This article is pay-walled because it’s part of the ‘Young Royals’ character analysis series, which will be locked in its entirety . (If you’re interested in the free content, you’re always welcome to check out the metaphor series, which starts here.)
Please read Part 1 of the character analysis series before reading the post below. Nothing in this article will make any sense if you don’t read Part 1 first.
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Many TV shows write sexual subtext into their stories; a lot of them do it badly, some very badly, but every once in a while, you can find an absolute gem sparkling in the dark. ‘Young Royals’ is one such gem, a case of seriously brilliant and cleverly written sexual subtext, that also manages to deal with the whole topic with great care, respect and understanding for the teenaged characters it has introduced and developed.
Let me give you an example of some rather crudely written sexual subtext first, so you understand what I mean when I say ‘badly written’ and can compare and contrast it with the sexual subtext in the screenplay of ‘Young Royals’ that we’re going to examine in this article. (You will see in a minute how ‘Young Royals’ approaches this whole concept differently, and why it’s doing it so much better.) I have specifically chosen the subtext of a gay storyline, so it’ll be easier to see the difference:
Sometimes a cigar really isn’t a cigar
The third season of the (admittedly soap-adjacent) historical drama series ‘Victoria’ (with Jenna Coleman of ‘Doctor Who’ fame in the role of the eponymous 19th-century Queen) boasts a lovely little scene in which a handsome young officer in uniform is standing on a balcony of Buckingham Palace, all alone in the dark, desperately trying but failing to light a cigar, his matches refusing to ignite and his mood getting ever more sour by the second.
Another young man steps out onto the balcony, greets him and, lo and behold, manages to light the officer’s cigar without fail, but with a quietly charming smile that would melt a thousand Victorian bombes glacées. The twinkle in his eye is probably barely legal in our day and age, much less in the 19th century. The two men exchange secretive smiles ensconced in their little bubble of light in the darkness, and then the scene ends.
In a later scene, the man’s fiancée complains that her intended husband was only ever interested in smoking cigars with his male friends.
I think none of us are naïve, and we all understand that sometimes a cigar…really isn’t a cigar at all. The metaphor isn’t particularly difficult to spot (to put it mildly); your grandmother would probably get it, blushing and shaking her head to herself in front of her TV set. The thing’s pretty much visible from outer space.
The young officer’s difficulty to light his cigar translates to woes of a different kind, of course. And the reason why it’s precisely a very handsome and very charming young man who manages to finally light up both the officer’s brain and set his loins ablaze is really not that difficult to guess at.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not knocking the two actors’ performance here. They’re two really talented young men trying to do their best with a rather yawn-inducing script. The scene on the balcony itself is actually quite lovely both for its mood and the quiet smiles they share, too. It’s the writing that’s subpar not just in this scene but for the show overall.
Scenes like the one described above with cheap sexual subtext like that are a dime a dozen on screen these days. Almost every show does it, and it always looks the same: Take some more or less phallic object, make it a metaphor, write a scene around it, congratulate yourself on your cleverness as a writer. Rinse and repeat.
(The subtext is also invariably phallic in nature, by the way. In that respect, ‘Young Royals’ gets at least some creativity points for having an ‘egg’ metaphor that represents Felice’s reproductive organs because, let’s face it, female reproductive organs are largely absent from the metaphorical subtext of any show or movie. Although obviously that ‘egg’ metaphor is just about as crude and simple as the ‘cigar’ one above is in nature.)
The main problem with the ‘cigar’ metaphor above isn’t even that it’s about the thousandth time I’ve seen a phallus metaphor on TV in some way, shape or form. It’s not even just the fact that it’s incredibly obvious, either.
The problem is that it doesn’t connect to anything else. There is no metaphorical subtext worth speaking of. The show ‘Victoria’ just throws you this one bone (sorry for the pun) and expects you to feel clever once you’ve worked it out, but there’s almost nothing else to be found.
Otherwise the relationship you see depicted between these two chaps plays out entirely in the show’s plain text, i.e. there are no other metaphors, no motifs, no allegory, nor any other literary devices that would tell you anything interesting about those characters. And there’s certainly nothing that would subtextually tell you anything about what their dynamics (both sexually and emotionally) would be in the bedroom and outside of it. What you see is what you get, i.e. the dialogue you get actually means what is directly, literally being said. That’s it. (And you don’t get a lot of scenes or even a lot of character development with these two, anyway.)
Now, you could, of course, argue that sexual subtext isn’t that important, “What does it matter to me what two fictional characters do or don’t do in the bedroom?”
But that’s precisely the point: They’re fictional. In fiction, every little detail is important and informs the plot or the characterization. Sexual subtext in fiction gives us a much better feel for the characters and for their motivations, for the decisions they make at certain points in the story and for other decisions they might hesitate or fail to make. In fiction (and only in fiction!), the sex a couple has tells us a lot about said couple. (And we will see in a moment what is going on between Wilhelm and Simon in the bedroom department and why that is important for them as a couple.)
If even the weather is important in fiction, then certainly the sexual subtext should tell you something about your characters' sorrows, pains, fears, joys and redemptive moments.
And while, in real life, you can’t (and shouldn’t!) jump to conclusions about two strangers’ sex life just based on their personality and behaviour, this is much different with fictional characters: Fictional characters aren’t real people. Their sexual woes, their problems, their sexual dynamics as a couple, invariably inform the rest of the story; they impact the plot, compound the couple’s other problems outside of the bedroom and should be resolved at points in the script where other major emotional resolutions happen, as well.
In short, the sex life of fictional characters is important for the rest of the story…but it’s rarely treated that way. Usually, all you get is a haha-find-the-phallic-metaphor moment, and that’s about it.
If, as a writer, you write characters that are complex and well-developed in every other way (personality, depth of character, problems, goals, fears, etc.), then their sex life should be just as complex, just as deeply explored and just as meaningful for the characters at large. In other words, if you’ve managed to write a story that is boasting many metaphors that are all connected and form one coherent subtextual web, why not connect it to the sexual subtext of your story and make that one just as elaborate, just as complex and engaging, frightening, frustrating, sad, joyful and exhilarating as the rest of your subtext?
This is what ‘Young Royals’ does.
And as you will see in a moment, it doesn’t use particularly unconventional or unorthodox writing techniques or literary devices for that. It does what is typically done in screenplay writing; it just does it better and explores the whole topic more deeply than many other shows.
Granted its subtext has its cigar-tier moments, too: The hook-in-the-locker-room scene isn’t particularly clever or interesting in explaining what is going on with Wilhelm. As a matter of fact, if moments like these were the only sexual subtext the show had to offer, I would definitely dismiss the whole thing as badly, crudely and unsubtly written. But the subtext is, in fact, much more elaborate, and we can find out a lot about our characters, their relationship dynamics, their secrets and their fears just by examining what the sexual subtext tells us goes on in the bedroom.
So, how does one write good sexual subtext? And how did ‘Young Royals’ rise to the challenge?
Well, follow me into the subtextual maze, and we will find out together.