Chapter Text
In looking at royalty we are always looking at what is archaic, what is mysterious by its nature, and my feeling is that it will only ever half-reveal itself. This poses a challenge to historians and to those of us who work imaginatively with the past. Royal persons are both gods and beasts. They are persons but they are supra-personal, carriers of a blood line: at the most basic, they are breeding stock, collections of organs
Hilary Mantel - ‘Royal Bodies ’
A few weeks before his and Simon’s ten-year-anniversary, his mother asked if he’d given any thought to proposing any time soon, and that he should remember to contact the royal jeweler in advance.
Wilhelm had been shocked by the unprompted comment. With Simon out of town for work, he had agreed to join his parents for an early dinner. He was old enough to be familiar with his mother’s nonchalant way of talking about deeply important private matters. But this one had quite literally taken the crown.
“What? Why?” was the only thing he managed to say in response.
“Well, darling, I just figured since you have a big anniversary coming up that you might be considering it.”
“Mamma, I can’t just get married.”
“Of course you can, darling. What makes you think that you can’t? I’d of course be giving you my consent!”
Well, that was certainly news to him.
At a loss for words, he turned towards his father. Suspiciously for Wilhelm, he didn’t seem very shocked by this development.
“I think Wilhelm is maybe concerned about the Riksdag , darling.” His father said, nonchalantly.
Without missing a beat, Kristina answered.
“Oh don’t worry about that, gubben. The coalition government is going to be our safest bet, and it’s better to not do it too close to election time.”
“What about Sverigedemokraterna ?”
“They might make a fuss; we can’t be sure. But they don’t have enough power to sway any votes their way,” she glanced at him, as if examining his attitude, before adding “it’s not in their current best interest to appear homophobic. And the same is true for all the other parties. ”
“Besides,” his father interjected unexpectedly, “ Ten years is an awfully long time. Don’t tell me you’re not planning to make an honest man out of Simon.”
His mother had nodded to that, and then very kindly requested her husband pass her the salt. The rest of the evening continued without much fuss, as if nothing had been said at all.
He spent the rest of the night thinking over what had been said. He should have been delighted about the whole thing. His mother, who had once tried to sabotage his relationship with Simon, was now basically inviting his boyfriend into the family. He knew that her pragmatism was just one of her many idiosyncrasies and that it didn’t necessarily mean she was being disingenuous. Regardless, he felt antsy about the whole thing. He knew what the optics were of his and Simon’s relationship, and could see how it could be a gamble his mother thought worth pursuing. A (future) queer head of state, happily married to his school sweetheart. The perfect image of progressive Sweden.
He kept thinking over and over again about her words, about the way in which she and his dad had seemed to have rehearsed all that.
At the same time, why should it bother him in the first place? In the end, hadn’t this been a gift? He and Simon could get married and his mother had practically given her blessing. He wanted to call Simon and tell him all about it, but knew it was still the middle of the day for Simon. He'd be spending the day in meetings with Dawn and some of the producers. He’d returned home the following evening; Wilhelm settled for just sending him a good luck message and telling him he loved him.
But as much as he tried, the discomfort was inescapable. After a few hours of pacing around his room, he grabbed his medicine pouch and headed for Simon’s apartment inside the grounds, figuring that the short walk and the cold evening air would help him clear his mind a bit. And, indeed, the further he got from the Palace the more at ease he began to feel.
Ever since Simon had moved, this tiny rental apartment had become his oasis. Since it was in the Palace grounds, he was free to come and go as he wanted. In contrast with the baroque decor of his own quarters, this apartment was quaint and minimalistic. Simon had left in a hurry a few days prior. He’d left the bed unmade, his blanket and sheets tangled and his pillows unstacked. Wilhelm couldn’t resist that invitation. He was happy to discover that Simon’s scent remained on them, before wrapping himself in his sheets and tricking his brain into thinking he was being embraced by his love.
“It sounds to me,” Vera said the following day, “like your mother is trying to be more supportive of your relationship.”
Wilhelm’s private secretary deserved a bonus for nearly always scheduling his therapy session the morning after dinner with his mom.
“And yet it seems like you’re not very enthusiastic about her suggestion.”
“No,” he said, exhaling loudly, “ I felt uncomfortable almost immediately.”
Vera tilted her head slightly before asking him why he thought that was. It was a quirk of hers he’d become familiar with after seeing her for as long as he had.
“Because that’s not how it felt. At first, I thought that maybe this was her weird way of telling me that she’d give us her consent to get married, which is not something I expected of her. But then it just felt more like she was trying to find a way to order me to get married without ordering it.”
“Is it important to you that your mother consents to your wedding?”
“That’s not really… she has to consent for me to get married. I don’t really like that I depended on that. I’ve been too afraid to even think about asking her because I’m constantly bracing myself for more rejection from her. And somehow, she managed to give me her consent while also still rejecting me.”
Vera asked him to explain that further.
“She’s accepting me, us, because it’s in the interest of the Crown. Because the people in PR have started to realize that he and I can make the monarchy look good. So it’s acceptance for us. But I genuinely can't tell you if she even wants me , her son, to get married. She couldn’t even allow me the option of deciding first that I’m ready for that.”
“You’d mentioned before that you felt like your mother couldn’t see certain aspects of you as a person. It sounds like this incident has been another example of that.”
He nodded. The room remained silent for a few seconds. He could see Vera thinking carefully about her next words.
“You’re very right in feeling hurt by this suggestion. Especially since I’m gathering, you’d never even mentioned wanting to get married to your parents,”
He nodded.
“I’d encourage you to think of this offer as the best attempt at acceptance your mother can give you at this time. You now know that, if you decide to marry Simon, she will consent to that. But it’s very important that you take this as an offer and not an order . Trust me, I’ve seen plenty of mothers that have wanted to push their children to get married. But this choice you need to make both individually and with your partner. Now, is marriage something you --not your mother, or the PR team-- want to think about right now?”
Wilhelm had expected that the conversation would continue onto the topic of his mother. He hadn’t been expecting that question
Is marriage something you want to think about right now? Yes, he thought about it all the time. No, it was something he actively tried not to think about.
“Yes and no,” he said hesitantly.
Vera’s head did another tilt.
“I’ve thought about it, of course. I’ve fantasized about it. Spoken with Simon about it. Like we have all these things we’d love for our ideal wedding.”
“Like what sort of thing?”
“Details. Like what we’d like to wear, how we’d like the song that he sang when we met to play. Things like that. Never a full picture. Just brushstrokes.”
“Those are some important brushstrokes, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I guess,” he fidgeted slightly on his chair, “But it’s never been real you know. Like they’ve always been more in the vein of a fantasy.”
“Why is that?”
“Like I never really expected we’d be allowed to get married. My mom consenting to it was never something I thought about.”
“But now it seems like that’s not the case,” Vera said with a soft smile, “how do you feel right now, having this conversation?”
“Scared. Like before all this happened, I could just not really think about this and now I’m…., ” he paused for a minute, trying to get his thoughts together, “I’ve wanted to marry Simon for a while. I love him. I cannot imagine a point in my life going forward where I don’t love him. And before, when I thought of us getting married I always knew that it would be something that could never really happen so I just kinda let it become whatever fantasy I wanted. The fantasy was never my mom giving us permission or Simon joining the family. And it’s not just that I’m unhappy that this real possibility is different from my fantasy, but that something about this makes me just… uncomfortable. ”
Vera smiled softly at him.
“I want you to imagine that you and Simon have decided to accept your mother’s suggestion to get married. Can you imagine that?”
Wilhelm nodded, although the image was difficult to see. He supposed the first thing would be to wait and see for the Government to make this choice. After his mother’s birth, the Riksdag had modified the act of succession to one of absolute primogeniture so that the King’s firstborn, Kristina, would not be surpassed by any potential younger brothers. However, The Riksdag added in another clause: only the King’s direct descendants would be in the line of succession. When his grandfather’s bloodline ended, the monarchy would simply cease to exist. No one had expected that after his mother’s birth, his grandparents would be unable to have more kids. No one had expected Erik’s death. The bloodline, the monarchy, the country’s system of government depended on Wilhelm and his bloodline.
In order to remain as her the Riksdag had to consent to it. When his mother asked the government’s permission to marry, it had been a formality. His request to the government was a constitutional crisis waiting to happen. Rejecting his marriage would be a nice and smooth way to put the end of the monarchy on the calendar. Coincidentally, the most ardent monarchists parties in place were, as far as Wilhlem was concerned, closeted homophobes who’d more easily vote for the election of a new monarch than allow him to ascend.
But in the event that consent was granted, he supposed the next thing would be the PR. He supposed there’d be a lot of meetings regarding how to present their wedding to the people and how they should interact as a couple. Selecting an interviewer that would ask the right questions (how did you know he was the one, Kronprinsen ?) and not the wrong ones (so why did you lie about the leaked sex tape?). The two of them being subjected to endless photoshoots and rehearsals. Simon being sent to his first media bootcamp so he could learn how to smile and what words not to say and how to speak.
“I just picture us getting dragged around by the royal staff,” he said, “doing interviews and photoshoots and the like.”
“Oh ok,” Vera said with a laugh, “and who’s actually doing the wedding planning?”
Wilhelm snorted
“Probably my secretary. Or my secretary’s secretary. And I supposed Simon might get a secretary too.”
“Alright. Now, I want you to think back to that fantasy you mentioned before. How did wedding planning look like when it could be whatever you wanted it to be.” .
And for that image, there was no struggle. Wilhelm had first thought of it in California, when he’d stayed with Simon for a month while he attended grad school. They’d made a pact with each other before Simon left: that whenever either one of them felt like the long-distance had become too unbearable, that Wilhelm would ditch whatever royal commitments he had and fly in to visit Simon. Perhaps it was embarrassing to say that they’d barely lasted two months without each other, and he landed in Los Angeles on a warm October afternoon.
That month had been like a dream, almost. He’d expected Los Angeles would be a nightmare of a city for him. But surprisingly, the city of Angels did not seem to care for a lanky European prince that was practically unrecognizable in a short-sleeved shirt. No one photographed him, no one stopped and gawked at him as he went. This unexpected anonymity gave their lives a quiet normalcy that they had never had before, not even at Hillerska. They went on a ridiculous amount of dates just for the thrill of being together in public knowing that no one was watching.
They’d gone to the beach during one of these dates, had kissed each other silly until Wilhelm felt almost drunk with the excitement of it all. Perhaps that’s why he’d said it:
“Do you think you’d like to get married at the beach?”
Simon frowned slightly at the question.
“Why? Are we about to elope right now?”
“No, I just… like I know that’s like a pretty romantic wedding location.”
Simon, too, had been in that dream with him. So he’d answered:
“Look, I love the beach as much as the next person. But I do not want to get married anywhere where sand is involved.”
“Fair enough,” Willhelm answered before pressing his lips softly against Simon’s shoulder, “What would you like then?”
“I don’t really have a specific location in mind. But it'd be nice if it were in some sort of garden. Like I’d want it to be colorful.”
And from there they carried on. A greenhouse outside of Stockholm? Or maybe a villa in Tuscany?
“We could just do both! Like the civil ceremony in Stockholm and a ceremony in Italy”
“Just know that if you try to tell the Italians that you want ketchup on your pasta they will kick you out of the country.”
And then they talked about the filling of the cake, and what outfits they’d wear, and that they’d dance to ‘ It takes a fool to remain sane’ . And from that day on their shared fantasy continued to exist as this secret of theirs. They’d bring it up every so often to make amends ( a beach wedding wouldn’t be bad as long as the venue wasn’t on the sand) and additions ( the cake should have a dulce de leche filling; that Wilhelm should have a navy blue outfit and Simon a deep green one) . But, of course, these plans remained always as hypotheticals; as something they wanted but they knew they’d never get. And this shared frustrated dream was almost like a vow unto itself: If only I could, I’d make you mine.
Vera had been waiting for his answer.
“It was just us talking about what we wanted to do. What kind of venue we wanted, what kind of food and whatnot.”
“And how did that feel?”
“Exciting. Joyful.”
“So, what’s the difference between these two scenarios? What’s so joyful about your fantasy that you can’t have in the other scenario.”
“Us. We are. The fact that we can just think about what we want. And I know that I can never get that. That it’s not just my wedding, but the prince’s wedding. I’m used to that; all of the major events in my life have been public . But our relationship has never been part of that. And I don’t want to do that. And then I go back to feeling like an ass because I’m one of the most privileged people in the world and I’m complaining because I don’t want to get married in a cathedral.”
“Wilhelm, it’s not an entitled or selfish thing to want to plan the wedding that you want,” Vera said softly, “Just because you have a responsibility to the public doesn’t mean you have to give up control over your life. Right now, I’d encourage you to think primarily of what it is that you want to do. Your instincts are, rightfully so, telling you that you don’t want to have a wedding that is entirely in the hands of others. So, I want you to try to think about what it is that you want to do. And the answer might perfectly well be ‘I don’t want to get married at this moment’ or ‘I want to get married but only if Simon and I are allowed to make our own choices about it.’ But whatever the answer might be, you’re the one that’s choosing to answer it. ”
Therapy often left him exhausted. Introspection was hard work, he’d come to discover. It wasn’t always bad-- often the most cathartic sessions left him feeling at peace with himself. But today was tiring for different reasons.
He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.
“Hey,” he answered, “how was the flight?”
“Ugh, horrible,” Simon said. “There were not one but two babies in the row in front of me. I barely got any sleep. Where are you?”
“Malin is driving me back from Vera’s. Do you want me to come over or should I let you sleep?”
“You’re such a bad boyfriend. You’re supposed to not let me fall asleep until nighttime!”
“And if I bring you a very strong coffee ?”
“Then you’ll be the best boyfriend ever, of course”
“Ok. I’ll be there soon, then. Love you.”
“Love you too,” Simon mumbled into the speaker before hanging up.
The problem here wasn’t his own uncertainty. Not at all. Every part of him knew what it was that he wanted. It was this . To welcome Simon home after a trip with coffee. To build a home with him that was just for them.
No, the question here wasn’t that he didn’t know what he wanted, but that he knew perfectly well that he couldn’t have it. All this time, he'd been allowing himself to live in a world where he could dream otherwise. He worried now that life would ask them both to wake up.