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Growing up, Wilhelm always thought he had a decent understanding of the toll the royal legacy can take. He had spent his whole life trying and failing to measure up to the perfect image of his title and his older brother, Erik—like he was trapped in a tottering rowboat out at sea, able to see the shoreline in the distance but never able to break land.
The legacy was as heavy as the crown upon the king’s head, Erik used to jokingly say to him.
Oh… but it is so much heavier.
Wilhelm wishes many things in the wake of his first year at Hillerska.
He wishes it were easier—this thing he has with Simon. He wishes he didn’t feel the constant, drilling pressure to hide and deny these feelings. It brings out something sad and afraid in Simon’s eyes, whenever he starts to pull away, that always makes his throat catch. Sometimes, Wilhelm wishes he weren’t the prince, just a normal teenage boy with a crush who invites him to his friend’s football games and teases him with a radiant smile on his face.
Mainly, however, he wishes for Erik. To be there, unburied and in the flesh, a presence of safety and understanding that no one could ever hope to match. His brother had spent his whole life with the expectation that he would one day rule the country: a lifetime under the legacy of Crown Prince that Wilhelm was only just beginning to experience and a shared knowledge of its personal cost.
Wilhelm learns the true weight of their legacy when the culprit of the leaked sextape is revealed: August, his own cousin, his supposed confidante, his closest tie to Erik at Hillerska. It is further solidified when he learns that his mother had known the information for days and declined to tell him in order to save face for the royal family.
“He should be punished. He bloody ruined my fucking life! How the hell can you protect him?”
“I’m protecting you. And I’m protecting our family, and I’m protecting the royal family, and I’m protecting our legacy. That’s the only thing that can give Erik’s death any kind of mean—”
It takes everything in him not to scream after he hangs up.
He feels hollowed out and crushed underneath the heel of his own mother. The royal family have closed ranks against him in the name of this great legacy.
Wilhelm wants to ask—to cry until his throat goes raw and he can no longer speak—Why should our legacy cost this much? What’s the fucking point?
He doesn’t, but he can’t keep going like this.