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skamenglishsubs · 3 years ago

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Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, Season 1, Episode 4

Episode 4 picks up maybe a week or two after episode 3 ends, and we're attending Erik's funeral.

Culture: Close relatives to the deceased wear white ties, not to be confused with the dress code white tie, which is something completely different.

Culture: In the funeral liturgy of the Church of Sweden, the priest pours a handful of earth on the coffin, and intones "Av jord är du kommen. Jord skall du åter varda." - From the earth you came and to the earth you shall return. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Culture: The green berets marks these soldiers as members of Livgardet, providing a royal guard of honour, as they have since they were formed in 1521, making them one of the world's oldest military units still in existence. They wear an insignia of the current monarch on their berets, and it's too blurry to make out, but it's definitely not the real-world one, so it could be something made up for Queen Kristina. The green berets and uniforms mark these soldiers as members of Amfibiekåren, which is where Erik was doing his military service. We know this because it's the same uniform as he's wearing in episode 1, except he's wearing the viking helmet insignia on his chest, since he's not wearing a beret where it normally sits. Thanks @sflow-er for the correction!

The blue board with numbers on it denotes which psalms were sung during the service, according to the hymnal of the Church of Sweden. They sang 289 - "God's love is like the shore and like the grass", 297 - "Lovely is the Earth", and 256 - "Don't be afraid".

Culture: The two honour guards at the back are wearing Carolean uniforms from the late 1600's. They were the fighting force that made Sweden an empire, for a brief century.

As the TV broadcast later shows, the funeral takes place in Johanneskyrkan in Stockholm, which is just a random church, and not where a royal funeral would actually be held. The real deal would happen in Riddarholmskyrkan, where all of Sweden's monarchs of old are buried.

Subtext: The business of the royal family doesn't stop, and with Erik dead, Wilhelm has to take over all of his duties and essentially learn how to run the business, because he's going to take over one day.

Subtext: Be straight, have kids, keep the royal family going across the ages. Only Wilhelm can do it now that Erik is dead. No pressure, though!

Subtext: The idea that you can simply pay to get ahead is completely natural for the upper-class kids at Hillerska, they don't see anything wrong with it. Linda is absolutely not upper-class though, so to her, the idea is horrible, and she thought she had taught Simon the values of her class, and is shocked he has adopted an upper-class value instead.

Subtext: August is an insecure, jealous little bitch, #1.

Cinematography: We've moved forward in time and it's now probably in the middle of November. The weather is appropriately gloomy for Erik's memorial service, all the leaves have dropped from the trees, and it looks nothing like the happier times at the beginning of the school year.

Wilhelm is also wearing a more formal suit matching the mood, and if you look carefully, you can see that he has started wearing Erik's watch. (A GANT Cleveland, btw. I don't think anyone upper-class would be caught dead wearing something as cheap as that, but I guess the production didn't have unlimited budget. May I suggest this lovely Hublot for the next season instead? It would really make a statement, and it's a steal at $70k!)

Culture: The paper with the speech features some sort of coat of arms, presumably the one for this fictional royal house, and it looks vaguely like the real Swedish coat of arms.

We should also all be happy that Wilhelm stopped reading his prepared speech, because it was a bland, politically correct, emotionally empty product of the PR machine of the royal family.

Subtext: Growing up knowing of your future inheritance must affect you pretty strongly. It's good that Erik and Wilhelm were able to joke about it, but it must sting a little to think of yourself as "the spare", wondering if your parents conceived you because they wanted to, or because they needed to.

Subtext: At this point, Wilhelm has decided to go all-in on being the best crown prince he can be, which means he has resigned himself to his fate, which in turn is why he's breaking up with Simon moments later. August is of course overjoyed at seeing this new Wilhelm.

Subtext: Since Wilhelm has now been elevated to crown prince, all the staff is aware that he's now the future king of Sweden, so they're upping the formality when talking to him.

Subtext: Only when the headmistress breaks the formality by addressing him by his name...

Subtext: ...does he break down, and go for the hug he so desperately needs.

Subtext: And to further reinforce how Wilhelm is now even more trapped than before, he picks up the frog prince snow globe again.

Culture: The bodyguards don't work for the royal family, they work for the government, protecting people in the interest of national security. They don't take orders from Wilhelm, or the queen, so they're not going to leave him alone, no matter how much he screams at them.

The subs and dubs are inconsistent here, btw: In the original audio, Malin says "Ja, jag är hemskt ledsen", and the regular English subtitles say "Yes, I'm very sorry", but in the English dub and the English CC subtitles, Malin says "No, I'm terribly sorry". Even though she says "yes" in the original, she's actually not going to leave him alone, because they both move to follow him anyway.

Subtext: Simon moves his dad over into a semi-prone position to ensure he doesn't choke to death in case he throws up while passed out. This whole sad scene also tells us that this isn't the first time Simon has had to do this for his dad, and he's also incredibly disappointed, because for all his dad's talk about seeing his family again and getting back on his feet, he's still an alcoholic.

Blink and you miss it: Felice tries to help herself along to an orgasm since August isn't exactly doing it for her, but since he's an insecure jealous little bitch, he doesn't let her.

Subtext: August is an insecure, jealous little bitch, #3.

Blink and you miss it: Madison asks Felice if having sex with August felt "royal", a throwback to their discussion in episode 1.

Subtext: August is actually admitting that a lot of the students at school are abusing drugs to improve their performance.

Lost in translation: Sara actually says "Jag vill inte att vi ska vara ovänner", which means that she doesn't want to be "not-friends". The negation has to be flipped in English because there's no good way to translate ovän, but that makes it lose some of the meaning.

Subtext: Madison saying what's on everyone's mind again!

Subtext: August is an insecure, jealous little bitch, #4. It's almost like it's the theme of the episode!

Subtext: For all his faults, Micke's greatest fear is that Simon is going to go down the same path as him, become an alcoholic or a drug addict, which is why he's always asking if Simon is using himself, just like he asked about the booze for the initiation party.

Subtext: Alexander doesn't have a key, because he's not part of the Society. He's basically their errand boy, and I don't even know why he puts up with it. Come on Alexander, you can do so much better than hanging around these assholes! Be free!

Subtext: Be straight, have kids, keep the royal family going across the ages. No pressure, though!

Culture: Yeah, why isn't Nils here? In an earlier scene, August grabs Vincent while he's playing chess with Nils, and rudely excludes Nils. What was that about?

Oh, have I talked about nicknames yet? You have probably picked up that characters switch between using other character's real names and their nicknames. Everyone knows these nicknames, because they are formed according to rules. Generally, for male names, the name is phonetically simplified and gets an "e" at the end. So we get Wilhelm - Wille, Simon - Simme, Nils - Nisse, Mikael - Micke, Alexander - Alex, Per - Pelle, Kristian - Krille.

Culture: And here comes the explanation, Nils isn't noble, so he's excluded from this, even though he is a popular third-year student and best friends with Vincent and August. He has money, but no title, no land, no heritage; he's nouveau riche. If Forest Ridge is Slytherin in general, this is the secret muggle-hating pureblood deatheater cabal at the heart of it, and they don't accept just anyone with money.

Culture: Although being noble doesn't confer any government privileges any longer, their titles are historically protected by law. The nobility is linked to the royalty, because if the monarchy should fall, if the country abandons it, the country might also decide that nobility is bullshit as well, and remove the title protection. If everyone is noble, no-one is noble, and the members of this little club would get really sad.

Subtext: This is a bit of nice foreshadowing for the future plot, but they actually mean it. They're professing their loyalty to Wilhelm, because he's going to be the future king of Sweden, he's going to outrank them all one day, and being close to him is going to be valuable.

Culture: The king of Belgium is King Filip.

Subtext: This will pop up later, and it's equal parts jealousy, and equal parts the fact that August thinks he'd take it more seriously, that he'd do a better "job" of protecting the monarchy than Wilhelm. Meanwhile, Wilhelm didn't ask for this, he doesn't want the duty and the scrutiny, and would actually happily swap with August if he could.

Cinematography: Although Simon is looking straight at the camera here, he actually isn't breaking the fourth wall. We're simply seeing him from Wilhelm's perspective, just like we've seen him before when they kissed for the first time.

Subtext: The first thing Simon does is to check Wilhelm's pupils, and this tells us that this is something he's done before, probably when taking care of his dad. This scene also heartbreakingly mirrors the earlier scene with Simon and his dad with Simon coming to the rescue in both cases. He's given up on his dad, but he's clearly afraid that Wilhelm might go down the same path and that he's gonna have to rescue him again and again.

Subtext: This scene mirrors an earlier scene in the episode when Simon asks Wilhelm how he's doing just after Erik's memorial at school. Back then, Wilhelm is cold, lies that "he's ok", and breaks up with Simon. This time though, he says that "he's better", because he is with Simon, which is what he actually wanted the whole time.

Culture: Is August doing something illegal here? Yes! Is it because it's child pornography? No, because if it was, Netflix wouldn't be allowed to distribute the show! The reason this is illegal is because it's revenge porn, which was made illegal in Sweden as late as 2018. Only a few countries have made this illegal so far, because it used to be very difficult to produce. Now that everyone has a high-definition recording device in their pockets, it's easier to make, and therefore becomes a bigger problem in society.

#young royals #young royals subtext #young royals analysis

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