What’s wrong for Wilhelm (and Felice)? – The ‘Fish’ metaphor (example: “Young Royals”)

It’s time we talked about a handful of uncomfortable-to-watch scenes, and no, I don’t mean the brutal hazing scenes during Wilhelm’s initiation; I mean those certain other scenes that we all had to sit through and that undoubtedly had a lot of us screaming, “No!” at our TV screens…

Brutal scenes may be difficult to watch, but at least their metaphorical subtext is usually easy to decipher: If a character has their head chopped off in a glorious splatter fest of blood and gore, you can usually determine what that means symbolically in the broader context of the story’s metaphorical subtext pretty quickly. The same goes for other gory scenes (think: a character getting shot through the heart or somewhere in the vicinity of the chest area as a universal symbol for falling in love). Even Wilhelm’s initiation in episode one of season one is more or less easy to decipher (we’ve discussed it at least twice in this ‘Young Royals’ analysis series already, and we will touch upon it one more time in a future article, I promise.)

There are other (non-violent) scenes that can be just as hard to watch, though, the reason for that usually being the protagonist making a choice that doesn’t fit his or her general life goals and characterization so far, so that, as a viewer, you hear yourself yell, “Don’t do it!” at the TV screen because the character in question is about to take a wrong turn that threatens to undermine their entire character development and lead them down a path towards a catastrophe of Greek tragedy proportions. 

Last week we talked about how, as a writer, you need to know precisely what the wrong choice is for your character, and obviously these types of scenes are used to highlight this (potential) wrong choice almost like in a thought experiment – to understand what outcomes the character has to avoid.

There’s one such storyline in season two of ‘Young Royals’ (I think, by now, you all know which one I’m talking about). We will get to it in a second, but first let me address a comment I got on my last article about the ‘pizza’ metaphor (i.e. the metaphor for Simon’s wrong choice):

A lovely person pointed out to me that there is a scene in episode two of season one in which Wilhelm and Simon pass a neon sign that reads, ‘Pizza-Kebab’ as they walk through Bjärstad on their first date. (Thank you!)

Let’s talk about this scene for a minute; you will see in a moment how well this actually fits the subject of this week’s article.

As you can probably guess just from watching the scene in question, the pizza sign doesn’t show up at a very comfortable moment. The dialogue immediately preceding this ‘pizza reference’ underlines this:

Wilhelm asks, “Have you always lived here?”

And Simon replies, “Yes.”

Then Wilhelm follows that up with the question, “Is it nice?”

And Simon says, “It’s okay.”

This is not something you say when you’re massively enthusiastic about a place. So, once again, we can see how the ‘pizza’ metaphor shows us something that’s, at its core, wrong for Simon. Staying stuck in Bjärstad forever is the wrong option, the wrong choice for this character. And he even elaborates on this when he says, “There’s not a lot to do. Everyone is doing the same thing, and everyone knows everyone.”

Note that the context of the line, “Everyone knows everyone,” itself tells you he doesn’t mean, “Yay! Everyone knows everyone. I think that’s so cozy and great! It’s so nice to live in a small-town environment of permanent social control where my neighbours will immediately tell me if I have neglected my lawn for too long. I love this. I want to stay here forever.”

The context is literally, “There’s not a lot to do,” and “Everyone is doing the same thing.” So that in and of itself should already tell you why the pizza sign can be seen bracketing this dialogue at the beginning and the end of it. It’s there to show us that this is Simon’s wrong option: Simon is bored here; we already know he’s a very bright young man who is most likely a bit different from the people around him: He is a talented musician, and we will later find out that he’s even able to compose songs. (Well, and then Simon’s rather unenthusiastic delivery of the line adds to that impression, of course.) So, that ‘pizza’ sign shouldn’t surprise us at all here. It fits the reading I proposed in my last article: Pizza is a metaphor for a wrong choice, and staying here in Bjärstad would be the wrong choice for Simon.

Something interesting happens at that point, though: After Simon has said, “Everyone knows everyone,” Wilhelm replies sardonically, “That sounds a lot like my life.”

Obviously, that’s irony. And it’s said so as to lighten the mood a bit, but funny one-liners often hide deeper truths and insights buried underneath the literal layer of the text.

Wilhelm is telling Simon (and us) that his life isn’t great either. In other words, both characters are living a life that is wrong for them.

The fact that Wilhelm is (ironically) comparing his life to Simon’s here tells us that he, too, is bored to an extent. He, too, thinks there’s not a lot of actually meaningful stuff to be done when you’re a royal, and that everyone in Wilhelm’s social circle does the same thing all the time, that everyone knows everyone, as well.

The contrast between their lives (Simon’s small-town working-class existence and Wilhelm’s life as a prince) couldn’t be greater, and yet, in a sense, the lives they lead are also very similar: Both have the potential to grind these two characters down over time and destroy them. That’s why the ‘pizza’ sign can be seen in that scene, and that’s why this comparison is being made in a scene that is such an essential part of their first date, at an intimate moment when the two of them interact so closely: These two are each other’s solution to their respective problem. Obviously, there will be more obstacles to overcome, but essentially, these two have to be together so they can break their respective chains. That’s the whole point of this scene and arguably the show at large.

Arguably, the comparison between these so different, yet oh-so-similar lives is also the reason why this isn’t just a ‘pizza’ sign, but specifically a ‘pizza-kebab’ sign. Again, we get a reference to two different dishes: A pizza and a kebab are two separate and very different things (like their lives), but the way they are consumed (at least in most Western countries) makes them very similar in some respects, nonetheless: fast food, not a delicacy to be savoured and relished – and ultimately a rather unhealthy meal option.

Simon’s life is ‘pizza’. Wilhelm’s is ‘kebab’. Both of them aren’t really enjoyable and have the potential to break these characters if they don’t manage to leave them behind and turn towards each other.

What’s more: Simon’s life is a small-town life. Wilhelm ironically compares it to his life under constant (national and international) scrutiny. Simon says that everyone knows everyone in Bjärstad because that’s literally true, but in Wilhelm’s case, it’s actually far more than just every aristocrat knowing everyone else in their own social circle. It also means that everyone at all levels of society and everywhere in the world knows Wilhelm and recognizes him by his face alone. Everyone literally knows him, seeing as his private life is plastered all over the news and every tabloid in the country at all times – a fact that is confirmed about a split second later when those three girls call him prince and start to giggle, which understandably upsets Wilhelm quite a bit.

To recapitulate: ‘Pizza’ and ‘kebab’ (Simon’s life and Wilhelm’s) are very different things, different entities, and the line ‘everyone knows everyone’ doesn’t mean the same thing when it comes to their lives. And yet, both characters would absolutely wither and die if they kept living like this. In that sense, their lives are similarly destructive to their spirit and sense of self.

Which is why this happens on their first date: It’s to show us their respective way out – each other.

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for today’s article by reminding ourselves what last week’s was all about (the ‘pizza’ metaphor, i.e. Simon’s wrong choice in life), we can proceed to talk some more about Wilhelm’s wrong choice because Wilhelm’s is actually not associated with kebab throughout the show but with a different dish.

The hard-to-watch storyline I was alluding to above, the one in which Wilhelm is shown a wrong option by the writers, an option he should absolutely forgo if he wants to grow as a character, is of course the one that culminates in him kissing Felice in episode three of season two.

I think every astute viewer (and I have no doubt that anyone interested in reading overly long analysis articles about a TV show on the internet is very astute) has probably noticed that, in that kissing scene, Wilhelm seems to be following some kind of unwritten script.

And I don’t just mean the fact that he is quickly proceeding from first to second base (or is it second to third? I’m sorry. I get confused with the bases; it’s really not my area), in any case, I don’t just mean that he kisses Felice and then fumbles under her shirt.

I don’t even mean the whole movie night that precedes this kiss and which the show has, at that point, already established as a metaphor for sex (Rosh and Ayub told us about that in episode two of season two).

No, this unwritten script actually extends further back than just that.

Wilhelm has been following an (unconscious) script for far longer than just the duration of their movie night and the kissing; Wilhelm has arguably been following that script for weeks, starting at some point during the Christmas break, and we will see in a second why.

Now, I’m obviously not saying that Wilhelm is doing so consciously. I think we can all agree that Wilhelm isn’t the type of callous guy to cruelly use his best friend for some misguided experiment. But somewhere in the dark recesses of his mind, this ‘script on conventional heterosexual courtship’ (for lack of a better word) must play at least some role in informing his actions. He literally admits to Felice (in plain text) that he wanted to see if it would be the same with her as with Simon. So, on some level and at least in hindsight, he must have understood that he was trying something out there (however unaware of it being an experiment he was while he was still running it).

The scene I want to talk about is not the scene in which he kisses Felice. It’s the one earlier in the same episode when he orders food for the two of them through the Royal Court (Jan-Olof). Note that this happens on a separate occasion (this is not the same evening as their movie night when he kisses Felice).

In a conventional courtship scenario, the first date is almost always a dinner invitation! The second date is usually an activity (something like watching a movie) that might lead to kissing and sex.

So, we can see how early both Wilhelm and Felice start following that script for conventional (heterosexual) dating. (Again: I don’t doubt this was entirely unintentional and even unconscious on both their parts. Keep in mind that Wilhelm and Felice aren’t real people; they are fictional characters in a fictional scenario which the writers chose to slyly code as pseudo-‘dating’.)

Wilhelm and Felice’s first ‘date’ (I’m specifically writing the word ‘date’ in quotation marks because neither of them consciously want this to be a date in the first place) is a shared dinner. It happens on a separate occasion (a different evening from their later movie night).

You could even argue that the unconscious ‘courtship script’ extends even farther into the past than that: Both of them are said to have exchanged little heart emojis on instagram that the people in their shared social circle find somewhat suspicious.

So, while I’m sure none of this is intentional on Felice’ and Wilhelm’s part, it’s clear what this looks like to an outside observer and what the writers are doing here. Ever since the Christmas break, Felice and Wilhelm go from:

1. Sending each other little hearts on social media to

2. Walking each other to school across ‘campus’ (from the church back to school in episode one of season two, for example; and as we all know, who walks whom to school is a clear sign of romantic intentions in the teenage world) to

3. Going on a first ‘date’: dinner, to

4. Going on a second ‘date’: movie night, which leads to 

5. Kissing (and potentially sex; the last part is subverted, though).

Don’t take this the wrong way: Neither Felice nor Wilhelm perceive these impromptu meet-ups in Wilhelm’s room as dates; neither are doing any of this consciously. But the show’s writers are showing us something here: an (internalized) script for conventional, heterosexual courtship rituals and relationships. (Obviously, we then get a lot of hints via the metaphorical subtext that this is actually the wrong choice for both characters, as you will see in a minute.)

Now, let’s examine this dinner ‘date’ and what it entails a bit more thoroughly.

We all know the scene in which Wilhelm orders food through Jan-Olof as a funny scene, and it is, certainly. But…

Rule of thumb: Whenever there’s a funny scene in a movie or a TV show, be sure to check it out extra-carefully. Pay attention to it. Jokes often hide more important truths underneath the laughter. Funny scenes can be either dead-serious once you analyze the metaphorical subtext or at least somewhat more introspective than originally assumed. (The latter is definitely the case with this scene.)

First things first: If you are ever in a situation where you want to woo a very conservative woman (I know, with readers of this blog, this is unlikely to be the case, but who knows), make sure to do two things on your first date with her (which convention dictates should be a dinner date):

• Let the woman in question pick what she wants to eat (to show generosity both of heart and of wallet),

• and then order for her.

The second part is very important in these conventional settings. This type of woman will not want to interact with any of the waiters, busboys or other lowly staff. 

You can probably see how even in this unusual setting (Wilhelm’s room, not a restaurant, with both of them unaware that this can be read as a heterosexual courtship ritual in the first place), Wilhelm follows these rules to a tee: He first lets Felice decide what she wants, then orders for her (over the phone).

The third order of business in a conventional, very conservative setting, by the way, would be to throw a lot of money around to impress her. In other words, you have to show that you are a high-status male who can lay the world at her feet (financially speaking). This you should do by either throwing a lot of cash on the table at some point (tipping in excess of what’s required, for example, to show you’re not stingy) or flashing the staff some fancy gold credit card to show your date what a great catch you would be. (I hope you understand that I’m being facetious here; I’m not actually trying to give you dating advice, Heaven forbid.)

Wilhelm does something even better than throwing bundles of cash around or bragging with his credit cards, he does something that shows he is an even more exclusive high-status male than that, the most exclusive and most high-status guy in the entire country as a matter of fact (Felice comes from a very wealthy family herself and has arguably seen all the ostentatious rich-guy behaviour there is to be seen at this point in her life): Wilhelm orders their food through the Royal Court. Wilhelm (however unconsciously) shows her that he is more privileged than any other boy Felice will ever meet in her life. He is the future King of the country, who has an entire court of servants at his beck and call. He is the most high-status male of the entire nation.

And that is the reason why this scene was written in this particular way (after all, the writers could have just as easily had Wilhelm call some take-away restaurant himself).

Again, I don’t think Wilhelm is flashing his privilege around intentionally, but Wilhelm isn’t a real person; he is a fictional character. It’s the writers who are doing this intentionally: They are coding this as a ‘date’; they are making him behave like a very wealthy, very powerful man who’s trying to woo an almost equally high-status woman in a very conservative way. So, he orders for her and specifically does so through the Royal Court (showing her that she could get anything she wanted from him in the event of them getting married – everything except real love).

This is the point where it gets really interesting, though. Because what exactly is it that they’re ordering?

We have seen that, for Simon, there is a wrong outcome in life that has to be avoided, and it is represented by metaphorical ‘pizza’. Wilhelm, too, has a wrong option like that, but his is different. 

The first thing we have to keep in mind when we look through Wilhelm and Felice’s dinner options (which Felice specifically lists for us) is that, on screen, seemingly extraneous details are never actually extraneous.

This is a hallmark of professional writing when compared to writing that’s done for pleasure: When kids or students write something (say, for school or some writing competition), the stories will often be filled with extraneous details. These stories can be very well researched, and the details in them can be beautifully descriptive, adding to the general atmosphere the author is trying to convey, but these details rarely mean anything on a metaphorical level. These stories are often texts without subtext.

Storytelling in professional writing (and this is particularly true for TV shows) works in a different way: Not only are details supposed to convey a metaphorical message, no, in a well-written show, each and every detail is supposed to feed a coherent and intricately woven metaphorical layer of subtext underneath the text, so that each metaphor is linked up with all the other symbolism in the text.

This is particularly true for a show that comprises just six episodes per season, in which each episode is just about 45 minutes long: You can’t have meaningless details in those. Time is precious. Details have to mean something or be cut out.

So, we can be sure that the different dinner options which Felice considers and then dismisses in that scene are all meaningful, or else a show that is so densely packed with content wouldn’t waste its precious screen time on them. A whole scene that’s just dedicated to Felice trying to make up her mind about what she wants to eat isn’t useful, so the scene has to have a significant symbolic meaning for what Wilhelm and Felice are going through. The dishes she lists are choices, wrong choices to be specific, seeing as Wilhelm and Felice are ultimately wrong for each other as romantic partners.

What’s more, we are getting a bit more than just a spotlight on what these wrong choices mean for Wilhelm. These dinner options also tell us something about Felice. She’s the one trying to make up her mind here. The food they eventually consume is meaningful for Wilhelm too, yes, but the list of meal options she goes through beforehand, that’s Felice’s subconscious talking. It’s her thought process we are following here. Metaphorically, she is telling us what she feels a relationship with Wilhelm would be like for her.

Note that her brainstorming session in that scene starts with Wilhelm asking her to come up with something spontaneously, i.e. without thinking about it too much. So, what is the first thing that comes to her mind? 

Well, it’s pasta, she says.

Phew. So, at least dating Wilhelm wouldn’t be ‘pizza’. She doesn’t seem to find the idea completely revolting. It’s not making her sick to her stomach, at least (remember Krille and what we said his vomiting metaphorically means for the Simon-Marcus situationship?).

So, at least, Felice and Wilhelm aren't subtextually linked to vomit, as well. (This makes sense, by the way. The two of them are good friends who trust each other. So, their relationship is qualitatively different from whatever Simon feels or rather doesn’t feel for Marcus. Felice and Wilhelm like each other – as friends. The ‘competition’ metaphor tells us Simon has no cordial feelings for Marcus at all.)

It would, however, be remiss of me not to mention the fact that pasta comes dangerously close to being pizza. Both dishes are part of the same culinary tradition and are often mentioned in the same breath (“What do you want for dinner? Pizza, pasta?”). So, dating Wilhelm wouldn’t be quite as vomit-inducing as being with Marcus is for Simon, but it would still feel kind of wrong, Felice seems to be suggesting here. She then corrects herself by saying, “No, no, no…”

The next option she comes up with is really interesting: Sushi!

Sushi is fish. And that’s where it gets fishy, so to speak.

We already know about the ‘fish’ metaphor on this show. It’s essentially an extension of the ‘water’ metaphor: Water represents feelings, and fish highlight the depth of those feelings between Wilhelm and Simon (fish live underwater, after all).

That’s also why we get the scene of the two of them embracing in front of the fish tank in episode five of season one, and that’s why Simon is staring at his fish so often when he can’t make up his mind about Wilhelm in season two: He is examining his deep, deep feelings for Wilhelm.

So, we do understand what cannot happen to Wilhelm, right? What should never ever happen as a matter of fact.

Wilhelm shouldn’t be eating fish. 

Eating fish, eating your feelings, so to speak, means swallowing your feelings, repressing them and living in denial throughout your entire life, dying a little bit on the inside with each passing day – all of which would run counter to his character development on the show, i.e. would constitute the wrong choice according to the writers.

So, a meal that involves eating fish will metaphorically always mean emotional repression for Wilhelm.

We have briefly touched on this before when I referenced a scene in episode six of season two: Wilhelm’s parents, the Queen and Prince Consort, have come to Hillerska, and they sit down for a meal with Wilhelm.

The camera specifically gives us a close-up of Wilhelm’s plate at the beginning of the scene (the whole purpose of a close-up is to draw our attention to something; so why on earth would we be shown what he is supposed to eat in this scene if not for the metaphorical meaning of the dish itself?).

It looks like a salmon roll, so we know Wilhelm’s parents want Wilhelm to just swallow his feelings and keep up a façade.

This fits the literal layer of the text in this scene, too: Wilhelm and his parents are discussing feelings, talking about who he is allowed to share his feelings with (them) and around who he should remain silent on the subject. In short, the parents are forcing their son to remain the emotionally repressed wreck that he currently still is and that they and Erik have been throughout their adult lives. The fish on Wilhelm’s plate and the conversation in the room fit together, metaphorically speaking.

Consequently, Wilhelm announces that he isn’t hungry right at the beginning of the scene and refuses to eat the fish (i.e. repress his feelings any longer); later he ends the conversation by telling his parents that he’s going to bed without having taken so much as a bite of said salmon. This is great character development as we will see in a moment because things weren’t always so clear for Wilhelm.

In the dinner ‘date’ scene in episode three of season two (I still struggle to even type the word ‘date’ in connection with Felice, but you know what I mean), fish does actually come up as an option: Felice specifically says sushi.

Sushi is raw fish, no less. So, we’re talking: repression of raw feelings, yikes.

And the fact that it’s specifically Felice who comes up with the idea shows us that dating Wilhelm would require a high degree of emotional repression on her part, as well. No wonder, really, seeing as she is currently going through some character development of her own. She is breaking out of the golden cage her mother has her trapped in, and going back to her artificial crush on Wilhelm and being reduced to becoming a baby-making machine for little royal princes and princesses instead of considering what she really wants out of her life would indeed require her to regress as a character and repress her emotions forever: raw fish en masse. The extra-grand sushi royale plate deluxe for two, please.

To be sure, on the surface of the text, nothing special is happening in this scene. Felice is simply trying to make up her mind about what she wants to eat, but metaphorically the writers are telling us so much here about what they think a romantic relationship between Wilhelm and Felice would look like. Let’s see what else they throw at us:

Felice then briefly mentions poké bowl (we’ll come back to that), and then comes up with yet another idea: Bibimbap.

While Bibimbap can be prepared in a lot of different ways, the most typical version of it that a Westerner would know includes an egg! Said egg isn’t just thrown or scrambled into the mix, mind; it’s the most visible and most important ingredient, seeing as it’s placed right on top of the whole thing and presented as the eye-catcher, the crowning glory of the whole dish.

This is the second time we see eggs come up as a metaphor around Felice (or rather the first of two times if you go chronologically), and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Look, I know the ‘egg’ metaphor may be a bit weird; it may even be off-putting to some viewers, but a show isn’t supposed to make us like each and every decision the characters make on screen. We are supposed to get ‘weirded out’ by some of the stuff they get up to. And the ‘egg’ metaphor serves its purpose quite well in that respect.

It’s also in no way unusual as far as metaphors go. You see symbolism like that all the time on TV; it’s just that people usually don’t notice any of that.

And it’s clear how the ‘egg’ metaphor is plugged into the rest of the metaphorical subtext of this show, too:

We have a ‘competition’ metaphor which in and of itself is not in any way, shape or form unusual. When a feature film or a television drama series features a rowing or swimming competition, a marathon, a cycling event or horse race, etc., this is never just about showing the audience a sporting event. There are other TV channels for that. It’s almost always a metaphor for what the characters are going through. That’s just how storytelling works. On screen, competitions are usually metaphors for two or more characters competing with each other for something.

In our ‘Young Royals’ example, the rowing competition represents the (ostensible) competition between Wilhelm and Marcus for Simon – ostensible because for Simon, there can never be a competition when it comes to his heart. He loves Wilhelm, and he doesn’t even like Marcus; that’s all there is to it. That’s why the competition has to be presented as fake on the show (inside a gym, no ‘water’, i.e. no feelings, etc.). Once the competition is (ostensibly) lost, and Wilhelm is devastated, a fake solution is presented to him: Let’s go and throw some eggs at the problem.

The ‘egging’ solution has to sound ridiculous, absurd and pointless because that’s what every effort the system is undertaking to get Wilhelm to succumb, to court and marry a girl is: ridiculous, absurd and pointless. 

Wilhelm loves Simon. Trying to throw eggs (read: the biological potential a girl would have to give him a child) at the problem won’t solve the problem of Wilhelm being heartbroken. The ‘egging’ is a dumb prank because that’s the writers’ commentary on enforced heterosexuality for procreative reasons only.

You can see how one metaphor (the egg metaphor) flows organically from the other metaphor (the competition metaphor), which, as I mentioned above, is typical not just for professional writing, but for a very well written show in which every single metaphor is not only consistent throughout the story but also connected to all the other metaphors in the text.

And that’s why Wilhelm’s attempt to hook up with Felice is then interrupted by Henry who isn’t coming in to borrow a book from Wilhelm or talk about the weather, but who is specifically shouting something about their egg prank at the very same time that Wilhelm is kissing Felice: One thing stands for the other; it’s a metaphor.

Wilhelm isn’t doing it consciously, but the ‘egg’ metaphor is telling us that somewhere in the far recesses of his mind the fact that Felice has got ovaries (i.e. could potentially solve his problem of being forced to procreate at some point later in his life) does at least play a part in why he is trying to hook up with her. That’s why this whole kissing scene is folded into this metaphor in the first place: to tell us something that the characters themselves are barely aware of. (Metaphors are very useful that way!)

And it’s a very clever metaphor too, seeing as it’s presented as a prank, something dumb, something that won’t change the outcome of the competition, something that won’t solve Wilhelm’s problem. Procreation isn’t everything. And just because one partner ‘has eggs’ and the other one hasn’t, doesn’t mean you can bring yourself to love the one who has and fall out of love with the one who hasn’t.

Now, at this earlier stage in Felice and Wilhelm’s (very much unconscious and very much subtextual) ‘courtship’, we get a glimpse into what Felice’s side of the whole deal is: She says Bibimbap, which is a dish that’s not just about an egg, but about an egg being presented on top of the whole dish as the most important and most visible ingredient.

A child (or the prospect thereof) would definitely be the main (and only) upside to an otherwise rather unhappy marriage between these two characters: Once born, it would be highly visible to the public. And even in the early stages of Wilhelm and Felice’s relationship, long before a child would even be born, this child, this royal baby, this heir to the throne would be a well-understood consequence of being in a heterosexual relationship in the first place.

In short, the prospect of a royal baby, i.e. the fact that Felice is a girl, would be presented to the public and paraded around like that egg on top of the Bibimbap dish. Yikes, again.

(How long do you imagine the writers looked for a dish that represented this whole idea so well? Did they pore over cookbooks for ages to come up with this one? I don’t know, but it’s always fun to wonder…)

The show does tell us in about a thousand different ways what the main problem arising out of Wilhelm’s liaison with Simon is: These two can’t have a biological child with each other, which would bring the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. If Wilhelm and Simon just peel and eat their clementines in peace (metaphorically speaking), they’re going to get to the sweetness inside the citrus fruit (read: their happiness), but no eggs are going to be thrown about which is what the Royal Court, parliament and the public demand.

Now, what’s interesting about this dinner ‘date’ scene with Felice is that she seems to briefly consider Bibimbap, but then dismisses the idea nonetheless.

We know Felice has been under enormous pressure throughout season one. Honestly, the fact that, as a sixteen-year-old girl, she brings up the idea of having royal babies right in episode one (and in a scene that truly introduces her as a character, no less) is heartbreaking. This is a massive warning sign that something very unhealthy is going on in her family; it should set off all our alarm bells right there and then. Her parents, who have talked her into pursuing a relationship with the young prince, seem to care more for their daughter’s childbearing potential than for her happiness. In other words, they care less about her as a person and more about her…well, eggs. They see her as a baby-making machine that’s supposed to produce royal offspring. So, if you find the ‘egg’ metaphor off-putting, don’t blame Wilhelm; blame her parents. It’s them that have reduced her to her ovaries, after all.

So, what’s at least slightly encouraging in our dinner ‘date’ scene is that Felice ultimately says no to the Bibimbap idea: The dish with the crowning egg on top is dismissed as an option, thank God.

In her brainstorming process, Felice then returns to an idea she had briefly mentioned a moment earlier: poké bowl. And that’s the one she sticks with in the end.

So, how is a poké bowl a metaphor for a relationship with Wilhelm?

Poké bowl is in essence very similar to sushi: It’s once again raw fish!

We have seen that fish represent deep feelings, and eating fish is a metaphor for emotional repression (i.e. swallowing your feelings). Sushi is raw fish, so it means repressing your raw feelings. And poké bowl is obviously very similar in that respect.

There are a few tiny differences, though, and those might be the reason why this particular dish was picked by the writers as the final meal option for Wilhelm and Felice.

You see, poké bowl is well known for the way the raw fish in it is cured: It doesn’t use citrus fruits as a curing agent. Instead salt is used to preserve the fish. See how well-thought-out this whole metaphor is? The writers didn’t just throw the dice on what dishes Felice would list when trying to make up her mind in this scene. They gave this quite a bit of thought.

Clementines/satsuma oranges (and other citrus fruits, I suppose) are metaphors on this show. Peeling them represents the difficult process of trying to be truthful with the person you love, but the juice of the citrus fruit itself (once you’ve managed to remove the thick, hard peel and finally arrive at the fruit’s juicy core) must represent the happiness that comes with true love.

The raw fish in a poké bowl isn’t cured with citrus juice, i.e. the fact that Wilhelm and Felice would have to repress their ‘raw’ feelings if they ended up dating wouldn’t even be mitigated by some measure of happiness, let alone love (i.e. no citrus juice). Instead the raw fish in a poké bowl is salted. Would they be ‘salty’ all the time? In any case, a lot of salt can’t be a good thing in a relationship whichever way you look at it linguistically.

It’s a small comfort that there are actually a lot of different ingredients in a poké bowl.

At least this encapsulates the idea that a relationship between Wilhelm and Felice would contain a lot of different aspects. The two of them are friends, and there might be a few things in that metaphorical ‘poké bowl’ that would be kind of nice: trust, loyalty, comfort…in short, friendship. (It’s not ‘pizza’, after all. And as the two of them actually eat their dinner later on, there are no complaints. It tastes good. It’s nice.)

But ‘nice’ isn’t what a romantic relationship and sexual attraction are made of.

It shouldn’t distract us from the fact that the main ingredient of this ‘poké bowl’ of theirs would still be raw fish with no citrus juice in sight and a lot of salt in it.

A relationship between these two would mean that they would have to repress their true feelings, their wishes, their desires for their entire lives. ‘Nice’ doesn’t make up for that.

This applies to both of them, by the way. Wilhelm would have to repress his love for Simon and all feelings of same-sex attraction he might harbour. Felice would have to deny herself a life in which she would be able to make her own choices, a life of freedom. By and large, both of them would end up perpetually emotionally repressed.

And we can actually see that in the scene itself; the two of them have barely started eating their poké bowl and acknowledged that this is nice when Wilhelm starts to complain about Simon and Marcus again. That must be every little girl’s dream: to one day marry a guy who constantly cries about his love for another man. What a delicious poké bowl that marriage would be, indeed.

For now (episode three of season two) they are eating this poké bowl, and the scene appears to be lighthearted and fun on the surface of the text, but we know Wilhelm will eventually reject ‘eating fish’ in the final episode of the season and come out on national television in short order. That’s some important (metaphorical) character development right there. As for Felice, she has already rejected the Bibimbap and is thus resisting to be the royal-baby-making machine her mother wants her to be. Let’s see what else the show has in store for her.

In short, what the show does by presenting us with the ‘pizza’ metaphor and the ‘fish’ metaphor is, it shows us what Simon’s and Wilhelm’s wrong lives would look like.

And it’s no coincidence that Simon’s ‘pizza’ moment in episode three of season two (when Rosh tries to help him prepare for the rowing competition and Ayub suggests to have pizza for dinner) is bracketed by Wilhelm and Felice’s dinner ‘date’ with the poké bowl.

We literally cut from: 

• a scene in Wilhelm’s room in which Felice tries to make up her mind and eventually settles on poké bowl to 

• Simon in the snow talking about being unable to fall in love with Marcus just as Ayub suggests to eat pizza and Rosh is irritated by that ‘pizza’ suggestion to

• Felice and Wilhelm again as they eat their poké bowl, and Wilhelm can’t even savour the food because all he has on his mind is Simon.

The way this is edited is so suggestive. It tells us what the wrong choice would be for these characters.

Simon’s life would be a perpetual ‘pizza’. Wilhelm’s would involve ‘eating a lot of fish’.

Simon would be stuck in Bjärstad, potentially with a boyfriend like Marcus, and no matter how ‘out’ that boyfriend would be, Simon would still feel like this relationship is making him sick (hello, Krille, thank you again for making this so clear!). Simon would waste his potential in and on an environment that doesn’t fully understand him and doesn’t support him (not because these people don’t love him, but simply because they don’t know how to help him realize his potential). He would be stuck in a dead-end job for the rest of his life with no prospects. In short, his life would be ‘pizza’.

Wilhelm’s wrong choice is completely different from Simon’s, and yet it would have just as much of a devastating effect on him: Wilhelm would end up marrying some girl of a suitable aristocratic background and then produce one royal baby after the other, remaining closeted and repressing his true feelings for the rest of his life – and largely just being incredibly unhappy. In other words, he would keep ‘eating fish’ the way his parents want him to, and sometimes said fish would even be raw…

Those are Wilhelm’s and Simon’s wrong choices in life according to the writers, but here’s the good news: 

The only way the two characters can avoid these wrong outcomes is by choosing each other. They are each other’s right choice; we can see hints of that as early as episode two of season one when they discuss and compare their backgrounds during their stroll through Bjärstad on their first date (and yes, I’m writing the word date without the quotation marks here). This is the reason the whole topic is brought up at that point in the story: They have the potential to each cancel out the wrong choice for the other one, to each fulfil their own potential in life by choosing the other.

And you know what it’s called when one character constitutes the other character’s right choice in life and vice versa? 

A happy end.

~fin~

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