Season 2 of the Swedish teen series Young Royals premiered on Netflix on November 1, picking up at the start of the spring semester for the group of private school teens. Prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding), the series’ protagonist and reluctant heir to the throne, is caught in the aftermath of being publicly outed on tape by August (Malte Gårdinger), his second cousin and the troubled popular boy at school. August is a menace in every sense of the word, causing the dissolution of the beloved relationship between Simon (Omar Rudberg) and Wilhelm, and putting Wilhelm through absolute hell. Despite causing everyone’s problems, he’s also magnetic, troubled, and ridiculously charming at times, a “bad boy” that constantly challenges our determination to hate him.
For August, increasing his social standing is everything, and most of his awful choices are in the name of “protecting the royal family,” which truly means protecting his own image to increase his royal status. By the end of Season 1, August is firmly established as the villain of the series, the bad boy with a drug addiction who instigates the drama. He buys alcohol and pills from Simon knowing he won’t pay him back, and he bribes others to take the fall for him when he's in jeopardy of getting caught. At his most callous and selfish, he films and releases a tape of Simon and Wilhelm hooking up, outing them to the public and placing them in the center of a nationwide sex scandal.
It’s a testament to the writing by series creator Lisa Ambjörn and Gårdinger’s performance that despite such a heinous crime, we still care about his character. When confronted about why he did it, he hesitates, before saying “Wilhelm’s got everything, but he just spits on it,” speaking to his desire for Wilhelm’s royal position and Wilhelm's indifference to his title. August believes that his status is all he has to offer, a toxic belief that fuels his troubling actions. His character's complexity proves the truth is often more complicated than good versus evil. Real people are multi-faceted, and August’s character is no exception. His moral ambiguity allows him to transcend the narrow "bad boy" trope.
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