#and I don't capitalize royal titles unless it's in fic

[groenendaelfic]

While planning ALaWHEO I spent a lot of time thinking about how the Swedish royal family is celebrated and what that meant for Wilhelm growing up. Now with Erik Day I was reminded of this once again and thought to share some of my as always very lengthy and convoluted thoughts.

Irl Sweden celebrates the king's, the queen's and the crown princess' birthdays and name days as official flag flying days along with a number of events of varying magnitude. Military parades, awards, concerts, golf tournaments and the like. For special anniversaries those are even bigger and can span multiple days.

Irl the Swedish royal family is quite large. Growing up, the cp's younger siblings had both each other, as well as a slew of first cousins, most but not all of them quite a bit older, but still. There were always a lot of royals around. The current royal house has nine members, with only three being celebrated that way and the rest of the royal family being much larger.

I have little good to say about the monarchy as an institution and nothing which couldn't be just as well if not better done without it, but I am quite sure that the irl cp's second child is well loved and not made to feel like a spare, but being raised in the fold of the royal family in the knowledge that he is a member of the royal house just like his uncle and aunt, and not worth less than his older sister.

Young Royals' royal house is quite different. We don't know much about Wilhelm's grandfather and grandmother, but from what we see Kristina is well established in her role as queen so I dare guess that Wilhelm's grandfather died when Wilhelm was quite young and his grandmother probably as well if not sooner.

So at best the royal house had six members when Wilhelm was young, with no immediate other family members, but for the vast majority of his life, if not all of it, it was only four. The queen, her consort, the crown prince and Wilhelm.

So three people to be celebrated and a spare.

Maybe sometimes young Wilhelm was glad he didn't have to spend part of his birthday or name day watching military parades and doing walkabouts, and maybe he didn't want events and awards and places named after him, but Erik got all of that. And not just twice a year.

He also got all the attention (unless Wilhelm caused trouble), both the good and the bad kind, from the public and their parents, and the expectations of Erik were higher, but Wilhelm was always and forever reminded that he is less, that everyone in the family/house matters more than him, and it was only him, no other siblings or cousins or aunts and uncles. I'm honestly amazed Wilhelm didn't cause a lot more (and worse!) trouble than he did before he was sent to Hillerska.

August is a second cousin, he doesn't count in any of that. He knew it, too, hence his surprise when the royal court tells him he could be (trained as) a (potential) successor.

Kristina and Ludvig aren't the most warmhearted of parents. They probably neither explained or prepared Wilhelm for any of this properly, nor do I see them throwing Wilhelm a heartfelt private birthday party fit for a child or making sure to show him that he is just as loved and cherished as Erik is.

So Wilhelm spent most of his life watching his parents and brother be celebrated by (as far as he could tell) all of Sweden, while he was the spare who was an afterthought at best, only noticed when he broke the rules, with no one else sharing his position on the sidelines.

That would fuck anyone up, no matter how they might otherwise feel about the constant public attention, but especially a child.

Then Erik dies. We don't know when anyone's birthday is, but we do know their name days thanks to the official list from the Swedish Academy. (Kristina July 24, Ludvig Oct 2, Erik May 18) None of them fall in the s1 and 2 timeline (maaaaybe Ludvig at the very beginning?).

Wilhelm's is on April 6, I'm sure we would have heard had Wilhelm (or Simon!) had a birthday, so that will be the first time in Wilhelm's life when there will be official public celebrations of this kind for him. Or rather The Crown Prince who now happens to be Wilhelm. And it will be The Crown Prince and not Crown Prince Wilhelm more often than not. The Crown Prince who used to be Erik, because Erik had to die for Wilhelm to be of any use or worth officially celebrating.

Throughout YR Wilhelm has started coming into his own, but I doubt he doesn't still first think of Erik whenever he hears the words The Crown Prince, especially when he's not directly being addressed.

I'd guess (although that's all it is, a guess) that at least the Erik Award for Sportsperson of the Year will not be renamed. It probably would have been had Erik not died so young and tragically, but I'd like to think they'd keep the name in his honor and create a new one in Wilhelm's name.

Everything else though? Concert, tournaments, races, random smaller events all over the country? Name and date change. There might be memorial concerts etc for Erik, but those will be something different entirely, something new. Wilhelm is replacing Erik, in everything, and Kristina and the royal court are pragmatic if anything.

In Erik Day I made the specific choice for everyone to move on, almost immediately, at least outwardly so. I'm sure Kristina and Ludvig still grieve, but they do so in private. I might be wrong, but I don't see them making grand gestures or having many memorial events.

I'm sure people are sad Erik died and think it's tragic, sympathy for the royal family will have risen in the aftermath of his death, but Erik was no Diana, and I'm quite sure most people spared his death little thought post funeral. So there's a new cp, so what? It changes little for the average Swede, and certainly not years later. They will have forgotten the date of Erik's birthday or name day, and only remember if reminded. (especially in an AU where Wilmon only meet years later)

[mstrchu]

Ok so do you know the White Horse the Tang Sanzang ride on from Journey to the West? He's exactly called The White Dragon Horse (hope I got that right). Why is there the word "Dragon" in the title?

Well that's because his true title and real name are the West Sea Third Prince Ao Lie, yes he's Ao Bing's Cousin,yes he's a dragon prince of the sea royal family and he can transform into a horse apparently

This is uncertain due to many versions but yeah that's the gist of it

Also Ao Lie is literally the White Horse Prince OMG-

I wonder if we would see him in New Gods Nezha Reborn though

Another thing: Wonder how the rest of the sea dragon family in the last three directions thought about East Sea Dragon King being this evil CEO guy lol. That man has many versions and in Nezha Reborn, he's the worst I've seen so far

pre-emptive apologies for this rambling ☠️ i sincerely hope i dont come off as like. utterly insufferable

i know of ao lie! honestly props to him for being so cool about being a horse 95% of the time because if i went from being a dragon to being an animal that couldn't lie on its side for more than like 45 minutes without suffocating i would not have handled it as graciously as he did. also if we had a nickel for every time a dragon king's third prince that's commonly depicted as a white/silver dragon befell some disaster or disgrace we would have 2 nickels. which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice..

i'm also not sure if the dragon kings are brothers in the regular sense or just brothers in the way that they all sort of belong to the same.. clan (? for a lack of a better word) but it is funny to think of ao lie and ao bing as cousins svdsjkndv especially since ao bing would have died before the events of jttw but in more recent adaptations if ao bing survived (a la 2019) or came back (a la 2021) i think it would open a door of very funny possibilities.. i think i've read a few nzr fics where it's kind of a touchy subject for ao bing bc ao run will not stop bragging about his son at family gatherings ☠️

unless he pulled a sun wukong, i don't think we'll be seeing ao lie in new gods :( but i would love to be wrong..

(on a side note, if they're going to be featuring more people from fsyy, i would love to see their take on huang tianhua, leizhen zi, ji fa, and jiang ziya ;-;)

based on ao guang's menacing monologue to ao bing (lol) the dragon kings seem to have a somewhat tense relationship with a lot of past baggage, but it's not so bad that they didn't put it aside to help ao guang get revenge on nezha 3000 years ago ovo i've also been assuming that the other 3 families mentioned in nezha reborn (li/shun/song) belong to the other 3 dragon kings, and if so then ao bing and the yecha's comments about them when they first appear makes it sound like they've all got a really intense rivalry going on about control over their cities which makes me think the other 3 ALSO have CEO mob boss vibes?! but they don't have the same resources or the iron-grip control that ao guang has, and so ao guang is still the Big Boss in the family.. so i guess i would say that their thoughts are that they wish they could do it like him!!

what i would also love to know is what ao jia and ao yi and/or other siblings have been doing this whole time or at least what the public thinks they've been doing?? ao bing is publicly acknowledged in "modern day" donghai as the san gongzi so.. there has to be at least 2 other older gongzis out there... maybe kasha knows what the goss is..

also ur so right. 1979 ao guang may have been eating children but 2021 ao guang invented capitalism which is way worse 😔

holy shit sorry circling back to ao lie again he's kind of funky isn't he!! i don't know jttw as well, only from like cultural/childhood stuff, but iirc he did turn back into his human and dragon forms a few times when he felt like he needed to, which kind of makes it seem like he could have done that at any time and he was just. choosing to be a horse. which is dalfkdnvlknva because i feel there were quite a few times in jttw where it would have been helpful for him to be a dragon and/or person instead of a horse. also the song about him slaps.