#systemic racism young royals

[raincitygirl76]

Excellent, thoughtful review, but chock full of spoilers for all of Season 3 of YR.

[ripplestitchskein]

So if Better Than Blitz guy is Stolas’s drunken teen hookup whose name you don’t learn or remember it makes me wonder if Vassago is part of his young adult/college/entering the workforce “I’m discovering other people and experiences” phase of development where he learns about things like microaggressions and systemic racism. Bonus points if we check the “You’re actually the perfect guy but I have no passion for you like I do my fucked up mess of a gremlin ex I’ve been pining over the whole time” box of romance tropes.

I’m just so curious what will be the catalyst for Stolas’s turn at the self actualization rodeo.

He’s so oblivious to his effect on others I believe he’ll need an example of his behavior now that Blitz pointed it out to him so frankly. Is Vassago the character who provides it potentially? A sweet, well meaning royal who Stolas finds a kinship with, who also treats imps in this way without thinking about it? The only other royals we’ve met are Stella, Paimon and Andrelphus so he will assume any ill treatment from them towards imps is due to them being awful in general, but seeing a fellow royal, who is similar to him, do the same small things without malice after it’s been pointed out to him might make him see it in a new way.

Like it would also be super funny if his outfit change to cozy sweater and slacks is a combo of divorced dad energy and also “Trust Fund Kid At A Liberal Arts College Vibez”. Him and Vassago smoking badly rolled joints in his new single dad apartment in a recently gentrified part of Imp City, reading aloud from Upton Sinclair and something like “How to Be Anti-Impist” while Vassago workshops lo-fi synth beats on his keyboard.

[queenvhagar]

Can I get your personal thoughts and feelings about Criston Cole. I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about him.

My personal background is in sociology, so I'm really interested in social stratification and how different groups in society interact, as well as how intersectionality comes into play in societies. This comes into play for my media interests in that I find shows that explore sociopolitical issues to be most compelling to me personally. A side note is that I also studied medieval French society and concepts of chivalry and courtly love, so this also informs my perspective on how I view stories in medieval contexts.

Fire and Blood explores the history of the society in Westeros and tells stories of wide-scale societal conflict that impacts people of various social backgrounds. In this society, people are stratified by race, class, socioeconomic status, gender, ability, and more. When it comes to the adaptation House of the Dragon, one of my major gripes is that it's only interested in looking at one of these aspects of stratification, gender, and examining it on its own without regard to its intersection with race, class, socioeconomic status, ability, and other social markers that exist in this world. The show wants to explore sexism, but it does so in a vacuum without meaningfully and realistically taking into account how classism, racism, ableism, and other systems of power interact with and exist at the same time as sexism. The way the show handles the character of Criston Cole is a good example of how they fail to fully explore these aspects of world building.

Criston Cole is Dornish in a medieval, feudalist monarchy where Dornish people are looked down upon and discriminated against. He is lowborn in a society that values highborn people and royalty above all else. As he is not born to an important family, he lacks resources like money and land that could allow him social mobility. However, he does have skill at being a knight, a role highly mythologized, idealized, and romanticized in medieval contexts. Knights operate with honor and abide by a code of chivalry, and it is viewed as a noble and honest pursuit and means of living that any boy in that world could dream of embodying. It is Criston's skill with the blade and other knightly abilities that allows him to pursue this role and begin to rise in status and achieve upward mobility.

At the tourney for the heir that Viserys throws in anticipation for Aemma's birth of a son, Criston stands out due to his skill and due to him surpassing expectations of a Dornish lowborn man at a royal tourney. His performance and appearance lead him to be selected by the princess for Kingsguard, the highest position a knight could rise to in this society. Now, Criston finds himself as the highest of knights in service to the realm and particularly the royal family who rules it, the members of which who stand at the top of social hierarchies in this society: Valyrian race, royal blood, immense riches, power, and privileges available to them. And, of course, access to dragons, the ultimate weapons and safeguards of power in this world.

As Criston says himself, his position as Kingsguard is something he worked for his whole life and it's all he really has to his name and legacy, due to his birth and his family's position in this world. As a Kingsguard, at least early on, he takes his vows seriously and performs the job as he thinks an ideal knight would.

One night, the princess, the who promoted him to Kingsguard in the first place, reveals her attraction to him and pressures him to break his vow, and she does not accept multiple refusals as an answer. He implicitly cannot refuse her request, as she holds authority over him. Despite the fact that, yes, she is a young woman of 18 and he is a young man in his early twenties, it stands that she still holds an exceptionally higher amount of power than he does: she is a Targaryen, of the blood of Old Valyria, a dragon riding princess, daughter of the king, and heir to the throne that grants the best absolute power her father holds, while he is a knight from a lowborn family of Dornish background. In this instance, on a whim, the princess knowingly or unknowingly uses her power to take sex from him without considering what might happen to him as a result. The consequences of this event are potentially severe for him while relatively minimal for her. As it stands, if anyone found out, the consequence for him is to be slowly tortured to death. For the princess, if anyone found out, there is ultimately protection from the king. Criston would die an agonizing death, but at the very worst, she is disinherited, but only if her father wishes it (and she still retains her name and her dragon to help her survive in the world). Following this event, the princess tells him that she expects him to be fine with being used for sex whenever she wants, despite the severe risks to safety and well-being this poses to especially him.

Criston becomes disillusioned with the world he knew. He did everything he was supposed to do - endeavor to improve his position in the world through the righteous means of being a knight - yet now, everything he worked for is potentially crumbling before him. He tries to rationalize her decision to take advantage of him - maybe she truly loves him and that is why she would not accept his refusal? But the reality is that she views him as a plaything. His whole life of work to achieve upward mobility and make a name for himself in the world, and on account of his race, class background, and relative position of powerlessness, he is simply used and treated like an object by royalty. What purpose does he truly serve, if it is not to be a sworn knight abiding his vows and serving the realm and the royal family? Criston's grasp on his identity and purpose waver. When interviewed by the queen, he confesses his guilt and asks for a quick death. He accepts that his life may be over and that everything he suffered through in his life meant nothing. At the princess's wedding, he is threatened by someone he perceives as attempting to expose what happened, which would result in a torturous death. He snaps, killing the man to silence him. Having taken this life, resigned to death himself, he retreats to the weirwood to commit suicide. But it is there that the queen appears to stop him, and in Alicent, he finds a renewed sense of identity and purpose. In Alicent, he can relate to being thoughtlessly used by members of the royal family. In Alicent, he can believe once again in the idea of being a knight serving a queen who saved his life when it would have been easier for her not to. In Alicent, and in her children, Criston renews his identity in knighthood and his purpose in protecting the royal family. This time, though, these royals are not just using him without consideration and will not take him and his sacrifices for granted. Criston once again buys into the mythologizing of knighthood and royalty, which gives him identity and purpose in the world once more.

At this point, I'll address that many viewers and readers see his dislike of Rhaenyra as evidence of him being a uniquely misogynist man in this world where gender is heavily stratified. While sexism does exist at large in this society, there is only evidence of Criston disliking one single woman who used him and then discarded him at great risk and harm to him personally. In this regard, him hating Rhaenyra is logical given their past. He does not seem to be more exceptionally sexist than any other character in this story, yet fans focus in on him in particular for this. The "why" of it all likely has to do with the framing of the show: the writers emphasize the perspective of the royals and those with the most power in this world, and from their perspective, anyone in proximity to these royals should be grateful for it, despite anything that happens, because they are the sympathetic main characters. This is especially true for someone like Criston who apparently should be happy that despite his low birth and inferior (in this world) racial identity, the princess still offered to have sex with him and this is the best thing he could hope to ever achieve in his life. Once again, the show hyper focuses on sexism in Westeros but does not explore other systems of power that exist in the world and/or their relations to one another and the result is a skewed view of how the world really functions and who actual holds power relative to who. This, combined with the shows insertion of certain 21st century politics into aspects of the show when realistically no such things existed in historical or fictional medieval feudalist monarchies, results in fans insisting Criston is an incel, showing fundamental misunderstanding of the world of Westeros and also apparently the term incel itself, as Criston is tied for the character with the most sex scenes so far at 3 separate scenes so clearly he is not involuntarily celibate.

Post time skip, decades pass and Criston continues to fulfill his roles as knight and protector of the royal family until finally the day comes when the king dies. Then, he works with the Green Council to take action to protect his faction of the royal family from the perceived threat of the other and becomes "Kingmaker" by personally crowning Aegon. Following the murder of Jaehaerys by Daemon and Rhaenyra in retaliation for the death of Lucerys, he advocates for stronger, strategic military action in the then inevitable war while Otto Hightower insists on sending more ravens. This results in Aegon making him Hand of the King instead. His plan with Aegon and Aemond to trap one of the Black's dragons allows the Greens to take Meleys out, but it also allows for Aegon to become injured and bedridden, necessitating that Aemond take over in his stead as Prince Regent and Protector of the Realm.

As for season 2 additions and changes from the source material, I always saw Criston's relationship with Alicent as one of courtly love, and so far in the show the motivations of each character regarding a sexual relationship have been confusing at best. How did it even start? When? What does it mean for their long term relationship and how it's grown? How does it impact each participant's view on the world and knighthood and royalty and honor and loyalty? The show seems to not care to explore any of this beyond trying to paint the two in a bad light. I could maybe buy a sexual relationship if it was well-developed, but there was basically no set up or narrative reason for its addition beyond making the characters look worse and deflecting blame from Blood and Cheese onto them. In the case of a developed romance or sexual relationship, I would say that Criston's relationship with Alicent has grown for over a decade into one of loyalty and trust, and a physical relationship might come from that once the king died, although some amount of moral conflict would likely still occur for each character.

As for the plan at Rook's Rest, it doesn't make much sense for Aegon to be left out of the loop, just as it doesn't make sense for Aemond to willingly sabotage his own side of the war by taking out Aegon and his dragon, especially over something like bullying when the stakes are so much higher than that at this point. If anything, the animosity between the brothers should be about how Aemond's actions indirectly lead to the death of Aegon's son (if the writers allowed Blood and Cheese to have any major impact on the story, but their goals are instead to minimize Team Black's involvement and lessen Team Green's reaction to it, so it remains obscured and in the background).

In general, I might be interested in the writers potentially wanting to explore in season 2 Criston's relationship with his vows and honor and even showing some hypocrisy while highlighting the conflict between his righteous ideals and less than righteous means of accomplishing his goals. However, it's clear that their intent with Criston and Team Green is to point fingers and label them as dysfunctional, morally reprehensible villains in contrast to a righteous Team Black and that's all they're interested in. There is no meaningful exploration of character or growth to be expected from Criston Cole. Unfortunately fan vitriol will continue to focus on Criston above other members of Team Green for the reasons listed above, and the writing will likely only continue to add to that.

[rijl]

My most passionately-held controversial Young Royals take: Wille should absolutely abdicate the throne. (Season 2 spoilers ahead.)

"But Wille would make a good king!" There are no good cops, there are no good US presidents, there are no good kings. Monarchies are inherently unjust. The whole foundation of a monarchy is the idea that one family deserves exorbitant wealth and status at the expense of the majority just because they had the luck to be descended from some guys who probably killed and maneuvered their way into power and control. Monarchies are about the powerful dominating and exploiting the masses, and especially the already-oppressed. The writing of Young Royals isn't shy about showing how inhumane the monarchy is, and how holding power does not mean you deserve it. ALSO Wille doesn't want to be king!! He doesn't want that power, responsibility, or exposure, and he's likely becoming skeptical of the legitimacy of monarchy in general. Also "don't let Erik down" is just not a good reason, it doesn't make any sense. (Ok, the only scenario where he should be come king is if he plans to abolish the monarchy immediately afterward.)

"But then August would be king!" Well, ideally, Wille's abdication would result in a crisis that would lead to the end of the monarchy. But even if August did become king, maybe he and the monarchy deserve each other! They're both toxic. If the pressure of being prefect was tearing him up, just wait til he's king. It's not the ethical conundrum that it would be if the monarch of Sweden had any actual political power.

"But it would be cool/historical/good representation to have a queer king and prince consort." No, it wouldn't. It would be cool to have a queer couple cause the end of the monarchy. The systems of domination and exploitation that legitimize monarchies are the same ones that underlie sexism, racism, and yes, homophobia. Letting a queer person be in charge of the exploitation machine isn't justice. Ending the exploitation machine is justice. (This is also why discussions of whether Kristina is homophobic just run in circles-- her individual sympathies or lack thereof don't matter because her loyalty is to an institution that is inherently unjust and incompatible with queer liberation.) Also, Simon would never ever want to be a prince consort or involved in the monarchy in general! Lol! I think that's the clearest part of all this.

Again, I think the show is very clear about being anti-monarchy. It's critical of Sweden's class structure, and the monarchy is the pinnacle of that structure. The "welfare fraud vs. tax evasion" discussion shows the entitled and inhumane mindset of the wealthy students. The very creepy Society shows that the monarchy and the 1% are in a symbiotic relationship with the shared goal of keeping status and wealth in the hands of a few noble (i.e. been around for a long time i.e. white) families.

I do get the affinity for the Cinderella story happy ending idea! It's a compelling fairytale. And that's part of what fanfic is for. But as @communityradiointerndanielle put it: Young Royals and Red, White & Royal Blue have similarities and understandable fandom overlap, but the difference is: RWRB paints liberal aesthetics over the unjust institutions to let progressive-minded people enjoy the Cinderella fantasy without feeling guilty. Young Royals is a cautionary tale about why you don't actually want the Cinderella fantasy.

(This post brought to you by a recent poll where ~75% said Wille should not abdicate. Thankfully a few people including @tooindecisivetopickaurl, @antigorite, @emberc, eloquently disagreed or qualified this in the RBs!)

[jingerpi]

Its honestly very concerning how popular ContraPoints video on "Transtrenders" was. I want to make a post discecting it briefly because I feel the video does a disservice to young trans folk looking to learn, instead leaving them feeling unjustified in their indentitiy under the guise of some radical acceptance One of the main issues with the video as a whole is how natalie breaks down existing understandings of trans medicine as a tool to try and unseat transmedicalist talking points, and show how being trans is about personal experience and "feelings". While its important to critique transmedicalists, what she does here is undermine what many people see as the best justification for trans existence without replacing it with anything. She does this in my opinion, because she honestly doesn't have anything to replace it with, and doesn't understand the real basis for gender in the world. Saying this is all well and good, I can critique anyone for not giving good basis for thing but its no help if i don't give anything of substance to back it up either, so heres a brief explanation of why transphobia is a problem, based in actual socio-political analysis.

Patriarchy is an economic structure which has been built up across centuries of accumulated surplus value which was passed down through the eldest son of the ruling class. this is a vast over simplification, but functionally this means there are systems in place in society which privilege men, give them access to more wealth, better positions, and control over non-men. Patriarchy has grown and changed over time and held different shapes depending on the society, we no longer have eldest sons inheriting royal rule (in most places), but we continue to have men as the group with the most economic and social agency in our societies. This privilege that Patriarchs have is constituted not of some magical benefits bestowed upon them from an abstract "system" but are instead taken directly from those who are not men. More specifically, men and Patriarchs take labor and resources from those whom patriarchy considers "non-men". Reproductive labor goes unpaid, women are under privileged in political society, we often don't get choices over our bodies. This isn't merely a coincidence, but serves specifically to give men power and confer more benefits onto them. Because of this, there must be systems in place to manage who is let into the patriarchy, who can be a Patriarch.

The most universal way of doing this is by deciding whether or not someone is a man and conferring onto them certain benefits as long as they uphold this structure, and ostracizing them if they are not. They do this ostracization because if this structure is not upheld artificially through oppression of women and bullying of nonconforming men to keep the categories of man and woman or even man and non-man distinct, the privilege given to the in-group starts to fade. In the same way that "White" is an artificial construct created and upheld to facilitate racism like slavery, imperialism, housing discrimination, and unpaid labor, so too is "manhood" and "womanhood". These constructs appear to be based in existing biology, so they often go without question, but race is also based on such "biology" and that does not mean its a founded construct. The basis for both "race" and "gender" break down once you look at higher level understandings of these concepts. Not all people with xy chromosomes are men, not all people of African decent have black skin, etc etc... I could go on about the "exceptions" for quite some time but you likely know many of them already. These are categories created fundamentally to give one specific category an economic advantage and justify their oppression of those who are outside of said category. The reason we need to respect trans-ness isn't because there is something inherently justified about being transgender, nor because we just have to be really nice to everyone and treat their feelings as absolute truths. Its because the systems which confine us and define gender so rigidly exist purely to oppress and extract value from others. These borders are deeply unjustified and we need to tear them away. We do not need to justify existing outside of the borders, but instead challenge the borders in the first place. Contrapoints fails to meaningfully do this Natalie focuses almost entirely on the arguments surrounding justifications for transness and gives little thought to the justifications for patriarchy. It is treated as a default, always existing, status quo that is unquestionable. It makes me wonder how aware of it she really is, she seems to get stuck in justifying her own existence. the "Transtrenders" video focuses on a discussion between several characters where the primary issue at hand is how to justify being trans, should it be done through medicial, scientific frameworks? or should it be done from a kind and accepting view of others? She makes arguments against the former for being flawed and the latter for being unfounded, but she never actually replaces it with any critique of society, instead saying: "Okay, so what am I supposed to tell Jackie Jackson then? What am I supposed to tell the TERFs? That I'm a woman because reasons?"

"No, not even because reasons. Just because you are."

"So it's what, a leap of faith? Oh great. I'm sure that's gonna convince all the rational skeptics. Justine, it makes us sound completely delusional."

"Well Tiffany, delusion is what separates us from the animals." Which is an extremely unhelpful answer to give after tearing down what is to many, a key aspect in their reasoning for why they are justified in their identities, and while it is partially correct that trying to use one of the specific theories she outlined earlier to justify trans existence is an exercise in futility, she can't seemingly offer any alternative than some kind of "because I said so" when there ARE very good reasons to be in favor of trans acceptance, and historical reasons for our existence. In failing to do so she misleads perhaps an entire generation of trans people into thinking theres no real justification for their existence

The justification comes from understanding that the premise is false, that the forces which try to bind people to a specific societal gender role are themselves the issue.

She tries to point out that we dont need to justify transgender existence because the frameworks which hold us to cisgender existence are the real problem, but without ever talking about these cisgender standards in an actually meaningful way, instead talking abstactly about societies "expectations" or whatnot, where she should could be attacking the real economic forces of patriarchy. She should be tearing down patriarchy first and then using that to liberate trans existence but instead she tears down trans existence without touching patriarchy or any of the coercion or exploitation that arise from it. I consider this a great tragedy, and a prime example of her failures as an educator.

[bluedalahorse]

Hi! I hope everyone is doing well. I am popping up to let you know that I’m alive, that there’s a lot going on, that I still love YR, and that I’m thinking about boundaries and priorities.

I loved Young Royals season three. I especially love how it engaged with the legacy of Erik and the systems of Hillerska. I love that it took the idea of the legal system providing catharsis and that it threw that out the window. I love the way characters got words for what they were going through, how Felice got to name the racism happening to her and August got words to name his disordered eating. Most of all I loved the way Lisa wrote Sara’s relationship with her father and her reconciliation with Simon. That meant so much to me, and I can’t wait to imagine a future for the Eriksson siblings.

Here is a brief list of things I loved about the finale. They were all written in the afterglow of seeing the episode. I stand by them. Especially how much I loved Wille’s ending, and what happened there.

In the coming weeks, I’m sure there’ll be stuff I’m more critical of or don’t feel as strongly about. I especially have mixed feelings about the way Lisa seemed to structure 3.5 in a way that mimics the emotional roller coaster of trauma. I’m not really focusing on that stuff here or now, because I don’t want to. But it’s on my mind, and I don’t know if I’ll end up posting about it here and elsewhere.

At present this post isn’t rebloggable or tagged with much of anything. That’s because I’m trying to figure out the best way moving forward with tumblr. I don’t know if I want to delete this blog and abandon it entirely, but the pressure to present a curated version of myself is too much, and is a pretty big trigger for things like rejection sensitivity and anxiety. The pace here is also too fast and there is no way to keep up with everything, and (forgive me for this cardinal sin in tumblr-land) I wish I had some easier way to not see the same sets of gifs a hundred times with the same commentary. I’m experimenting with slower ways of doing fandom, where I can enjoy myself more.

I do, however, want a way to get the cultural footnotes for Young Royals, especially when they help me write better fic and create better fanworks. I know there’s some pretty darn useful posts about how lines get translated and various holidays and traditions (and looking forward I would like to know more about universities in Sweden, and how the monarchy works and such.) So I want to be able to find the stuff I need without having to spend as much time on what I don’t need. The resource posts people make are truly helpful.

And I also have some other fannish things I want to see here, like Les Mis and Interview with the Vampire. And the memes are nice. I miss the memes.

Before I make the decision about how I engage, I think it will be useful for me to know my priorities. So I’ve thought about them a bit, and I want to make the decisions that align with my priorities. Here’s what I want to focus on moving forward:

I want to spend more time creating. The thing that has always brought me the most genuine joy in this fandom is writing fic. YRS3 ended in a place of possibility for so many characters, and I want to keep writing about them and learning about them that way. (I won’t even lie, of course most of my ideas are about August—August and Kristina working on their intergenerational cousin relationship, August getting pulled into weekly DND sessions with Wille and Simon so they can all get better at being human together while pretending to be elves or something, August doing the personal and liberatory work that allows him and Sara to one day have a Second Chance Romance with they’re older, even August/Nils because oh boy did that season give me ideas about them I never knew I had.) One of my goals is to cut down on browsing time significantly so that I spend more time writing, especially so I can finish Heart and Homeland. I think it’ll make me happier.

I want to spend more time helping others create. Some of the most meaningful experiences I had in this fandom involved being a beta reader or hearing out another person’s fic ideas, and getting to live in that space of creation and collaboration. For that reason, I’d like to still make new YR connections on occasion, especially with people who wanna share their writing process with me. Tumblr may or may not be a place to do that. I’m still figuring out where stuff should happen.

I want analysis to be something I do as part of my creative process, and that’s it. I don’t know if this is fully true, but it felt like ten years ago there was more fandom meta focused on what fans wanted to write in their fanfics, and how their interpretations of canon led to them creating cool art. There was some meta that was about how to interpret canon “correctly” but that wasn’t the priority. Now, it feels like—and this is true even outside of YR fandom, so this is no reflection on YR specifically—there is more emphasis on having the “correct” interpretation of canon. About getting it right, and having the right predictions and interpretations. It feels competitive in a way that wears me down. From this point forward, when posting analysis, I’m going to ask myself, is this furthering my creative pursuits and my understanding of the writing process more generally, or am I just trying to win an argument? If the answer is just to win, then I’m not going to post my argument. That runs counter to my goals.

I don’t want to engage in any space where anonymous discourse flourishes. Even when well-intentioned. Being away for a while was clarifying for me on that point. Turns out one of the biggest triggers for my anxiety and shame are extensive, heated conversations where I don’t know who is saying what and who I can trust. Spaces where there’s a lot of anon conversation are probably going to be ones I block and unfollow first moving forward. It just seems like a good baseline for how I engage.

So this is where I am as of now. I’ll probably continue to hold off on doing much posting in the coming days, but I did want to poke my head up for air for a second to let people know what the state of everything is.

Here’s one picture of the plushes for the road:

And here’s a picture of the waffles I ate on finale day:

Oh, to have cloudberry jam and time spent with friends. These things are truly joyous.

[hvenart]

Since Young Royals is over I wanted to take a look at some characters and kinda explain how I interpret them as people. (this is hella long but I’m mostly praising the show and how they handled things cus I’m an optimistic girl who loves life)

First of all you have the students of Hillerska. Hated them.

Genuinely cannot stand most of them and I gotta be honest, I was cheering for the school to close down. The toxicity and pure classism that radiates of that school is sickening but I’m afraid not unrealistic. As Willhelm said it’s in the walls of that place, it’s impossible to get it out. Everyone in Hillerska loves to pretend everything is fine. As Wilhelm said EVERYONE IS FAKE. Not just Hillerska but the monarchy and that entire system is too. While there are most likely very close friendships in the school it seems like nobody really knows or tries to understand each other. They refuse to acknowledge the fundamental problems of the school and instead party and just see the school closing as a sad thing.

Vincent is a perfect example of that. I love how they showed that queerness never was a problem for him. Vincent was fine with Nils being queer cus it doesn’t directly effect the system. Simon being a socialist who can possibly talk about the issues of the school was. I also think that he sees August purely as his role. He sees him as a party animal and having connections to the royal family. That’s the role he fulfills so he’s confused as to why he wants to be more than that because position wise he’s in a perfect situation. Him not knowing what August wants as a person and not knowing his best friend was queer just shows to me how little they know each other. How superficial their friendship is.

Nils is interesting. He’s queer and him being a person of Color all give him an interesting position in the whole system. He probably has a little more empathy and is a little less out of touch than his friends (ex. he is the first person to talk about how fucked up their initiation was) but he chooses to ignore it. I think that for him the pros outweigh the cons because at the end of the day he’s still rich and at the top of the foodchain at hillerska so it makes sense that he has no desire to change anything. Which brings me to why I LOVE felice.

Felice is by far my favourite character (Simon is a close second). She very much could turn a blind eye to everything and be like everyone else but she doesn’t want to anymore. I think being a black girl in Hillerska gave her more sympathy and understanding of the problems but I think even then she could’ve dealt with it like Nils because lets be honest racism is everywhere. But she realises if it’s already this bad for her she can’t imagine how it is for the people of the lower class. It made her see how fucked the hierarchy is and realise how deep it is engraved in the school. She realises that not even her best friends want to truly understand her struggles because it’s awkward for them (I said in another post her friends weren’t as bad as Vincent but honestly they’re just as bad). That realisation made her not wanna go to New York. She doesn’t wanna ignore her problems like everyone else but face them head on and goes to Sara. The one person who at the end wasn’t fake to her.

Im absolutely in love with Sara and Felice’s relationship. They kinda parallel Simon and Wilhelm in a way because Sara was the first truly honest person in Felice’s life just like Simon was to Willhelm although Felice and Sara are the platonic version of that (and while I loved that it portrayed the importance of friendship, my lesbian ass was really wishing they would’ve kissed like the TENSION but that’s just me). I also think that’s why the betrayal of her with August was so painful. She couldn’t care less about August, she cared about the fact that the one person she thought she always could rely on did that to her.

I also loved Sara this season. She’s a very flawed person yes but you could always tell her apologies were sincere. You could tell she had strong feelings for August but she was able to put Felice’s, Simon’s and most importantly her own feelings first. I was really scared they were gonna make her and August get back together in the end (especially with the conversation about giving people second chances in reference to her dad being also possibly about August) but they made sure to stick with her character development.

That brings me to August. He’s a really interesting character to me and I never know how to feel about him. He has done some horrible shit and at first I wanted him to suffer or do something big to try to make things right and I didn’t like how he never truly got his karma but I like how open they left his character. He obviously has some issues (eating disorder, trauma from his initiation,…) but he doesn’t ever delve deeper into them. He acknowledges the things he does and is obviously very sorry but just like the rest of the people in Hillerska and the Monarchy he ignores the causes of it. He never acknowledges his eating disorder. He’s probably aware that he has a problem (cus Simon pointed it out) but ignores it. He ignores the reasoning Sara gives for them not working out and gives her solutions that in the grand scheme will not change things. He still has huge respect for Eric despite what he did to him and the fact that it clearly left lasting traumas and just brushes it off. He longs for the Crown Prince role not even thinking about the harm that it can cause him. I said that he didn’t get karma but that’s not true. I think that the Crown Prince title is a curse and even if Wilhelm didn’t mean it that way, I think he got his final karma at the end by passing that curse down to him.

I love how they handled Wilhelm and Simon. Wilhelm had just like the rest of Hillerska and the monarchy the tendency to ignore things. Simon was the one who had to give him a wake up call and break things off. Simon forced him to face reality. He didn’t understand why Simon saw the title of Crown Prince as such a curse. Everyone ( ex. His mother) around him kept saying how much of a privilege it was that he never took a step back to question if it really was such an honour. His mothers words were so deeply engraved into him that it took him a while to finally be able to hear Simon. Simon wasn’t the reason why he didn’t want to be the Crown Prince, he just made him realise he never wanted any of this in the first place. It was never about Simon it was the fact that Wilhelm as a person was never really for the Monarchy. He loves his mother and the connection to his brother but he finally was able to let it go. He knows his brother still would’ve loved him but the perfect image of his brother the Crown Prince is gone. I don’t think he’s ever gonna forgive August but he has let it go and given him the title he so desperately wanted. His hatred towards him is not strong enough to keep the title of Crown Prince. In the relationship he was the one who needed to change. Sure Simon also went through growth and had to have a lot of understanding but it was Wilhelm who had to realise his core teachings and the way he thought of life were very flawed. He had to be his own person outside of the system that held him down so desperately. And even the mother understands that. She will always be part of the monarchy but she acknowledges that it nearly destroyed her and realises that she doesn’t want that to happen to her son and lets him go.

Hillerska, the monarchy and the classist hierarchy is not gonna change. But some people can. That’s why I think in the end there was no song about revolution. They didn’t have one. Sara, Felice, Wilhelm and Simon were the ones who truly got away from everything. They were able to get away from the schackles of the system and leave it behind. Even if Hillerska did reopen I doubt they would go back. They didn’t revolutionise anything other then themselves. There wasn’t a revolution but an evolution of themselves.

I think that’s a beautiful message. You can’t always change the bad things around you but you can change the things about yourself that were caused by the bad things around you. You can do and be better even when the world isn’t.

[dusty-daydreams]

Little subtle things that touch on racism in young royals: the 17-18th century costumes for the valentines ball. Not only are the costumes hearkening back to an exclusionary ‘golden age’ the costuming includes makeup that makes the skin appear lighter. We see at least Wille and Maddison in. Having this kind of make up is so so exclusionary - because like the wigs that Felice refuses to wear, to engage with the activity properly non-white students are being tacitly encouraged to lighten their skin and white students are being tacitly encouraged to value whiteness

And yes it’s a fun dress up heritage activity that includes make up for the reenactment purposes - I get that heritage is literally what I’m studying BUT one of the big discussions within the heritage field is the ongoing question of whose heritage is celebrated and why?

For example - it makes no sense for Hillerska to host a 17th Century ball, the school opened in 1901, there is no 17th century heritage of the school, it’s imagined heritage that they are utilising. If the ball was a turn of the 20th century ball (the Edwardian fashion era in English parlance) that would make sense as an engagement with the schools heritage. This heritage may still be racially charged but not as racially charged as the imagined 17th Century heritage ball.

So why 17th C? Well I think the school is invested in training up nobility and royalty, individuals who do have heritage dating back to that period, who are likely to imagine that period as the golden era before the class system began to be (slightly) more equal. Hillerska despite having none of its own 17th C heritage is imagining heritage for its students to help maintain an increasingly shaky class and racial system that has it’s students at the top.

It’s therefore pretty significant that Simon is not in a 17th C costume. He has no 17th C noble heritage and unlike Sara (and Alexander, and Nils) is not interested in pretending that he does.

It is also interesting that Felice, who is on a journey of self acceptance and identity beyond her social climbing white family, only partially dresses in the pretence of 17th C noble glory.

Finally, it is interesting that Wille, desperately does not want to put this costume on, and is crying as he does so. He does not want this awful legacy, it keeps him from Simon and it makes him transform himself into something he doesn’t want to be.

[svetzzi]

knightklok stuff Is it headcanons or an au? I don’t know, but either way I sure as hell wrote about it.

Timeline: 1450’s-1480’s

Main Location: Pre-Sherborne/Sherborne, Sherborne Abbey Cathedral

Content Warnings: Character death, Christendom, religious fundamentalism, mentions of torture, mentions of social and systemic racism, mention of alcoholism.

Note: I subscribe to the implication that Dethklok, or even so the other people foretold in the prophecy, have been subjected to reincarnation for eons. Whether or not reincarnation is a normal aspect for everyone’s life-death cycle in the Metalocalypse universe is unknown to me as of writing this, but here I am making it certain for the pawns of the prophecy. Personally I find that the prophecy cave art in season 4,  the “ancient animal forms” from season 2 and onward, and the lyrics of Blazing Star are evidence for this notion. Every force included in the prophecy are doomed to their fates; despite being placed in deadly situations time and time again, they can make it out totally unscathed until their death. Said deaths may seem sudden or untimely on a surface level, but they are always decided by destiny or the universe (or perhaps The Devil if we lean more into the Satanic narrative). Here we see a version of Dethklok from their long line of reincarnations (that also happen to be ancestral to the present-day members), who had failed to fulfill the prophecy and thus had to die and start over.

If there are severe historical inaccuracies, then my apologies, I am not a buff and I made this for fun. If it helps to ease the pain at all, I am certain if this were to actually happen in the show, it would also be incredibly historically inaccurate.

I am also not Catholic, so some things may be wonky in that context as well.

Noah Eruption

Nationality: English / Roma

Weapon: Morningstar

The surname Eruption evolved to Explosion as the English language advanced.

His looks and demeanor forgave his non-chivalrous attitude, however being a man of few words made the public mistake him for chivalrous. Nonetheless his stature and steadfast fighting ability granted him both knighthood and the role of leader for the Sherborne Guard. Born in Canterbury, Noah traveled to Sherborne for personal independence and to no longer deal with those that knew of his mixed Romani bloodline. His morningstar was his closest companion.

Fled and retired to The Western Isles post-exile. In retirement he turned to cattle farming.

Death: Drowning (reason ruled unknown, speculated to be either suicide or accident)

Aengus “Picil (The Ruthless)” Barrel

Nationality: Irish 

Weapon: Dual-Wielded Scottish Dirks

The surname Barrel derives from his English grandfather’s favourite pub.

Picil, freeloader son of a shepherd, lived at his village’s pub. Of course, this habit kind of ruined his life and reputation within his hometown, however he did get some decent knife-tossing skills out of it. The pub eventually changed ownership, and consequently he was banned for being a pest. In some spark of clarity, the young man decided to start off on a clean slate. He packed a bottle for the road and headed for England (I reiterate short-lived clarity was mentioned, not intelligence). As a stumbling Irishman his time living there was incredibly difficult, but upon meeting Noah and Bishop Offgyrdd seemingly by coincidence he was “taken in,” so to speak.

And yes, his classic dirks slightly resemble penises, like God intended.

Fled to Wales post-exile.

Death: Went into the wood at night in a typical drunken stupor and was never seen again.

William “The Barbarian” “The Royal Guard’s Boil” “Barnacle Meat” Murdgruff

Nationality: English-Italian/Ethiopian (see Medieval Ethiopian Discovery of Europe) 

Weapon: Battle Axe

William Murdgruff fled from Italian slums as a young adult, in fear of further discrimination and possible death. He hid in a cart of hay bales and went wherever it took him. Sherborne did not treat him much better upon his arrival, even less so than expected, but the Bishop of the village saw his potential. Murdgruff then proved himself to be a merciless fighter, and with the strong persuasion of Bishop Offgyrdd, he was knighted by the Lord and assigned to the small guard sanctioned in that very town. An exchange was brought in return for his knighthood– that he would keep his appearance a secret from the public, as it would damage the church’s reputation. They even commissioned a custom helmet in order for him to fulfill such an order. He did as told, however that did not stop him from becoming the town’s punching bag due to how he held himself (and having the most non-chivalrous of attitudes, obviously). 

Fled to Germany post-exile.

Death: Tortured and Executed via Wheel at the beginning of The Werewolf Trials after fleeing to Germany.

Sigfrøðr / Sighfridh Swkigelf 

Nationality: Geat 

Weapon: Knightly Sword, though prefers Falchion

Irregular for the time and place, Sighfridh was born to closeted Heathen parents. Their Geatland patriotism imprinted onto him, but he found himself drawn to the Christian environment surrounding his family. Sighfridh saw himself not only in Odin, but in both the Lutheran and Catholic depictions of the Lord. In interest of visiting an authentic Roman Catholic cathedral, he decided to journey west. His stay in England was supposed to be temporary, especially after Toki began to accompany him on his journey, but finding good work with the Sherborne Guard (along with acclaim from all the English ladies…) Sighfridh stayed until the group’s exile.

Before England, Sighfridh was an ice harvester.

Returned to Scania post-exile.

Death: Disease of Totally Unknown Origin (it was definitely not syphilis).

Toki Wartúþr

Nationality: Norwegian/Norse

Weapon: Knightly Sword

(To my knowledge the name Toki has existed since like ~7th Century AD, so I find it perfectly sensible that the name Toki would be present multiple times throughout his family tree.)

He was a Sami boy adopted by Christian parents as a babe. Blessed with the spirit of death, his parents eventually blamed him for the unorthodox deaths of crops and farm animals, even if he was not tending to or near the area at the time of death. Their negative superstition surrounding their son grew more, soon blaming him for the rot of their food and the harsher winters. Believing him to embody the antichrist, they intended to kill him, but Toki found this out and escaped before they could execute their plan. He was a homeless wanderer for years, getting by on stolen goods and river water. It was when he ran into the traveling Sighfridh that Toki finally found some sort of path in life. To Sighfridh’s dismay, Toki was enamored with him and his journey, and so tagged along. 

Exiled.

Death: Murdered.

Bishop Offgyrdd

Nationality: English/Welsh

Weapon: Holy text, witchcraft, sabre

Under the guidance of his most trusted companion, Sherborne’s Archbishop, Offgyrdd was devoted to the underbelly of the church. He typically kept an eye out for any newcomers during the day, and was a transcriber at night. Before the mysterious and gruesome death of Canterbury’s Archbishop, Offgyrdd was– although emotionally distant– an average abbott. Even though transcribing was work for a lower monk, Offgyrdd happily took on the task for The Church of The Black Klok. The loose lips on the group of knights he brought together was ultimately his, their, downfall. From Sherborne Castle, the royal guard was demanded to put an end to this heresy, but they refused. Because they liked Offgyrdd. He was pretty nice to them after all, you know? Their Lord allowed for word— panic— to get out due to this. Reeves and the rest of the general public ended up taking matters into their own hands. The traitorous royal guard’s executions were debated. The enraged mob was still somehow infatuated with them, despite their association with witches. Out of fear of his own life, the Lord mercifully damned the knights to exile. After the beheading of the Archbishop, the last thing Offgyrdd saw was Noah watching his demise from among the crowd.

Thankfully, the actual Black Klok meeting grounds were never found by authorities. 

Death: Executed; burned at stake.

[justacynicalone]

Aurelius

Aim in life:

He has no idea what he wants, his mind is still stuck with the goals his father imposed on him, so all he knows to work for is Aetia, and nothing else. Everything he does is for the kingdom, and on rare occasions, himself and the people he cares about.

Tarot Card:

The Hanged Man

Associated songs:

Sober to death

Step on me

Mama’s boy

St. Valentines 

Quizzes they’d fit in!!

The King

Blood in a lamb’s wool

Name analysis: 

Full name of Aurelius Caleb Vasilios I

Aurelius meaning Golden one, often used for royalty

Caleb meaning dog, which is an animal that fits him and also faithful, whole-hearted, and bold

His surname, Vasilios meaning royal, or kingly

Backstory:

He was raised as the one and only Prince, his father had stuck to monogamy rather than the royal's usual harem of beauties.

Despite this, his father was not a good person, forcing him to constantly follow along with his ideals and prejudice against the common people.

His mother on the other hand was raised as practically elven royalty, which was one of the many reasons that his parents had married in the first place, an arranged marriage that ended in his mother and father truly loving each other.

Aurelius' Father taught him strictly to hate all those who weren't of "noble" race (i.e. Human, Elf, Dwarf, and those above.), and also intense homophobia. Aurelius was able to unlearn the racism as he grew up, especially so around Desiderio who was half-drow himself, but the homophobia was something his father taught with an iron fist.

Aurelius has moved  away from that, he is not homophobic or anything, and treats most people in his country with as much equality as he can, working through laws to fix this as he moves forward. But he has a sort of …

He doesn’t like loud things because of how much his father used to shout. He finds comfort in music and enjoys playing violin and flutes. He is quite talented in magic due to his elf heritage.

Aurelius and his mother are actually quite close, she is alive and well supporting of her son. Aurelius' mother does not support her husband's prejudice but still does nothing about it, too dismissive of it as small things.

He hates disappointing people, he constantly feels like he is. He is slightly clingy, as in he will hang on to Desiderio’s clothes when they’re standing next to each other, or stick close to Eurydice when she’s around. 

Aurelius is a soft spoken kind of person. He is kind, and thinks of everyone as equal. He has a tendency to throw himself into his work when he wants to avoid something, and is hard headed when it comes to his goals, he would do anything to protect those he loves.

He has a sort of toxic positivity about him, he’ll try to convince himself that everything is okay, even when it’s not. He knows what his father taught him is wrong, and what he put him through is wrong, but he can’t help but defend him when told about his wrong doings.

Even if he knows the system is corrupt, he is convinced he can fix it, although his main idea of fixing things is keeping it the way it is. He doesn’t understand how he can fix things around him, and is scared of what will happen when he does. If his father was gone, maybe he could heal better, but he isn't. His father is alive and well.

He loves with his whole being, once he loves a person he would do anything for them. He loves like a dog.

Connections:

Aurelius and Desiderio were childhood friends, and Desiderio is currently Aurelius’ royal advisor. Aurelius and Desiderio have been best friends since they were young children, the only genuine friends each other had 

Aurelius and Eurydice get along alright. She often liked to tease him when they were younger, but was much more focused on caring for Desiderio. Eurydice cares for Aurelius, that is obvious, but to her he is not her first priority, Aurelius understands this and keeps a sort of distance. They aren’t exactly really close, but Aurelius respects Eurydice for how she cares for her family and how she takes on responsibility. They both have a sort of mutual understanding of how they’re both the eldest of their families and are controlled by their father’s. Aurelius sees her as an older sister figure, this is not returned.

Aurelius and Cato have a sort of awkward relationship, they got along alright and Aurelius would even consider them to be sort of friends, bonding over their mutual care for Desiderio, but they never really talked to each other much. 

Aurelius and Athanasia …

How he speaks:

He has a regal tone, his voice hardly ever falters, a strong and loud voice. When he’s nervous his voice goes soft, or sometimes even much too loud, so loud he snaps and shouts at people when he doesn’t mean too. 

Physical Features:

He has naturally white hair that he wears in a dead-mom style ponytail, and blue eyes. He has a weak right shoulder and knee from ‘falling’ down the stairs as a child. He never found out how he fell. 

Notes: 

...

He is 26 years old

INFJ

[humanrightsupdates]

Australian Children Facing ‘Egregious’ Violations in Justice System

Children’s Commissioner Report Calls for Nationally Coordinated Reform

On Tuesday, Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner released a report, “Help way earlier!”, that finds that Australia is failing to protect children’s rights in its criminal justice system.

Commissioner Anne Hollands based her findings on interviews with 150 children and young people who have experienced the system firsthand. The report makes 24 recommendations, including banning solitary confinement for children throughout Australia and raising the age of criminal responsibility to 14. In most parts of Australia today, children as young as 10 can be detained.

The report finds that First Nations children with intergenerational trauma and children with disabilities were too often being criminally prosecuted. Many of these children were experiencing poverty, marginalization, and systemic racism, but their basic needs, such as safe housing, were not being met. Instead, they faced incarceration

The report also highlighted that that many of the children detained are living with disabilities and mental health conditions, which can be exacerbated by harsh conditions, including solitary confinement.

Previous reports, including the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, have also made recommendations to ban solitary confinement and raise the age of criminal responsibility. However, most Australian state and territory governments have not acted on these recommendations.

[kazeofthemagun]

More on Vodya Houses:

[Massive trigger warnings for racism, slavery, ableism, eugenics, AI, unethical science.]

The concept of Value: idea that every living being has to contribute towards global "value" in some way: either by production of goods, maintaining the ecosystem, research (production of global knowledge) or, failing that, slave labor. Value is often perceived egotistically, with whatever benefits the Vodya House being "valuable" and the rest, not. This leads most Vodya Houses to harbor an innate disdain for other forms of life, especially those that take no part in Vodya's own ecosystem and thus, serve no purpose in its existence. According to the Value Doctrine, the only type of value to be had from such life forms is slave labor.

Beings that are considered unable to provide Value legally lose rights to their own existence. This belief leads to horrific ableism, both mental and physical, among the Vodya, with heavily disabled individuals often being culled. Lesser degrees of "devaluation" predispose the individual to be shifted lower in the work hierarchy, eventually leading to slavery. Most proud members of the Vodya race would much rather die than be reduced to servants, however. This is hypocritical towards their own beliefs, as they openly preach slavery to be the more valuable alternative to death.

The Council of Value: each House possesses their own Council, which usually consists of the Chairs of their respective Cathedrals (with Cathedrals as homes to specific fields of scientific research, such as: Biosynergetics, Technosynergetics, Logistics, Physics, Chemistry, Thaumaturgichemistry, Mathematics, Geosystemics, Medicine, Social Systemics.)

A Chair is most often the lead Mind of their respective field, as in the scientist with the highest overall equivalent to our "impact factor", which is a scoring system used in science.

The Council of Value is the defacto ruling body of the House, the advisors of the Head of the House, who is a political representative and practically always a Chair themself. The Council's job is to decide on the optimal course of action for the House's development, as defined by the maximization of Value. The Council decides whether to approve experiments and pathways of development, evaluating the resource cost vs potential resource production. For this purpose, they often employ the House's Nexus Mind, an advanced risk management AI program.

Notable Vodyanoi:

Pist Shaz XI, Eleventh Head of Shaz. Chair of Technosynergetics, with multiple advanced achievements in related fields. A self-proclaimed Lord of the Seas, he ran House Shaz in an authoritarian manner with several contigents of neural-chipped and bioengineered thralls at his command - couresy of his collabiration with the Shaz Chair of Biosynergetics. He also possessed several squads of specialized Wonderlandian mercenaries as his private army. Ever since he began work on the Ocean Puzzle, he had spent most of his time in a private palace away from the main settlement of House Shaz, both for safety reasons and out of vanity. He was 300+ years old at time of death.

Xel Ort V, Fifth Head of House Ort at tender young age of 37. Heir to the House as per aristocratic nepotism - Ort are more traditional and value genetic lines. Royal children tend to be genetically engineered to inherit most desirable traits, maximizing intellectual ability. She does not yet possess Chairhood in any of the Council's fields, being an undergrad in the Cathedral of Thaumaturgichemistry. Despite this, her achievements are already remarkable and she had set out to further her Mist research in Wonderland, finding work with Anarchy. Still, being saddled with this much responsibility at a young age had left her with major anxiety issues and shaken her personal Value, as well as her political position. Currently on a quest to reaffirm her worth both to herself and to the Ort Council; Struggling with the concept of Value versus morality.

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

From one of Canada's three major papers

OPINION

Spare me: Prince Harry’s claim of victimhood doesn’t quite fly

PHOEBE MALTZ BOVY

SPECIAL TO THE GLOBE AND MAIL

Copies of Prince Harry's new book Spare at a shop in London, on Jan. 10.CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES

348 COMMENTSSHARE

BOOKMARK

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail.

Some – and I’m among them – argue that rather than being a way to promote social justice, so-called wokeness is about maintaining the status quo. A system of rules and manners that might seem progressive is in fact a cover for material inequality.

One could not design a better example of this than Prince Harry, the world’s premier nepotism baby. In his new memoir, Spare, Harry (he abhors snobbery, so let’s drop the “Prince”), bolstered by therapy, offers himself up as a courageous opponent of stiff-upper-lip upscale Britishness. He’s a modern man, in touch with his feelings. And he’s had it with archaic royal protocol, especially the bit about giving the kingdom to the elder son. Fight the power!

The biggest bombshells coming out of Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare

What Spare seeks to accomplish is to translate the life experience of a Prince who has spent much of his life carousing – a man whose life makes everyday white male privilege seem paltry – into the story of a victim of systemic forces.

When he partied, this was not a prince cavorting. It was a troubled young man finding solace in the bottle, the Ziploc bag.

Apart from the self-medicating, pre-rift Harry was known for having worn a Nazi uniform to a 2005 costume party. Ordinary people have been cancelled for less. But a royal, even a “spare,” is uncancellable. We learn that Prince Charles summonedthe Chief Rabbi of Britain, who told Harry – 20 at the time – what the Holocaust was.

Harry recounts this episode in his usual feelings-speak. The takeaway is not about mankind’s evil depths, but rather about … his own “self-loathing.” And anyway, how contrite did he need to be, given that, in his telling, William and Kate put him up to it?

Indeed, much of the book covers how Harry feels, temperature-wise, while in the army but also in civilian situations. He’s forever either too warm or too cold. (The latter involves a nauseating anecdote about frostbitten nether regions. Harry’s no Gary Shteyngart, and should have left well enough alone.)

He complains that he finds the dining room at Sandringham House “subtropical,” but that the Queen’s corgis objected to open windows (the draft, you see) so footmen would audibly close them. “That loud thump, unavoidable because the windows were so old, always felt like the door of a jail cell being slammed.”

Royalty, for Harry, has been a prison. It’s involved being hounded by paparazzi, and it made his pre-Meghan romantic life a challenge: women were either put off by the lack of privacy, or a little too excited about becoming a princess. That being a royal has also afforded him endless second chances and unfathomable gobs of money eludes him.

The point is not that Harry hasn’t suffered. To lose your mother at 12 is tragic even if you’re a prince. Where things get murky is in Harry’s interpretation of more recent history. Do the grumblings of a second-born royal hold a place in any broader fight for justice? With the exception of the ones specifically about the British tabloid press’s racism against his wife, it’s hard to make that leap. Yes, he moved to California after falling out with his family. But is he right to say he “fled”?

The power that comes with being Prince Harry is his for life, whatever his official role within the Royal Family. Harry claims his father left him “unemployable.” But he canstill do whatever he feels like (such as get a memoir ghostwritten by a fine writer), put a giant “Prince Harry” stamp on it and sell it to rapturous audiences.

The narrative at this point weaves from spring 2020 up to fall 2022. COVID – and the world shutting down – goes unmentioned, except as it affects their travel. A reference to Meghan’s three-bedroom detached property in Toronto as her “little house” offers a subtle reminder of Harry’s perspective. The book is at its strongest when Harry leans into that highly unusual vantage point.

Between the lines, and despite itself, Spare can be a fun, escapist and gossipy read, about a world where homes have 50 bedrooms and young people go on safari with hippos because why not. There’s the thrill of hearing the late Queen Elizabeth referred to as “Granny.” A royal story is worth more than a regular one, a fact that ultimately unites Harry with the tabloid journalists he – understandably – loathes.

On the streetcar home, gripping my copy of Spare, two older women sitting near me discussed the price of cauliflower. Nine dollars. More than these ladies could, uh, spare.

Thanks!

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Harry and Meghan are now among the most unpopular public figures in Britain.

That is what my polling reveals this week, after they released their Netflix documentary.

Amid their scathing attack on the royal family, which comes barely three months after the death of the Queen, the British give the young couple a ‘net rating’ of minus 26.

If you want a reference point, this is where Jeremy Corbyn was before the last election.

Harry’s ratings, in other polling, have crashed from -13 before the documentary to -26 while Meghan’s have slumped from -32 to -39.

Of all the royals, only Prince Andrew, the disgraced prince, is more unpopular.

What explains their unpopularity and, more importantly, what is all this telling us about modern Britain?

Well, listen to a certain section of the cultural left and you will be told this backlash reflects the dark underbelly of a racist nation.

Britain simply never came to terms with a royal marrying somebody who is mixed-race.

This narrative is assiduously cultivated by Harry and Meghan themselves, with the Netflix documentary, amid dark violins, presenting the virtuous couple against the backdrop of what we are asked to believe is a deeply imperialist, racist, Brexit-voting, even violent nation that has still not come to terms with its past.

Only, I’m not convinced.

Aside from sitting uncomfortably alongside a large pile of evidence, which shows that levels of racial prejudice have now fallen to their lowest level in Britain’s recorded history —and have fallen even further since the vote for Brexit— much of this also glosses events in the recent past.

There was a time, not so long ago, when Harry and Meghan were among the most popular royal couples, more popular than Charles and Camilla and only disliked by around one in ten people --the same share who disliked the late Queen.

Nor were the British bothered by Meghan’s race. When they were asked how they felt about a royal marrying somebody who is mixed-race, most shrugged their shoulders.

Like having a non-white prime minister, or rejecting the idea that somebody who is not white is not truly British, the vast majority said it was ‘entirely acceptable’ for a royal to marry somebody of a different ethnicity.

Meghan’s race was never the issue.

What is the issue, what has driven a wedge between the couple and the country is something else entirely.

It is the belief system they have embraced, which is not only on full display in the documentary, but now clearly shapes how they see the world.

In their rush to join the new elite, among whom loyalty to a particular set of beliefs has become as much an indicator of somebody’s social status as their material wealth, Harry and Meghan have clearly decided to go all in on ‘radical progressivism.’

This is a belief system:

• which views the past and present of Western nations as structurally racist;

• which views their history not as a source of pride but shame and embarrassment;

• which defines people not as individuals but as members of fixed identity groups, who either belong to a victimised minority or the oppressive white majority which must seek forgiveness for its ‘white privilege,’ and

• which, because of these things, demands we radically revise, if not repudiate, the established institutions, myths and memories of the majority, such as monarchy and our sense of history.

Whether reflected in Harry and Meghan’s regular references to dubious concepts such as ‘unconscious bias,’ ‘systemic racism’ and ‘white privilege’, or their recruitment of radical progressive thinkers such as Afua Hirsch and Kehinde Andrews who crudely view Britishness through this racial identity politics, Harry and Meghan have now positioned themselves as leading spokespeople for this ideology.

For the morally righteous and narcissistic elite, this ideology it not simply political.

It is, as professor John McWhorter notes:

"a ‘new religion’ for a new elite, a belief system which links anything and everything to racism, which shows remarkably little interest in any evidence to the contrary, seeks to ‘cancel’ detractors, and is used by elites to both acquire more social status for themselves from other elites while simultaneously disassociating themselves from the supposedly racist, imperialist masses below."

But here’s the thing. This belief system, this ideology, which is only held by around 13-15 per cent of Britain, is really not very popular at all.

This helps to explain why Harry, Meghan and radical progressives who tend to dominate much of the media, the creative industries, the cultural institutions, the universities, and no doubt the Netflix editorial meetings, are rapidly losing friends and alienating the wider majority.

Take history, for example.

Whereas radical progressives are obsessed with addressing what they see as historical injustices, with 84 per cent of them believing that Britain cannot move forward as a country if it does not acknowledge mistakes made during the days of empire, only 41 per cent of all British people think this way.

Conversely, whereas nearly 60 per cent of all British people think there is no point continually going over the rights and wrongs of our history, that we should instead move forward as a country and focus on the future, only 16 per cent of radical progressives agree.

Most people do not want to spend their time being lectured to by a small elite, being told to focus obsessively on what went wrong rather than what went right in their national history, and to take responsibility for things that happened centuries ago and are routinely taken out of historical context, judged by the standards of today.

It is the same story when it comes to how people think about the legacy of empire, Britain’s role in the slave trade, or historical figures such as Winston Churchill.

Harry, Meghan and the radical progressives who dominate the institutions want us to focus overwhelmingly, if not exclusively, on the negative, chastising the country for things which happened decades, if not centuries ago, and rewriting history around the new sacred goals of equality and diversity.

But a much larger number of people, as my polling shows, want to focus on both the good and the bad in the story of who we are.

They want to acknowledge that while Britain’s Empire got some things wrong, it also got some things right;

That while Britain contributed to the slave trade, it also played a major role in abolishing it, and

While Churchill certainly said some unpleasant things, this reflected the reality of the time and is massively outweighed by how he helped save Western civilisation.

Nor are most people convinced by the standard progressive trope, wheeled out by the likes of Harry and Meghan, with little evidence beyond vague appeals to their ‘lived experience,’ that Western nations such as Britain are ‘institutionally racist.’

Today, just 6 per cent of British people agree with the idea, fashionable in progressive circles, that Britain is ‘very racist’ while a majority, 60 per cent, reject this claim altogether.

Most people loathe racism and do not want to live in a racist society.

But nor do they want the entire national conversation in the country —from what their children learn in school and the universities to what they are told by the media and museums- to be completely wrapped around this radical progressive story.

The key point is that when it comes to our history, our identity and our culture, most people do not share this worldview.

A worldview that now permeates the newspaper columns, the BBC, the adverts, the television programmes, the films, the books, and the Netflix documentaries they are bombarded with on a daily basis and which have reduced our culture to an extended lecture by a morally righteous small elite to the rest of the country, which is now looking on, like they look at Harry and Meghan, with a growing sense of despondency and disillusionment.

This not only helps to explain why support for Harry and Meghan has fallen off a cliff but why arguments about the culture wars are misleading.

Ever since Megxit followed Brexit, it has been fashionable to argue that the fallout in the House of Windsor is symbolic of this deeper rift in the country.

The typically insightful Trevor Phillips captured this a couple of years ago when, like Brexit, he talked about Megxit as “a sign of deeper divisions between two emerging factions” in Britain.

“One Britain wants to join the 'progressive,' globalist, woke world epitomised by Meghan and Harry's circle —George and Amal Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, the Obamas et al.

Another yearns for the comfortable, domestic, common-sense future in which the Queen, William, Kate and Mary Berry represent the nation’s beating heart.”

Yet while there is some truth to this, we should push back against accounts that present these two sides.

These two very different visions of Britain, as though they are evenly balanced, as if the radical progressivism epitomised by Harry and Meghan is somehow comparable to the more traditionalist worldview epitomised by Will and Kate. Because it is not.

Brexit was a 52-48 divide, but Megxit is more like 80-20, with Harry, Meghan and radical progressivism adrift from the values of the majority.

There is a reason why Will and Kate, who are far more in tune with the majority, enjoy net ratings of +62 and +57, respectively, while Harry and Meghan languish on -26 and -39.

And why more than half the country tell me Will and Kate represent British values while not even one in ten say the same about Harry and Meghan.

The battle over who we are, playing out through this battle in the House of Windsor, is actually not that close at all. And we should say so more often than we do.

The radical progressivism, which unites Harry, Meghan and the elite class who now disproportionately dominate the institutions, is simply nowhere near to representing the worldview of the majority.

This also helps to explain why the populist revolt against this elite and the institutions is continuing across the West.

Neither Harry and Meghan, nor Will and Kate, will be running for election anytime soon.

But their very different levels of popularity and the reaction to the documentary are telling us something about how the forgotten majority see their nation, their history, their identity and, ultimately, themselves.

And given how wide this gulf now is, it is high time that Britain’s institutions begin to reflect this reality, too.

[coralpenguincherryblossom]

covid and mental health

By Rachel Shannon

Everyone can relate to the fact that covid was a stressful period in our human existence. Some people struggled more than others but no hardship should be weighed or compared to one another's. It was both a tribulation and a learning experience. Before covid, we lived in a very rushed Society. The work day was 9-5 Monday through Friday, we never thought to challenge it. Now post covid, some people don't work on Mondays or have half a day on Fridays, or some people work completely remote which never used to be an option. We now take more time for our emotional health and embrace therapy which for decades previously was considered taboo.  To get to this point, Society had to face some tough adversities which include mental health decline in Victoria Australia, harsh discriminatory challenges for Asian Americans, and radical transitions for college students. These three scenarios are just a few examples of some of the many ways in which covid impacted our mental health. These situations brought awareness to the way we view and treat mental health.

Since covid, intentional self-harm rates skyrocketed in Victoria Australia due to lack of employment opportunities and social isolation. While young people are less susceptible to covid, the pandemic did disproportionately affect their psychosocial development, as social connectedness and social identity are important factors in youth. Suicide attempt hospitalization rates ranged from 77.4 to 97.9 events per 100,000 population between 2012-2013 and 2019-2020. Rates were higher outside of urban areas. It is estimated that the self-harm hospitalization rates in Greater Melbourne was 75.9 per 100,000 population compared to 112.0 per 100,000 population in the rest of Victoria. The Victorian mental health system was extensively evaluated by the Royal Commission on the advice of the Victorian government. The Royal Commission found  that the state's mental health system was unable to respond to the needs of the people suffering from mental illness or psychological distress, unsuitable to meet current and future demands, and an urgent need for reform. 

“Pre-existing individual factors, such as poorer physical health, a history of chronic illness, or pre-existing mental health problems, have been associated with higher rates of anxiety and depression during COVID-19. Other individual factors may be important too, for example introverted individuals are somewhat less likely to have high quality social support systems compared to extraverts. Consistent evidence shows that adults experiencing pre-existing socio-economic disadvantages face increased mental health problems related to COVID-19.” (Westrupp,”et al.”2023)

While Westrupp explains that pre-existing conditions occurred in parents and children in Victoria before covid, these conditions were made worse from government restrictions and shutdowns.

Since covid, the Asian-American population have faced intense racial discrimination which include verbal harassment and physical assault. This is mainly due to media outlets blaming China for the pandemic.  A recent Pew Research Center report found that approximately 31% of Asian American adults reported being the subject of slurs or jokes because of their race or ethnicity, and about 58% of Asian American adults shared that it is more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views about Asians than it was before the covid-19 outbreak. The increase in racial discrimination against Asian Americans during the covid-19 pandemic has also contributed to covid-19 discrimination fear, which exacerbated mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. 

“Anti-Asian racism has always been present in the US society for over 150 years, though it has been encoded in different vocabulary and language in different periods of time.”(Adachi,2022).

Adachi explains that the “Yellow Peril” which is described as western fears of Asians, especially Chinese, would invade their land and disrupt western values, started as far back as the 1870s. Although these fears already existed, there has been an uptick in racial discriminatory acts since covid due to media outlets and politicians. 

Covid took a strain particularly on college students. College is already a stressful time for young adults then covid added the pressure of social distancing, working remotely and in extreme cases leaving their dorm and finding residence elsewhere. Many may argue that stress among college students is unrelated to covid and that it’s been an ongoing issue for some time. McLafferty writes that a survey was conducted of students who attended college in Northern Ireland in the fall of 2019, then again a year later found that high levels of mental health problems were already present among students commencing college. Although college students were already struggling before the pandemic, it’s important to understand that covid exacerbated pre-existing mental health conditions.

“Students assessed post pandemic reported significantly more symptoms of anxiety and depression than students assessed pre pandemic, and these two cohorts are reporting more symptoms in many areas than a cohort of students assessed 25 years earlier.”(Nails,2023). 

In conclusion, the COVID-19 pandemic made the Victorian government aware of the urgent need for better mental health care for their people, brought to light the racial injustice of Asian-Americans, and showed the massive strain covid had on college students. These three situations highlight the severity in which covid affected our mental health. After the pandemic, it was realized that mental health care was at the bottom of the list of priorities. This awareness led to changes such as flexible working conditions and more need for therapy. Therapy also became more available remotely. Not only should we spread awareness on the issue of mental health but we should also take combative steps to help such as make therapy more affordable and hire more mental health providers. Unfortunately it took this catastrophic event to make us open our eyes. With this better awareness and understanding, we as a society can tackle mental health issues head on. 

Vacher, C., Ho, N., Skinner, A., Robinson, J., Freebairn, L., Lee, G. Y., Iorfino, F., Prodan, A., Song, Y. J. C., Jo-An Occhipinti, & Hickie, I. B. (2022). Optimizing Strategies for Improving Mental Health in Victoria, Australia during the COVID-19 Era: A System Dynamics Modelling Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(11), 6470. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19116470

Westrupp, Bennett, Berkowitz, Youssef, Toumbourou, Tucker, Andrews, Evans, Teague, Karantzas, Melvin, Olsson, Macdonald, Greenwood, Mikocka-Walus, Hutchinson, Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Stokes, Olive, Wood, Feb2023, child, parent, and family mental health and functioning in Australia during COVID-19: comparison to pre-pandemic data

Huang, C. J., & Huang, C. Y. (2023, December 21). The Moderating Role of Emotion Regulation Strategies on Asian American Parents’ Discrimination Experiences and Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ort0000714

Adachi, Nobuko, 2022, Yellow Peril Redux: Vitalizing Pre-Existing Racial Conditions with a New Symbol

Nails, Julianna. “A Crisis in College Student Mental Health? Self-Ratings of Psychopathology Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, 11 Nov. 2023, psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-78779-001

McLafferty, Ward, Walsh, O’Neill, Bjourson, McHugh, Brown, McBride, Brady, Murray, Nov 2023, College Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Prior to and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

[andthatisnotfake]

Started to rewatch episode 2 of this season of Young Royals and absolutely forgot I was going to comment on it here lol

So you get comments from the half point on

When August is in that room where he finds the phone, there are tons of games behind him. Maybe the kids would be less bored if they played one? Also, on that note, we've seen them playing chess and cards before, this isn't so different.

Very impressive that August remembers Sara's number by heart. I only know mine and my mom's.

Nils and Vincent "grading" the new headmistress is peak straight boy behaviour, which is even funnier as Nils is not.

August's audacity of talking to Simon. Baby boy, you shouldn't even be attending the same school as him. Also, I see the peek of purple in August's collar...

I wish we'd actually seen more of the mediation between Wille and August, because it clearly achieved nothing lol. Wille should have continued regular therapy instead. Better yet, couples therapy with Simon.

Wille's drawings are so cute.

The religious pamphlet written in Comic Sans was very accurate.

Simon is braver than the Marines recording that video straight to Instagram, no edits, no filter...

The book on Wille's shelf being entitled "freedom" was a bit too on the nose, but I appreciate it. (Apparently it's a great novel and now I wanna read it.)

Wille having only one picture with Simon on his wall is unrealistic, he should have at least 3 with both of them and another 10 of only Simon.

Fredrika says that people should have complained while they were studying, not after, but the issue is that they may have been scared to do so. And, more importantly, I think a lot of times, especially when you're a teenager, people fail to realize that the system they're under and the things that happen to them aren't normal or expected. It's quite common for victims of abuse to only realize that they'd been abused a long time later, and often when other people speak up or tell them that they weren't supposed to have gone through that. Maybe it's a bad comparison, but it reminds me of people who were beaten up by their parents when they were kids and grow up to do the same with their own kids and keep making excuses for that behavior and defending it. And then, occasionally, they're able to realize, usually through the help of others, that that isn't the norm and they can stop it. It's when you tell people "I'm sorry that happened to you and it shouldn't have" and watch them realize that it was actually fucked up and their feelings of anger and sadness and betrayal over it were valid. Ok, enough of this nos, but yeah... I really liked that line.

I love that Felice mentioned being the only one told to put her hair up, because I noticed that in S2 and I know this show doesn't do this sort of thing for no reason, but I really liked that she referenced back to it.

Stella's line is another one that I really like. Felice is talking about veiled racism and she completely misses the point and says Felice is pretty. She's trying to reassure her, and it's sweet, but she fails to actually hear Felice and emphatize with she situation. I think the third year boys are very clear examples of blatant prejudice (homophobia, mysoginy, elitism and, though not as blatant, racism), while this girls portray veiled forms of prejudice, which can appear non-consequential, but can be equally harmful, especially when you don't know whether or not to point it out, or you do and people act like they're offended that you feel offended, because omg, don't you know that it wasn't the intention at all? So a lot of times you just pretend you didn't hear it, which ends up being quite grating.

I'm curious if Nikita actually got her hands tangled in those lights or if she was just that good of an actress. 🤣

Wille picking Simon up remains the cutest thing ever.

The poor gym teacher is so done with these kids. 😅

These rich kids choosing to take lights and speakers to the woods instead of, you know, actually helpful and important equipment, is so funny to me.

Someone else said, and I agree, why on earth aren't Simon and Wille sitting together around the fire?!

I don't know what's best, Rosh's look when she notices Stella looking at her, Ayub whispering something to her, her face when she goes over to dance with Stella, or the face Fredrika makes when she sees them.

The girls peeing together, I... get it, but also, I could never. I'm just gonna go behind this tree, ignore me.

Them being surprised that Rosh and Ayub had never been to the US is super realistic, actually. Rich kids are very out of touch with reality.

Wille saying he was also getting a summer job, baby girl was trying so hard to relate to them, and also I guess to include them, but yikes. The second-hand embarrassment was real in this scene.

The whole altercation around the possibility of someone taking pictures of Wille and it being what sends everyone away was so heartbreaking. He can't win, even if he does nothing.

I understand where Simon is coming from, but he missed the point Wille was trying to make when he said he didn't have a choice in going to "prince school". Sure, he does get anything he want, but he also had a lot of duties and a lot of pressure on him.

The shushing though. I was gagged. The audacity! I would have left to sleep in the hammock if I were Simon. I get that that's how he's always been treated, but oof.

Insomniac Early bird Wille confirmed, he was up even before the teacher.