Fanfic Friday
Or: Young Royals fanfiction, week 1
The Nordic countries divides their year into weeks starting with the week that contains the first Thursday of the new year, the Young Royals years could be said to have started with the premiere on the 1st of July 2021, the Young Royals fanfiction year the date the first fanfics were published on AO3 the 2nd, a Friday.
Between the 2nd and the 8th of July there were 47 works posted in the Young Royals (TV2021) fandom.
In the tags of the first fic, out of the three posted that day, the author exclaimed; there aren't any tags yet!!! so they had to create them by themselves.
It is a fic of 669 words in Swedish with Simon and Wille in focus.
AO3 link: Imorgon
The author has since then orphaned the fic.
It is a truly sweet piece that also still contains angst similar to the tv show and does a wonderful job of showing Wilhelms conflicted indwelling.
The relationship pairings in that first week weren’t exclusively Simon/Wille, although they held the tag in 43 of the 47 fics we also had Felice/Sara (2 fics), Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor (4), Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson (1), Erik/August Horn of Årnäs (1) and for the platonic pairings: Erik & Wilhelm (Young Royals) (6), Wilhelm (Young Royals) & Original Female Character(s) (1), Erik & August Horn of Årnäs (1), August Horn of Årnäs & Wilhelm (1).
Five of the works were in Swedish and the rest in English.
Wille got to be in 39 of the fics
Simon in 29
Erik in 8
Sara in 5
Felice only got to be in 2 of the fics while August, as well as Kristina, Alex Claremont-Diaz and Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor made an apparance in 4 of the published works .
What tags were used then?
Fluff was the most used tag that first week by being used for 17 fics, the other tags followed with:
Angst (12)
Canon Compliant (9)
Not Beta Read (9) the yellow section
Coming Out (7)
Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence (7)
Fluff and Angst (6)
One Shot (4)
Hurt/Comfort (4)
Alternate Ending (4)
Longest fic: 5,955 words
Shortest: 319 words
Most hits was today a fic with 42,075
While one of the Swedish ones has the least hits with 595
Kudos left for fics published this week varies from 35 to 5,925
Amount of comments varies from 1 to 103
Of the fics from that first week, all has gotten bookmarked at least once.
The rating for that first week held mostly teen and up, while there still were fics that can be said being explicit sexual (a blowjob in that very first Swedish fic).
The number of authors is hard to pin down since nine works has been orphaned, but five authors posted two fics, and one posted fics.
I was gonna make an comparison, to see how those first seven days differed from the other years up until now but since we are in a heatwave, I'm away on vacation plus fighting a cold I didn't have the capacity for it.
What I can say is that between the 2nd and 8th of July there were:
20 fics updated in 2022 Wilhelm and Simon in most, angst the heaviest tag.
38 fics in 2023 Wilmon here the most. Established relationship the heaviest tag
34 fics in 2024 Simon was in most fics. Fluff carried the tag burden.
16 fics in 2025 Wilhelm was in most fics, fluff was again the most used tag.
