"It takes a fool to remain sane !" The fool, the jester and the journey towards truthfulness and acceptance of difference ! Open your eyes baby ! Let’s be brave together ! Young Royal analysis.
So it all started with a question that arose in the Kingdom (long live the Kingdom !), a group of fans discussing all things related to YR, playing detectives and throwing spaghettis all around to see what sticks (Kingdom TM). What does the drawing Sara makes mean, what to do with this strange Nordic Nisse ( a playful winter Gnome who loves to play tricks) under this blazing sun ? A winter gnome around Christmas makes sense. But what about the sun ?
The image reminded me of a court jester and of the tarot card where the fool is represented by the sun.
So we dived together, we found many interesting conclusions and today, I would like to go further, first to link it to the main song “it takes a fool to remain sane” and to link this carnival theme to the Valborg’s theme present in the S3 trailer. Let’s dive.
The song first chosen to represent the love story, the one that could be sung, the one destined to mesmerize the Handsome prince was “Symphony” by Zara Larrson. Then they switched it to “It takes a fool to remain sane” by the Ark. It’s the first song we hear in YR, in the church, with a Solo by Simon. It’s an important song.
And the song continues a little bit in the next scene where Wille and Eric rediscover their inner child, play the fool by running up the stairs trying to escape the PR circus and the scrutiny. The song invites Wille and all of us to be the jester, to play it like a harlequin, to “take it to the stage in a multicoloured jacket /Take it jackpot, crackpot, strutting like a peacock/Nailvarnish Arkansas, shimmy-shammy featherboah /Crackpot, haircut, dye your hair in glowing red and blue”, Yeah Go Simon ! Go Wille ! Go Wilmon ! (It's strange to see Wille in pink or in studded jackets etc. but I kinda like seeing him experimenting his true self, be brave etc. Embrace the madness baby ! )
So the song invites us to be different, to “be brave, to break down the walls of attitude” just for the sake of it. It invites us to not be afraid “to feel strange, to feel ashamed, to seem strange, to seem insane, to gain weight, to seem gay”. The song tells us that it’s “your right to laugh at me”, that it will not prevent me to “feel brave, because ridicule is no shame”.
Simon the gay, Wille the rebel to rules and Sara the autist embody the outsiders, the free thinkers who dare to be different, to not care about the look, to speak freely, to find one’s voice even if this is a painful journey. The struggles to be the fool in order to stay sane, the journey to be able to speak one’s truth is hard, leads to a steep hill.
To speak freely, to question the conventions, the traditions is exactly the role of the court jester. He has to open everyone’s eyes to the madness of society. Sara does it quite naturally. Wille endlessly attempts to do so with his parents (to no avail so far) thanks to Boris. He questions their reality. He opens his eyes and try to take them to also open theirs and question appearances. In a carnivalesque society where the jester has its own place, the roles can be reversed. The fool can be a king, the gender boundaries have no meaning, the class divides are pointless.
So what’s the link to Valborg ? Valborg is quite different. It has another meaning. But there is also a fire that ends the obscure times to lead to the light. And the carnival where the jester reigns normally ends with a bonfire where you burn all the old meaningless symbols. The fool and everyone are invited to dance and chant around a fire to start a revolution, i.e a reversal of roles, a new life, a new beginning.
So thanks to YR and the Ark, we all know what we have to do:
Do, do, do what you wanna do
Don't think twice, do what you have to do
Do, do, do, do, let your heart decide
What you have to do
That's all there is to find
'Cos it takes a fool to remain sane
Oh, in this world all covered up in shame
