The pressure of growing up can be asphyxiating. In season two of Netflixs Swedish language teen drama Young Royals released on November 1 the fight to breathe is literal. Sixteen year old Wilhelm Edvin Ryding pictured top left is despondent after the heartbreak of a lifetime all while struggling with oppressive expectations from his parents severe anxieties about fitting in at his elite boarding school and fallout from an intimate video of him with his male friend secretly filmed and released by an enemy classmate. It does not help that he is the Crown Prince of Sweden, with generations of tradition and responsibility resting upon his shoulders.
Edvin Ryding gives a remarkable performance as the troubled young prince, filled with an unimaginable amount of teen angst as he yearns for Simon in lingering glances fragile conversations, and breakfast sandwiches made in secret. Fighting for revenge against his self obsessed cousin, Wilhelm is quickly lost in a sea of secrets and ill devised conspiracies, and he spirals out of control as the queen threatens to demote him if he does not prove himself to be capable of sitting on the throne. Wilhelm’s story is gut-wrenching to watch every attempt that he makes to reconcile with Simon just makes things worse, and as Simon develops new feelings for a less complicated boy, it becomes difficult to look away until Wilhelm has found some relief.
Despite the stakes (the crown, the fate of the nation, etc.), Wilhelm’s problems feel remarkably normal -- heightened, of course, but no different than the stuff that plagues an average teen wracked with anxiety, responsibility and first love. Much like the ever-present team of personal bodyguards, the centuries of royal obligation and tradition and expectation are in the background just as much as they are in the foreground. Young Royals is about the weight of the nation on one young boy, but it is also about the weight of any responsibility -- of growing up, of falling in love, of finding oneself. As Wilhelm tries therapy for the first time on his mother’s command, it becomes clear that, at heart, he is just a teen trying to make his own path in the world. In this way, “Young Royals” encapsulates what it means to grow up: to decide for ourselves -- and not for others -- who we will be.
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