#stella young royals

[simon-eriksson]

Fredrika & Stella | 3.06

[raincitygirl76]

To be perfectly honest, I found 3.06 a bit of a letdown. All Wilhelm’s problems won’t magically disappear just because he’s abdicating. And I found Kristina’s acquiescence deeply implausible. If someone has acted one way for 17 episodes, it’s tough to believe they’re magically a reformed character in the eighteenth episode.

There were a lot of things I really liked about the episode, don’t get me wrong. But for me, the entire third season didn’t hang together the way the first two seasons did. This last episode felt like such an abrupt tonal transition from the darkness of 3.01 through 3.05.

I loved that the boys (and Sara and Felice) got a happy ending. But I was hoping for….more. This ending didn’t feel entirely earned to me. The first 5 episodes of the season dealt with the downward spiral so well, and then they tried to abruptly bring everything back up again in a single episode.

Apologies if I’m going against the general zeitgeist here. But at this point I’m simultaneously relieved my four faves all got a happy ending, and feeling let down. Because they patched everything up in the space of an hour, and it was a rush.

That said, there were things I thought were spot on. Sara and Felice were note perfect. Nils and Vincent being dismayed about August’s promotion to working royal was great. And Stella and Fredrika being sapphic, but still being classist, snobby bitches. Being queer doesn’t automatically turn someone into a nice person.

But in terms of the central pairing, I’m feeling a bit let down. Like they didn’t quite earn their happy ending and I’m not quite sure it’ll really stick in the long term.

[skateboardtotheheart]

in no particular order, here's a list of season 2 moments I am obsessed with

- "I got a haircut"

- Kristina going "okay???" when Wille talked about Simon being on a date

- Simon CHUCKING that dodgeball at Wille

- "he likes it when I sing" "and I don't????"

- every time Ayub or Rosh were on screen

- AYUB AND SIMON ARGUING OVER THE NAME ROSH'S EX

- Stella's poem

- Wilmon's relieved smiles when they kiss at the ball

- "... uh huh" when Wille finally gets it through his head that the song is about him

- once again,,, the dodgeball

- Wille going to therapy

- CLOSING THE CURTAINS CLOSING THE CURTAINS CLOSING THE CURTAINS

- the giggles immediately following

- THEY DON'T HAVE NAMES

- "did he just say he'd give up the crown for you?"

- SIMON TELLING WILLE HE WANTS TO BE WITH HIM

- I LOVE YOU

- the speech the speech the speech the speech the speech

- Boris' smug ass look when Wille broke from script

- any time Simon sings

- Simon and Wille finally understanding each other via an oral book presentation that lead to them essentially arguing the other's opinion on their own situation

- Simon stealing Wille's sweater

- Felice being the Most Supportive Bestie even when Wille was an asshole

there are more. but these ones just,,, yes

[young-royals-confessions]

Stella and Federika were always terrible people. It took the 3rd season to give us a clear view of their true colors . They are a watered down version of Vincent & Niels.

I bet Felice had to sit through plenty of tone deaf conversations with them.

[waltybrainrot]

first and last appearances

(i am so sorry madison but getting a flattering ss of the last scene was impossible)

(thanks for this idea @zee-has-commitment-issues)

[edibleapplesoap]

HELLO LGBTQ+ COMMUNITY

THE FACT WR GOT MORE GAY CHARACTERS LETS GO 😋

[yeebeemaxheehee]

young royals finale so good i cried for twenty minutes

[waiting-star]

ok but the way they foreshadowed roshella in s2..... 🍭

[zee-has-commitment-issues]

Thinking about how the biggest difference between Stella being nice to Rosh and Stella being mean to Rosh was the amount of alcohol she'd had.

[itzmoss]

i recently came back from a trip and i saw an interaction at a rest stop and it just stuck in my head cus it was soooo walty coded

basically as i was walking in, a group of friends were walking out

and two boys linked arms and started skipping together

and the girl behind them was just like “NO NO THEY ARE NOT WITH ME THRY ARE NOT WITH ME!”

it was so funny

but yes it was henry and walter and the girl was prolly stella lmaooo

[bluedalahorse]

Notes on Sara’s initiation costumes

I am allowing myself a few comments of meta before before I begin my Substantial Adulting Task Of The Day.

How we see a character at the beginning of a season and at the end of a season is so indicative of their arc. Costuming plays a role in this, and this morning I’m particularly interested in how it plays out with Sara.

In episode 2.1 of Young Royals, the Manor House girls initiate Sara into their circle. This initiation ceremony includes various costume items, all of which evoke with different archetypes and provide foreshadowing for the group’s eventual split. The girls cover Sara’s face with a witch mask, and have her wear an apron painted with a garishly bright and headless naked body, including prominent pillow breasts. For a portion of the initiation, Sara wears a princess’s tiara—something that is taken back by Fredrika, who anxiously explains about it being a family heirloom.

As we saw with Wilhelm’s initiation, and with initiations of this sort in real life, there is often a stage of the process that involves degradation or humiliation of the initiate before they are fully integrated into the community. The Manor House girls decide to degrade Sara with the breast-apron and the witch mask. Let’s unpack these symbols a little more. The nakedness of the apron speaks to with the idea of being exposed and vulnerable, but also—in this case—has connotations of sexuality and sexual awakening. It’s hard not to think of the way people cut teenage girls and adult women down by slut-shaming them. As for the witch, witches are folkloric outsiders. People of all genders in modern times have reclaimed the label of witch and found the empowering aspects of non-conformity, the same way Sara sometimes tries to empower herself by saying “I don’t need to fit in anyway” especially early on in the series. At the same time, we can’t ignore the way that historical accusations of witchcraft and witch trials have been used to push women out of their communities—especially older women, and women who were experiencing mental illness and neurodivergence. There’s a difference between claiming the role of the witch for oneself, and having it slapped on you as you’re forced out of the place you call home.

What about the tiara? The tiara of course invokes the archetype of the princess, and more broadly the idea of royal women. By joining Manor House, Sara has gotten a chance to “try on” royal status, but she doesn’t get to keep it. Fredrika taking the tiara back shows how quickly the can girls take back their welcoming of Sara, and how conscious they all are of Sara’s outsider status even when she’s passing her initiation with flying colors. (Lighting the banner on fire? Iconic.) I love how layered the symbolism of the tiara is, and how organically it fits into the Hillerska universe. It makes total literal sense that these landed rich kids would bring a family heirloom like that to school, use it for their teenage antics instead of like going to the drug store for bachelorette party supplies or whatever, and then get nervous about breaking it or getting it dirty during aforementioned teenage antics. And yet, the fact that this item has a history in Fredrika’s family shows that there’s a real system of power and wealth and lineage beyond the tiara—a system that works against girls like Sara.

Note that the tiara appears again in 2.5, when the girls are doing their TikTok video. The camera is panning across the dormitory wall when the voice on the video says “Who’s going to be the first to get married?” The camera lingers for a moment on a Polaroid of Sara during her initiation, where she’s wearing the breast-apron and the tiara together. This combination of power (tiara) and reproductive biology (apron) are a glaring reminder that the monarchy’s historic power has relied upon bloodlines to keep it going, and that they’ve used dynastic marriages to secure and maintain those bloodlines. This raises the question: does Sara reinforce that historical pattern with her gender in a way that Simon can’t, or disrupt it with her social class the same way her brother does? The camera cuts away from the photograph and over to the Manor House girls, who push Fredrika forward and she mimes showing off an engagement ring.

(Tangent: I keep wondering if Fredrika’s going to end up in a somewhat significant heterosexual relationship next season. I don’t see it taking over the plot but I can see it being used to develop themes.)

Let’s move ahead to the girls’ falling out and where Sara ends the season. Felice is upset with Sara in a fairly nuanced way; we know what she feels most betrayed by is Sara being in love with August when August did horrible crimes and Sara knew about it. Felice is trying to grapple with the complexity of Sara—she’s seen a side to her that she didn’t know about before and couldn’t have easily predicted. I think it’s fair to say that even if Felice is furious with Sara and feels deceived, she’s still seeing Sara as a human being. She’s just seeing a human being she doesn’t want to be friends with anymore.

Stella and Fredrika, meanwhile, don’t see Sara—they only see the initiation costume. Sara, the witch, is disloyal to Hillerska conformity and should be cast out. Sara, the blatantly naked girl, went and slept with a boy she shouldn’t have. I think it’s worth pointing out that while, yes, August did crimes and Sara knew that, Fredrika and Stella don’t know this part of the story. From their perspective, they are attacking Sara for… *checks notes*… hooking up with a guy that Felice dated last semester and never really cared about?  They’re mad with Sara for being so “naive” as to be “manipulated” by the school’s notorious player (even though Sara did a fair amount of initiating in the relationship and August was infinitely less harassment-inclined toward the other Hillerska girls in season 2?) While, in life, sometimes slut-shaming is really obvious, there are other times where it’s covered up by flimsy excuses. “I’m sex-positive, I just think in this case she should have…” Stella and Fredrika are not making the case for justice or accountability. Again, they don’t know what this has done to Sara’s relationships with Simon and Felice. They’re enjoying the opportunity to tear Sara down and reinforce the values of their insular, elitist community.

This is precisely what makes Stella and Fredrika so interesting to me. Until they clear the air about whatever’s going on between them (we know Stella has unrequited romantic love, but Fredrika’s romantic feelings are unconfirmed, and it’s clear they haven’t had a real conversation about it) they are inclined to lash out at authenticity in others. Their joking about the sex tape and surrogate mothers in 1.6 kinda happens along the same lines. Sara has the authenticity of the witch archetype and allows herself to be emotionally naked/vulnerable in that moment, holding true to her heart even when it’s weaponized against her. This is why her parting line to Stella and Fredrika, about how at least she can be honest about her own feelings, is so satisfying to me. YMMV, of course. But I think it says a lot about who Sara is and what she’s willing to own, even if she takes a while to process a deeply messy situation and let go of what she loves.

(This is also why Maddie can’t be present in the scene. Maddie is chaotically authentic and only follows Hillerska’s rules when she wants to. She’d be chiming in like, ok yeah he’s evil trash but he at least went down on you right?)

To wrap up, I want to address Sara’s final look of the series. The word that comes to mind when I think of her final outfit is “dislocated.” Sara’s left her riding pants behind on the dorm room bed—a symbol of breaking with her friends, and specifically the way they’ve weaponized their wealth against her. As she leaves Hillerska’s grounds with her rolling suitcase, she’s wearing her skirt and blouse, but not her blazer and tie. She’s still somewhat attached to the school, but not in the way where she’s wearing their logo anymore. She also wears her purple shirt, reminding us of Simon’s infamous purple clothing accents, and I think we’re supposed to see this as her thoughts being partially with her brother and the home she grew up in. While Sara begins the season in caught up in a jumble of archetypes, she ends the season in a different kind of liminal space: between two worlds, but not really anchored in either of them. This makes me wonder where Sara will end up in season 3 physically. We’ve all assumed she is going back to Linda, but it may be that she tries something really unexpected, like moving in with her dad or trying to make it on her own now that she’s eighteen. Both of those things make me worry for her.

Sara’s future home is another issue entirely, so I’ll bring this back around to character arcs. There’s themes going on in season 2 about how people can get pigeonholed into certain fairy tale archetypes, and a lot those themes get reinforced through costuming choices. At the end of the season, we’re being asked to see Sara as a person—her sparkle and flaws all as once, just as she is.

BONUS COSTUMING NOTE: did you notice that Sara is predominantly dressed in white during the Valentines ball scene, while Felice is predominantly dressed in black? Please note that this is the episode where August begins scheming again and in the episodes that follow we see him lurking around the chess board in the common room and talking to the other third years about how to win chess and stuff. My point is, FELICE AND SARA ARE THE CHESS QUEENS THIS SEASON. I THINK IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ON PURPOSE. I love the way this show makes me think!

[young-royals-confessions]

So my confession has nothing to do with Wilmon but I need to get it out my system: I'm very frustrated with people shipping Felice with Sara, or Madison with Rosh when we have an actual canon women loving character on the show, Stella! I never see anyone shipping her with anyone and I don't get it: the Felice/Sara ship will never be canon, but we have Stella who is a secondary character but might (hopefully) get some development! Where are the Stella/Rosh shippers? I don't know, it always fells weird to me how people in fandom are quick to ship straight women together and ignore the canon lesbian ones (I've seen the same happen in another fandom and I was still just as perplexed). It's silly I know, and I get that people are allowed to enjoy whatever ship but it's always rubbed me the wrong way to see so much "yay queer Felice" (when she has been nothing but straight in the show) but then nothing at all for an actual queer Stella. (Maybe I'm just following the wrong people though... Any Stella enthusiasts?)

[hillerska-official]

Fredricka: "they're like, sending hearts to each other on Instagram, the whole things really fuckin suspicious"

OKAY LETS SEE YOUR TEXT CHAINS WITH STELLA, THEN

[youweremyversaillesatnight]

okay listen i cannot get this thought out of my head so i’m just. putting it out there. stedrika but i’m a cheerleader

[insomnaticwilmon]

god I fucking love the YR side characters with a goddamn passion. Henry? Walter? Nils? Vincent? Stella? Fredrika? all having their own little character quirks? URGAH! give me more!