Negative Space – The Simon-as-a-boarder theory examined through the lens of art history

(examples: “Young Royals”, “Up”, “Brokeback Mountain”, “Titanic”, paintings by Ingres and Vermeer)

I had originally planned to make this a bonus ‘dessert’ treat for my paid subscribers sometime later, seeing as it’s a bit of its own thing and not really part of our usual, regular metaphor posts. But since then, so many people have contacted me, asking me to write about the Simon-as-a-boarder theory that I realized there must be a general interest in this. Things that interest so many people should be for everyone, so I’m keeping this unlocked and free for everyone to read. (My paid subscribers will receive a post about shot composition in about a week or two instead.) So, I hope you’ll all enjoy this little ‘dessert’ treat, bon appétit.

Did you notice Erik went from a double to a single room at Hillerska, and Wilhelm’s ‘room journey’ was the exact reverse? That’s no coincidence. The show is using the room situation to tell us something about these characters in its metaphorical subtext. To understand what that is, we need to discuss a concept from art history first.

Negative space is a term that originated in the formal study of art. Here’s a definition you might typically find in an art history textbook: Negative space is the space in a painting that’s not occupied by the depicted subject(s), i.e. the empty space around and between the subject(s). The space occupied by the subject itself is called positive space.

Let’s take a look at an example:

                                         (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ famous 1814 oil painting ‘La Grande Odalisque’. 

One could say a lot about this painting, from its controversial depiction of human anatomy in a neo-Mannerist style to its equally controversial orientalist theme, but we’re going to ignore all of that today. For the purposes of this discussion, we will concern ourselves only with what’s in the background: nothing. Because, as you will see in a moment, in art, nothing is sometimes everything.

The dark wall behind this lovely lady is the negative space in this painting, and as you’ve probably all grasped instinctively, this space might be empty, but that certainly doesn’t mean it’s devoid of meaning – quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.

So, what’s the purpose of all that negative space on this canvas? Is that dark empty wall just there to contrast nicely with the vast expanse of the concubine’s smooth skin?

I’m sure there’s something to that, but this idea only addresses the question of what effect is achieved by inserting the dark wall into the picture. In other words, this just tells us how the artist achieved what he was trying to achieve by means of technique, not why the negative space is there in the first place.

Negative space is a vacuum that wants to be filled, and in this case it relies on our imagination to do so. The emptiness here cleverly showcases a potential contained, yet not fully expressed in the painting.

You see, the depicted subject is a woman we’re only shown from behind (the technical term for this in art history is a ‘Rückenfigur’). The way she’s positioned on that chaise longue makes it impossible for us to get a full frontal view of her naked body. We catch just a tantalizing glimpse of one of her breasts and receive the coquettish, potentially challenging look she’s giving us over her shoulder. The painting relies on our imagination to insert ourselves into that negative space. The ‘Rückenfigur’ generates the tension, the paradox between showing and hiding, and the negative space capitalizes on that by leaving everything to the imagination of those gazing at the picture.

A discerning 19th-century gentleman would have instantly known what that empty space on the other side of that bed is for (and quite a few discerning ladies, as well, I’m sure). It contains the potential to insert ourselves into the picture, creating a perpetual erotic frisson of sorts by never allowing us to act out that fantasy: After all, in reality, we’re not in the painting; we’re on the other side of the canvas, forever trapped in the room at the Louvre museum as a visitor, unable to just vanish into this fictional reality.

The negative space here is unfulfilled potential. And as you can see: Just because it’s empty doesn’t mean it’s empty…in the figurative sense of the word.

With the invention of cinema, the concept of negative space was transferred from art to film pretty much instantly. So, let’s now take a look at how it’s utilized on screen, shall we?

In this analysis series on ‘Young Royals’, we have touched on quite a few interesting and rather different TV shows and movies already – from the epic and brutal mafia classic ‘The Godfather’ to the arthouse masterpiece ‘Russian Ark’ and the light-hearted rom-com ‘Dash & Lily’. So, let’s diversify our palette even more by taking a closer look at an animated film:

The 2009 animated Pixar movie ‘Up’, a magnificent, both heartbreaking and heartwarming film, that manages to make grown men cry within the first ten minutes of screen time (reportedly), tells the story of Carl Fredricksen, an elderly man who loses his beloved wife Ellie at the very beginning of the movie.

To explain what this film actually achieves by using the concept of negative space, I’ll first show you a shot containing a lot of positive space, which the movie uses to contrast the later negative-space-heavy shot with. This is approximately what it looks like if you storyboard it on the back of an envelope:

The elderly couple, Carl and Ellie, are cleaning a window. He is inside the house (underscoring the fact that he is a bit of an introvert and a loner), and she is on the other side of that window pane, outside (highlighting the fact that she is his ‘way out’, his connection to the outside world; she is what motivates him to come out of his shell). They’re clearly happy in the shot, smiling at each other, wrinkles and all, enjoying doing these household chores together, cleaning a window pane, so as to metaphorically make it easier for him to see the outside world.

After Ellie has tragically passed away, we get the shot I wanted to discuss with you, the one containing the negative space:

It shows us the exact same window from the exact same angle, and Carl is even doing the exact same thing (cleaning it), but Ellie isn’t there anymore. He is doing it alone now. A notably shrunken and more haggard-looking Carl is standing in the same spot, cleaning the same window pane, but on the other side of it, there’s absolute emptiness. The negative space (i.e. the empty spot behind the glass) highlights his loneliness and grief and shows us that his connection to the outside world has been severed: He’s now trapped behind the glass pane, cut off from the outside world; there’s no one on the other side for whom he would even consider opening that window anymore – an incredibly sad and powerful image.

A few moments earlier, we do actually get an even more poignant shot:

Carl is still lying in bed. It’s a double bed, a bed made for two people, for a married couple, but one side is now conspicuously empty – forever. To underscore this point, the filmmakers left Ellie’s empty pillow on the bed and made sure the rays of the golden early-morning sunlight from the window fell specifically on that empty side of the bed, illuminating the negative space and making it glow brightly in the shot, so it could deliver its heartrending message loud and clear: Ellie isn’t there anymore. She’s gone.

Note how well-thought-out every little detail in this shot is: It appears symmetrical at first, which really highlights the empty spot on the left side of the frame. A closer look reveals all the little differences, though; all the objects on Carl’s side of the shot (the lamp, the bedside table, even the picture frame on the wall) are straight-edged and angular. All the things on what used to be Ellie’s side of the bed have rounded edges and no corners (the lamp, her bedside table and the other picture on the wall): Ellie, Carl’s better half, that complemented him and made him whole, made him less brusque and more rounded out as a character is gone. He’s left, all alone in the dark with his angular personality, that’s all edges and corners other people just bump into.

Note also how the light that’s illuminating the empty side of the bed is streaming in through a window, which once again shows us that symbolically Ellie was Carl’s window to the outside world. In the shot itself, the sunlight doesn’t reach him on his dark side of the bed. Translation: Now that she’s dead, the world can’t reach him anymore.

Once again, you can see that negative space might be empty, but it’s most certainly not devoid of meaning – far from it, as a matter of fact. It’s precisely the emptiness that imbues it with depth and significance.

By the way, just so we don’t misunderstand each other, negative space doesn’t necessarily have to be flat. You don’t need a broad surface area (like a window pane or a wall or bed) for negative space to come into play: The 2005 movie ‘Brokeback Mountain’, that I’m sure a lot of my readers are familiar with, has a particularly heartbreaking ending; its main protagonist Ennis is standing in front of a closet (that in and of itself is an interesting metaphorical factoid!), staring at the shirt of his dead lover Jack. A shirt is normally supposed to be worn by a person, but the person is missing here; the garment is empty. The negative space is folded into the fabric of that shirt hanging on the closet door. (By the way, if you are avoiding ‘Brokeback Mountain’ because of its infamously tragic ending, you really shouldn’t – at least not if you’re interested in cinematography. What Ang Lee has created there is nothing short of a masterpiece of cinematography, that teaches its viewers how to interpret shots, framing, camera angles etc.; it will certainly come up on this here blog again.)

I’ve given you three very different examples of how negative space can appear in art and on screen. Once you start looking for it, you’ll notice it practically everywhere; it’s such a popular and widely used tool in the symbolism toolbox. The question we have to ask ourselves now is: Do the makers of ‘Young Royals’ know about it?

I mean, obviously that’s a rhetorical question. All filmmakers know about it; it’s a very basic concept. But what we’re trying to establish here beyond a doubt is: Can we actually prove that they know about it by examining the show itself? Yes, we can.

After Erik’s funeral in episode four of season one, the remaining three members of the Royal Family sit down for a meal back at the castle. The shot we’re given looks something like this:

Note the empty place at the table that used to be Erik’s. There’s our negative space!

Keep in mind that the filmmakers could have just as easily sat the family down at a round table (where the empty seat would have been less noticeable) or an overly long dinner table in some extravagant dining hall at the castle (which would have left a lot of seats unoccupied). But they specifically chose a square table designed for four people. They even put an empty placemat on the table to visually show us that this family is now missing one member. There are plates, napkins, food items, glasses, forks and knives lying on the other placemats; it’s just Erik’s that’s empty: Erik died and left all of this negative space behind.

Curiously, the filmmakers didn’t go with the time-proven lighting tradition of illuminating the deceased person’s negative space (here: Erik’s empty seat and placemat), as had been done in our example with Ellie’s empty pillow in ‘Up’. Quite the opposite, actually: They set a candleholder with extinguished candles next to Erik’s placemat. Burning candles are, of course, a memento mori symbol when depicted in a painting. They are burning to remind us that our time on this earth is running out and our life will be extinguished before we know it. These candles are shown to be already extinguished: Erik’s life is over. He’s dead now.

Once again, the seat and placemat might be empty, the candles without flames might give us a sense of emptiness as well, but again this negative space is not devoid of meaning. This entire tableau we’re presented with shows us that this used to be a family of four that has just tragically lost one of its members.

Just as with the examples from ‘Up’ and ‘Brokeback Mountain’, the negative space in this shot from ‘Young Royals’ is used to symbolize grief and loss. As we have seen in the Ingres painting, however, it can sometimes represent unfulfilled potential, as well.

(Negative space in art and on screen can actually be used to express far more than just grief or potential – a sense of unease, for example, when a largely empty landscape is shown – but for the purposes of this ‘Young Royals’ analysis, we’re going to address only grief and potential because those two concepts are the ones the show expresses in this way. If you want to see an example where the symbolic meaning of negative space is turned pretty much inside out, I recommend watching the Oscar-nominated animated short film ‘Negative Space’ (2017). It’s just over 5 minutes long, but it explores the whole concept of negative space in a very clever way.)

One other important thing we have to understand is that negative space isn’t just a visual concept. While it can be used in a visual way (just as in the examples we’ve discussed above), it does, in fact, encompass far more than just that.

Consider, for example, that so-called ‘rests’ and ‘pauses’ in music are technically also negative space, seeing as they are defined as the moments of silence between notes.

Just because there is no sound, however, doesn’t mean these moments aren’t important: They can be very significant for the flow of the melody and the harmonic and rhythmic structure immediately preceding and following them. They can be used to great and sometimes surprising effect – or just to make sure the audience can experience the reverberation of the notes played prior to the pause. For an orchestra, a general pause usually means that, as a musician, you’re not even allowed to turn the page of your sheet music at that particular moment; the rustling of the pages would disrupt the audience’s experience of absolute and total silence for those brief few seconds that it lasts (and if you’re one those people in the audience prone to coughing precisely during a general pause, may the spirits of all the dead composers haunt you for all eternity!). A general pause creates and heightens the auditory tension we experience as we get fully immersed into a symphony or sonata or whatever piece of music we’re listening to.

So, as you can see, the visual arts work with negative space, music does too…and narration (whether in a novel, play or screenplay) frequently uses it, as well. There is, indeed, such a thing as narrative negative space (phew, that’s a mouthful).

Consider the ‘Harry Potter’ book series, for example: Harry’s dead parents are arguably the negative space in his story. At the beginning of the first book, we just know that Harry lives with a god-awful step family; we know that something happened to his parents and that they’re dead, but we don’t know what went down exactly, and their death is a taboo subject that’s not really talked about. The parents are the gap both in his backstory and in what starts to evolve as his own storyline. For him, they are the blank spaces on the map, his very own terra incognita, and yet it’s from this black hole that many if not all the dark plots and storylines spill out onto the pages of Harry’s story and character development. This gap is the negative space that’s slowly being filled in the more Harry finds out about his parents. It’s a case of narrative negative space slowly turning into narrative positive space.

I’m getting the feeling that we’ve talked a lot about negative space being used to express grief, so let me give you another example of how it can be used to showcase potential: James Cameron’s 1997 movie ‘Titanic’ has its main protagonist Rose unpack a whole lot of paintings once she’s come aboard the eponymous ship. Her fiancé Cal cold-heartedly dismisses her interest in art, thereby showing us that he’s not just an opinionated, unfriendly fellow but also plainly not the right man for her. The right one is, at that point in the story, just a gap in the narrative, someone who is still missing in her life.

Since we’ve already talked quite a bit about art in this article, please allow me to elaborate on this: Rose has notably not bought a bunch of baroque or rococo paintings; all the paintings she is unpacking in that scene are what we would regard today as classics of modernity (I think I spotted a Monet, a Picasso and a Degas; maybe you’ll spot more). This tells us that, unlike her conservative fiancé, Rose is a modern woman, who just doesn’t fit into the old-fashioned upper-class world she inhabits with her mother and the man she’s supposed to marry. She has the potential to break out of it and lead such an interesting life, but so far there’s been a gap in the narrative where the catalyst for that growth should be.

We might even mention the fact that Claude Monet, whose failing eyesight did influence some of his work, was at first derided by contemporary critics for the blurriness of his impressionist paintings that didn’t seem lifelike or realistic enough for their conservative tastes. Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’, which Rose unpacks in her suite aboard the ‘Titanic’, launched cubism as a movement that revolutionized the visual language of art. In short, these artists show us things that aren’t visible in real life; they show us more than our eyes can ordinarily see, a new perspective on life. They massively challenge the way we perceive the world. This is most likely what drew Rose to them in the first place. And that’s exactly what the people around her don’t understand about these paintings. That’s why her fiancé derides them as ‘finger paintings’ in that scene. All that Rose is missing at this point in the narrative is the person to help her break these chains. (And it’s no coincidence that Jack, whom she meets later, is an artist himself.) Interestingly, the scene in which she unpacks the paintings doesn’t show us any visual negative space. There isn’t any conspicuously empty space in the frame, but the narrative has a gap. It’s only after Rose has met Jack, and the narrative negative space has turned into narrative positive space, that she starts to realize her potential in life.

What I would like you to take away from this long exposition is that negative space doesn’t just happen on its own. It’s not just empty by coincidence; it’s usually deeply meaningful.

The example of negative space from ‘Young Royals’ we’re going to look at now arguably straddles the line between visual negative space and narrative negative space. It is both visually shown to us again and again, but it also represents a conspicuous gap in the narrative. (And remember: Just because it’s empty, doesn’t mean that it’s devoid of meaning – in this case: unrealized potential…or should I say: as of yet unrealized potential?)

I have received a lot of requests to write about the Simon-as-a-boarder question, and I think one kind tumblr person who messaged me put it best when they said, “That empty bed in Wilhelm’s room has been driving me insane for ages.”

I think this reaction is spot on: That empty bed is supposed to drive us insane. That’s exactly what its purpose is in every shot where it’s visually shown to us and in the narrative at large where it exists as this conspicuous gap. There’s a technical term for it: negative space.

Important side note here: Please keep in mind that a film or TV production isn’t real life. Things that happen on screen don’t just happen by coincidence. They are specifically written and created by someone. That’s why things on TV have meaning while they might have no deeper meaning in your own life. You might have an empty bed in your home (maybe you have a spare bedroom, or maybe a family member of yours is off travelling somewhere right now). An empty bed in real life doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything. It’s just there. But in real life, your mood doesn’t affect the weather either (if it does, please tell me how you do that). On screen, on the other hand, this happens all the time. 

Just to give you another example: You might have a half-empty vodka bottle in your home for some obscure reason (maybe someone brought it over years ago, and it’s been sitting there for ages; it doesn’t have to mean anything). But the half-empty vodka bottle in Micke Eriksson’s home definitely means something because, unlike you, Simon’s dad is not a real person, and everything he does, says or owns was either written into the story by a writer or added to the set by a prop master. Your vodka bottle doesn’t have to mean anything; Micke’s almost certainly shows us that he has an alcohol problem.

A TV show is a fictional reality in which details have meaning (otherwise they wouldn’t be there) because virtually everything in a shot has to be built, arranged, properly lit, etc.

To understand what that empty bed (i.e. the very much intentional negative space) in Wilhelm’s room means, we have to first examine what the room itself means. Because, make no mistake, that room means something!

A room (on screen or in literature, not in real life!) often represents the life you’re destined to lead, the metaphorical space you’re occupying through your very existence, a space in reality that destiny has carved out for you.

I know there might be objections to this reading in the context of ‘Young Royals’. I’ve had reservations about this interpretation myself for the longest time until I realized that Erik and Wilhelm move in opposite directions on their ‘room journey’ at Hillerska, and everything finally clicked into place. (The fact that they move in opposite directions is a seemingly unimportant detail that is, however, specifically pointed out to us by Erik in the very first episode. And if you’ve read more of my analysis series, you’ll know how I feel about seemingly ‘unimportant’ details...)

Remember we can’t just say, “Oh, I think the school’s administrators just gave Wilhelm a bigger room because they wanted to show their respect for the new Crown Prince or console him after his brother died.” The administrators aren’t real people; they don’t exist. The writers make them do things. And we can’t say, “Erik just switched rooms because that’s the rule: All the third-years get a single room.” It’s all a fictional universe; the writers make up all the rules in their universe. 

And to claim that the writers just wrote this whole room change situation in there on a lark, you would have to accept that they brought up the topic twice without attaching any deeper meaning to it: Once when Erik specifically tells us about it in episode one and once when the show goes out of its way to show us that Wilhelm gets a new room, i.e. you would have to accept that a TV production wasted valuable screen time, a new set and the work hours it would take to prepare it for no apparent reason.

I will freely admit that I was against a metaphorical reading of the rooms for a long time myself. My main objection went something like this: How can Wilhelm’s double room have any metaphorical meaning? After all, Wilhelm invited Simon to his old room in episode three of season one. It was a single room (without an empty bed). Wilhelm was already keen on sharing that space with Simon, so the double room can’t mean anything, and the empty bed can’t mean anything, and Wilhelm switching rooms can’t mean anything either.

If this is your main objection to the ‘room’ metaphor (and trust me, I’ve felt the same for a long time), please keep in mind that Wilhelm’s second room (the double room with the empty bed) doesn’t necessarily have to be a ‘love’ metaphor. The room most likely doesn’t represent the depth of Wilhelm’s feelings for Simon. We have other metaphors for their love (the ‘water’ metaphor and the ‘music’ metaphor come to mind).

I’m sure Wilhelm was already head over heels in love when he invited Simon to his (single) room in episode three of season one. That their feelings for each other were already deep and meaningful is attested to by the other metaphors we have already discussed. The powerful physical attraction, which the show hints at unsubtly and somewhat inelegantly in its crude subtext in the locker room scene and elsewhere, was also already manifest, so the weekend after Parents’ Day would have been a time of passion if it hadn’t fallen through, and the two of them would have undoubtedly been a romantically and sexually involved couple by Monday. I don’t doubt that all of it was real and they were genuinely in love already.

But consider this: A long-term relationship is built on more than just being romantically and sexually attracted to each other (even if the love is genuine and deep-felt). A truly committed relationship between two emotionally mature people means a common purpose, common goals in life. It means, ‘My life is your life now, your fate – my fate. Your burden is mine to carry, too. Anything that happens to you happens to me, as well. Each turn your life takes is a turn in my life’s path, too.’

To achieve this state of emotional maturity is already difficult for us ordinary folks, and Wilhelm isn’t an ordinary person; his burden is on a different order of magnitude (think: the Crown, the prospect of being the future head of state, public attention, being followed by paparazzi everywhere, etc.). They’re also both teenagers who shouldn’t have to deal with any of this at that point in their life.

Being in a committed long-term relationship should also mean, ‘I can’t physically bear the thought of lying to you because it would feel like I’m lying to the other half of myself.’ And it would, at some point, mean being open about who you love, letting the whole world know who it is that’s helping you carry your burden and fulfil the role destiny has chosen for you.

All of that is tied up in the ‘room’ metaphor.

And obviously Wilhelm and Simon are nowhere near this emotionally mature relationship in episode three of season one when Wilhelm invites Simon to his (old) room. (To be fair, none of us would be at their age and in their situation. That kind of relationship takes time and hard work.)

The half-empty (double) room that Wilhelm only gets in episode four of season one is fate unexpectedly presenting him with a new and very different life, throwing him a completely new challenge – the prospect of the Crown.

And the empty half of that room shows us that he simply can’t cope with all of that without that significant other person in his life. Without that certain person, this sort of life would be unlivable. So, the stakes are higher now than before. It’s now about more than sexual attraction, more than romantic love even, it’s now about the deeply existential need to share your entire life with this other person because otherwise the role you have to fulfil would eat you alive.

Wilhelm receives his new (double) room specifically after becoming Crown Prince, a dramatic change in his life. The two things, the room and the Crown Prince role, are thus clearly metaphorically linked. And this new life (new room) has a massive black hole, a gap in it (metaphorically: an empty bed). Wilhelm cannot fulfil his new role, live this life, if that gap remains. That negative space, that vacuum, screams to be filled.

Make no mistake, Wilhelm was already miserable and lonely before, struggling with his role as ‘spare’, feeling abandoned and intensely alone (all of that is metaphorically reflected in his small, narrow single room), and he would have loved to bring Simon into his life, to share his space with him, to have someone he could love and desire.

But the moment his whole life was uprooted (visually shown to us as his ‘baggage’ being moved to a new room), this need became much more acute. 

Now it’s not just about being miserable and lonely and closeted and unhappy anymore. The new development is that he now has a role (on top of all that!) that is completely impossible to fulfil if he tries to do so on his own. This new life (like the room) will always have a gap in it, a hole, until that empty space is filled. So this has now become an existential question.

Still not convinced the room has a metaphorical meaning? 

Look at it in this way: The double room represents the life you have to live as a Crown Prince, but the way you organize and occupy that room shows us what kind of Crown Prince you choose to be.

Wilhelm receives his double room once he unexpectedly becomes Crown Prince. Erik, on the other hand, is put in a double room right from the start because he arrives at Hillerska already a Crown Prince.

Note how brilliantly the show’s writers play with the metaphor here: The way the two Crown Princes handle this burdensome life (the room) is completely different. 

Erik has a roommate in his double room. (Most likely this is not a lover; the roommate is meant to be read as a metaphorical representation of friendship.) We already know Erik was at least somewhat happy at Hillerska until he had to leave. He tells us as much in plain text. And even though his friendships at the school were a bit superficial (the ‘rowing’ metaphor, remember?), they were apparently enough to keep him afloat for a while (pun very much intended). He had a friend in his metaphorical room (i.e. Erik had friendships in his life as Crown Prince, but they were superficial and most likely ended once he left). Erik never put a significant other in his double room. We know he never dared to pursue any romantic relationships out in the open, so his love life and the metaphorical ‘double room’ remained separate entities. He didn’t have the strength to fight the Court, the press, the establishment to be able to put something more vital than just superficial friendships in his metaphorical ‘double room’. He didn’t have that fight in him. (And before you say, “The school doesn’t allow boys to have girls as roommates.” This is a fictional universe. The writers make up the rules in it. If they had wanted to, they could have shown us Erik in a hotel room with a girl, or better still, have him fight his parents to be able to invite a girlfriend to his room at the castle.)

Wilhelm’s double room (life as Crown Prince) is, so far, completely empty on one side. Again, this doesn’t mean he’s not deeply in love. It just means that, so far, his life as a Crown Prince and his love life have remained separate entities. That negative space wants to be filled, though.

Unlike Erik, he has no roommate (superficial buddy-type friend) in his double room. Wilhelm is all alone in that life as Crown Prince. But at some point, he will have to share that life, that Crown, that role with someone. (And we all know who that someone is going to be!) And unlike Erik, Wilhelm will find the strength and the courage to fight for that: He will find the strength to put his boyfriend in there. (Which metaphorically also means that he will be open about this relationship, by the way. You can’t put another person in your room without the whole world knowing about it.)

What’s more, Wilhelm arrives at Hillerska not a Crown Prince. That’s why, unlike Erik, he isn’t put in a double room at first (the single room = not a Crown Prince). You can even read his loneliness, his struggle with his role as ‘spare’, his unhappiness into that narrow single room if you like.

Now, as we’ve already discussed, Wilhelm only receives his metaphorical ‘double room’ once he becomes Crown Prince, but look at what happened to Erik!

Erik arrived at Hillerska already a Crown Prince and was accordingly put into a metaphorical ‘double room’ (that he managed to fill only with superficial friendships), but then something interesting happened in his third year…(By the way, I don’t think this is specifically about something that happened in the third year itself; it just happens at that point to foreshadow future events in Erik’s life; just like the moment when Erik and Wilhelm switch places on the sofa at the beginning of the show isn’t specifically about that very moment at the castle but foreshadows future developments, as well.)

Erik received a single room, foreshadowing the fact that at some point in the future he wouldn’t be a Crown Prince anymore (because he would be dead). If you once again want to read the switch to a ‘single room’ as a narrowing event (read: his life as becoming more and more unhappy, miserable and lonely) until that life ended in the narrowest of places, the confines of a sports car, be my guest.

What we’ve learned now is that basically this is what the whole ‘room’ metaphor can be broken down to:

The double room = life as a Crown Prince

The single room = not a Crown Prince yet/not a Crown Prince anymore

What’s most heartbreaking about this whole metaphor is the sentence Erik utters when he and Wilhelm are shown into Wilhelm’s single room in episode one, “Wow, I’m so jealous!”

Remember: The double room represents life as a Crown Prince. The single room represents life as Not-Crown-Prince (and in Wilhelm’s case arguably his difficult life as the ‘spare’). 

As hard to believe as this may be, this one line Erik says there in episode one subtextually suggests that he’s jealous of Wilhelm’s lot in life.

Wilhelm is unhappy, lonely and struggles with his role as ‘spare’, and still…Erik is envious of that life of not-having-to-be-the-Crown-Prince. He thinks Wilhelm’s miserable life is preferable to his own life as a Crown Prince (even when he had superficial buddy-type friends in it).

That’s one of those gut-wrenching moments that you just cannot unsee once you’ve examined the metaphorical subtext of the show: Erik wants to have a single room (the life of not-being-a-Crown-Prince). And since he received a single room at the end of his stay at Hillerska and this foreshadowed something about his future, we can only conclude that his wish not to be a Crown Prince anymore was eventually fulfilled and he died. (I don’t want to go too much into the whole suicide-speculation thing here because that deserves a whole article of its own, but suffice it to say that Erik wanted a single room and he got his wish.)

Long story short: Erik and Wilhelm switch rooms (I’m sure they’re not physically the same rooms, but figuratively they are). They switch rooms just like they switched places on the sofa at the beginning of episode one.

Erik gets his wish not to be Crown Prince anymore (metaphorically: a single room and then a very cramped sports car). Wilhelm is now burdened with life as a Crown Prince and receives the metaphorical ‘double room’ instead. But unlike Erik, Wilhelm doesn’t have a roommate. Wilhelm needs to fill that negative space in that metaphorical ‘room’. (Remember what I said about negative space often representing a potential?)

I don’t really think you can expand the ‘room’ metaphor of Erik and Wilhelm metaphorically switching rooms to any more characters at Hillerska. (If you set your story at a school, you have to let the kids sleep somewhere. Not every glass of water on this show can have a metaphorical meaning, and not every room can be a metaphor either.) But it’s at least curious that the only room we ever see August in is a narrow single room. Now, if we believe the school’s administrators play a bit fast and loose with the rules when it comes to allocating those rooms, it’s at least possible that August was never even put in a double room in his first year. (In any case, we never hear it mentioned!) 

We only ever see August in that small single room – even when he’s with Sara, even when he is essentially offered a shot at becoming Crown Prince, he is never given a double room. The single room keeps telling us ‘Not a Crown Prince’ loud and clear throughout season two. There isn’t really any space in his life for anyone else, and that life itself is lonely, miserable and narrow, so to speak.

Now, earlier we have examined examples in which negative space represented grief or potential. Grief is about someone who isn’t there anymore. Potential is about someone who isn’t there…yet!

And that whole empty space in Wilhelm’s double room looks exactly like there’s potential there: It’s not just that the bed is empty; the entire empty half of that room is impersonal. Somebody needs to put their own things and attributes in there. I’m sure once Simon moves in there, we will see ‘music’ on that side of the room everywhere. I don’t know if the school will allow him to pin up his ‘Music’ poster (which we’ve already discussed). If not, he could always just throw his keyboards on that empty bed. He’ll definitely bring his ‘baggage’ (i.e. his orange backpack representing his own issues and problems, that need to be unpacked together with Wilhelm!).

For the purposes of this metaphor, it’s not even important whether Simon will ever actually sleep in that bed; they might just share Wilhelm’s. What’s important is that that negative space is filled with Simon’s things. (My favourite option, by the way, would be for them to push the two beds together and make them into one double bed if that’s physically possible in the location they’re filming at and the beds aren’t bolted to the floor.)

I mean, we’ve arguably already seen how desperately Wilhelm tried to fill that negative space (i.e. that hole in his new life); it just didn’t work – because it couldn’t work. I’m aware a lot of people read Wilhelm trying to hook up with Felice in that other bed as a representation of that bed being somehow wrong, a metaphor for that wrong pursuit of Felice. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the bed itself; it’s just that Wilhelm tried to fill that negative space with the wrong person. (Obviously he only did so when he was at his lowest point, completely devastated at the prospect of potentially losing Simon.) But the metaphor still holds up here: Wilhelm has narrative negative space in his life. It’s shown to us as visual negative space. And he desperately tries to turn it into positive space (read: fill it with someone). He just does so with the wrong person, which is why it doesn’t work out. It can’t and won’t ever work out that way.

The only person that empty bed belongs to and has always belonged to ever since Wilhelm got that double room (his life as a Crown Prince) is Simon!

And again, this doesn’t mean Wilhelm didn’t love Simon just as deeply before he became Crown Prince. He did. He invited him into his single room (his miserable, lonely little life). 

But we never actually saw Simon in Wilhelm’s old (single) room. He never physically entered it. He was already reaching out into that space, yes. Wilhelm texted him and he texted back while Wilhelm was sitting in that room (read: that lonely, miserable life). Signals were flying back and forth, so to speak.

But the existential need for a grown-up, emotionally mature relationship, for someone to share his entire life with, to share the Crown with, only became this acute for Wilhelm when he got that half-empty double room.

Now that he’s a Crown Prince, his life (his double room) just doesn’t work anymore without Simon: A double room that’s occupied by just one person is illogically defined; it’s an oxymoron, a contradiction in and of itself – it doesn’t work by definition if there’s just one person living in it. (And how clever of the writers to make a double room the metaphor for life with the Crown! It tells us right in its name that you can only pull this off if you have your partner by your side.)

Wilhelm got his double room just like he got his life as a Crown Prince: unexpectedly. He didn’t ask for it. It just happened. The ‘suitcase’ (that he fought over with August in episode one, remember?), the ‘suitcase’ representing his heavy burden, a.k.a. the Crown, just ‘magically’ materialized in that double room. The ‘suitcase’ was visually put down next to that empty bed. And that’s the point Wilhelm is at right now: Such a heavy burden and so, so much negative space…

We don’t seriously assume that negative space is going to be filled by, say, Henry after a reshuffle at Skogsbacken, do we?

Simon has to move in there. That’s the only thing that makes metaphorical, subtextual sense.

That negative space in Wilhelm’s life needs to be filled not by a superficial buddy-type friend, not even by a true and good friend like Felice, that space needs to be filled by the love of Wilhelm’s life.

Simon doesn’t have to like it at first (I’m sure he will be quite sceptical in the beginning). Simon doesn’t actually have to sleep in that bed (although having them hook up in that empty bed to show us the contrast with the Felice scenes would be nice), but Simon’s stuff has to be put on that bed at the very least, and Simon has to live in that room.

I’m not sure whether Simon moving in there will be a major plot point in season three (although there are a couple of other details that hint at that; we will discuss this in a later post) or whether he will only move in towards the end of the show, but move in he will! Negative space needs to be filled. And that negative space in Wilhelm’s room is among the loudest, most meaningful and most obviously and obnoxiously hinted at I’ve ever seen on screen.

Let me finish this whole art-history-heavy article with an excursion to view yet another painting:

If you like Jan Vermeer, you might be familiar with it already, but it has such a surprising and fascinating history (specifically when it comes to the negative space contained in it) that I just have to bring it up towards the end of this post. You’ll see in a moment why.

This 1657-59 Vermeer painting is called ‘Girl reading a letter at an open window’, and you might have seen postcards or posters with reproductions of it. Maybe you even own an art history textbook with it on the cover. You might have seen it anywhere from printed mousepads to mugs and notebooks. It’s a very popular painting. But if you’ve seen it, you’ve most likely always seen it like this:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

Now, if you do, indeed, own an art history textbook or have ever come across some magazine article about it, you will definitely have read some art historian waxing poetically about that negative space behind the girl, about that ‘magnificent white wall that is an invitation for us to project our own ideas onto’ (just to give you one example), about the ‘empty wall that shows us the endless possibilities of what might possibly be contained in the girl’s letter’, about the ‘breathtaking negative space that contrasts so subtly with the erotic connotation of the fruit in the foreground of the frame and together presents us with an irresistible, yet unsolvable puzzle of what the letter’s content might actually be.’ Is it a love letter? Is this a painting about love? Or is it something else? The negative space in this painting is so important and yet so silent…

…or so the well-educated art historian in our imaginary textbook has been telling us not just for decades, but for many, many centuries in fact.

Until very recently, when something happened to that painting…

It had been clear for many years already that underneath the paint covering that wall, there had always been…something else. Something that had been painted over a long time ago. For years, it had been visible in the ever-better and ever-sharper X-Ray images taken of that painting – until 2017, when it was finally determined decisively that the chemicals contained in the paint covering that wall were, in fact, not from Vermeer’s own time, i.e. it couldn’t have been painted over by the grand master himself. The conservator in charge then decided to remove that overpaint and lay bare what had been hidden underneath that so-called ‘negative space’ for so many centuries. And this is the result:

                                                (Source: Wikimedia Commons; image is in the public domain.)

This is what the painting looks like after its 2021 restoration: There’s a painting in the painting, and it shows a Cupid!

You’ve probably noticed that I have a bit of a rule in this series of posts on ‘Young Royals’: I try to keep myself out of the analysis as much as humanly possible. And while who we are probably always influences the way we perceive art to some degree, going step by step, metaphor by metaphor, literary device by literary device, shot by shot and frame by frame can be really helpful in order to avoid the pitfalls of deliberately starting an argument by saying, “My identity is X, that’s why I can relate to the character.” Because the moment I were to start an analysis by looking at, say, my own age, my sexual orientation or my ethnic background, I would start to tell the text things, instead of trying to look at what it’s trying to tell me. Here, for once, I will break my self-imposed rule a tiny bit, though, if you’ll allow me, and tell you a little anecdote about myself:

When I first saw what had happened to that Vermeer painting, I was incensed. I thought I knew it so well. I had stood in front of it several times (decades ago), and I had always marvelled at that magnificent negative space behind the girl. The painting seemed so serene, its stillness almost sacred. That empty wall was something I felt I could project anything onto, and the unfulfilled potential in it seemed endlessly fascinating.

When I heard about the (by then already controversial) restoration, I was doubtful that showing the Cupid had been Vermeer’s intent. I kept imagining a scenario in which Vermeer had first painted that frame with the Cupid in it but had then thought better of it and painted it over himself. Maybe the chemical analysis of that varnish was wrong somehow? Maybe the negative space was meant to be in there forever?

And then, just a few weeks ago, I actually stood in front of that painting at a museum again (not a reproduction or an image on wikipedia, which makes a world of difference; paintings look very different up close and in person). I stood in front of it and was just gobsmacked at how brilliant it looked, all my earlier doubts completely forgotten.

I looked at it and ‘got it’ instantly. That painting inside the painting, that Cupid…it’s all incredibly delightful, and the reason why I had resisted it so much was most likely that I had got used to the idea of there being empty space, negative space, unfulfilled potential, in the painting. (Does this constitute a case of addiction to tragedy porn already? I don’t know. Maybe I had just wanted that girl’s desires to go unfulfilled, so I had wished for the space behind her to be empty, for that potential to be unrealized forever.) I had subconsciously doubted the content of her letter because I had got used to this painting being an unsolvable puzzle, a story with an open ending…

But this was never the artist’s intention: The Cupid above the girl’s head tells us there’s love in her life; it unequivocally tells us what’s in that letter. It’s all there. And it’s so lovely up close; it instantly makes you smile.

The lesson this painting can teach us is that sometimes negative space isn’t supposed to be negative. Sometimes it has to be filled with a Cupid, with love. Because sometimes that was the creator’s intent all along.

~fin~

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