parts of their estate or relinquish pieces of art. Simon’s family lives in a simple apartment in the modest town of Bjaarstad with no land or expensive paintings. Besides, the conflicts that arise due to this transaction show the opposing definitions of value. August, a member of the nobility, grew up in elite circles where prestige is of the utmost importance. Once you have a powerful name, you can get anything you want. However, Simon, like most of us, puts his value on the material things he needs. Thus, it puts Simon directly in conflict with August, someone who has had almost everything handed to him on the basis of who he is.
All of this points to one question. August may be unlikable, but how does his behavior imply that he’s anything worse than that? Well, August facilitates the destruction of Simon and Wilhelm’s relationship by recording Simon and Wilhelm sleeping together. To make matters worse, August uploads the video to the web, making it open for the public to see. Although August wholeheartedly believes that his actions were done in Wilhelm’s best interest, he’s clearly asserting his dominance. He doesn’t realize the ramifications of outing someone and how it can shatter their reality. August merely sees Simon as an obstacle between him and Wilhelm and does everything in his power to remove Simon from the equation, even if it means jeopardizing Wilhelm’s safety.
Surprisingly, August never faces consequences for his actions. Instead, Queen Kristina chastises Wilhelm, telling him that she wants to safeguard their family, their legacy, and the monarchy. She’s protecting August in order to protect Wilhelm. Queen Kristina’s obsession with her family’s image blinds her and inadvertently confines Wilhelm to living a lie. While Queen Kristina’s actions are undeniably harmful, it’s worth noting that royal families put immense effort into appearances because it affirms their societal status. Their immense wealth affords social markers that are hard to come by, further propagating the idea that European royalty is the pinnacle of perfection. These royals cannot afford to be near anything beneath their stature or else it ruins the mythical depiction they have created for themselves. Simon foils that reality, not only by his class position but by his race. In Queen Kristina’s mind, family legacy comes before everything else, and in order to maintain the family legacy, non-white people from working-class backgrounds like Simon must be forever excluded from their inner circle.
Wilhelm is a likable young man figuring out his place in the world, but he too is implicated. Unlike August, Wilhelm isn’t vile, but he doesn’t necessarily interrogate the inner workings of his environment. For example, while others are celebrating their high marks on their math exam, Simon is disappointed in his score. Wilhelm, noticing this, nonchalantly tells Simon that the instructor is more lenient on students who pay for private tutoring when it comes to exams. Wilhelm just wants to offer some words of encouragement, but he doesn’t realize how damning this statement is. He’s willfully admitting how wealthy kids are afforded even more opportunities in a place prepared for them. Any normal onlooker would deem this as fraudulent and unfair, but to Wilhelm, it’s just how things work.
The “every man for himself” ideology has often been used by those who are well off to justify their selfish behavior. Wilhelm and members of the Society, a group that August inaugurated Wilhelm into, are emulating that doctrine to make sure one of August’s friends, Alexander (Xiao-Long Rathje Zhao), is not implicated by the school administration for having drugs in his possession. More importantly, the Society members do not want to face disciplinary action. Therefore, members of the group deem Simon as a perfect sacrificial lamb. Even though Wilhelm is hesitant to allow Simon to take the fall for the crime, he tells Simon that he can’t get into trouble because an expulsion at Hillerska would be damaging to his family’s image. From that point on, it’s clear how Wilhelm thinks. Even though he and his mother have different philosophies, their focus is the same. The image of the royal family is of the utmost importance regardless of who gets hurt. Wilhelm’s solution to the problem is asking his fellow Society members to allow Alexander to face the consequences. Something very sinister about this situation is that the boys who are potential victims to the administration’s wrath are both people of color. Consciously or unconsciously, all these boys, including Wilhelm, treat these two individuals like throwaways. To them, Alexander and Simon cannot be the reason why the boys get rejected from top-flight universities, have a blemish on their record, or embarrass their family name. Alexander was a friend and Simon was a loved one, but in the end, August, Wilhelm, and the other boys deemed both of them as unworthy of their sympathy.
Underneath the typical teenage drama, Young Royals manages to provide an excellent commentary on class. Here we are presented with two types of wealthy people: those who use their power to take advantage of people and those who prefer to passively live in excess. In the end, both types of people leave those who are not deemed as valuable behind, wallowing in the dust. Hopefully, in the next season, the commentary on race could be well developed and built upon. Maybe Wilhelm and August can turn over a new leaf. But for now, I am rooting for Simon, the underdog.
