I was just watching videos of Omar on tour and it reminded me of ELYN. The way he is on stage is so ELYN vibe. I feel like I’m watching the chaos tour haha (minus the negative stuff)
<3 <3 <3 Hiiiii, thank you!!! It's been fun to see all the pictures and videos coming from the concerts and play spot the difference with my mental pictures of Simme. (Sadly I haven't been able to go, very rude of Omar not to go to Australia on his Europe tour. We're in Eurovision! That makes us basically part of Europe.)
Also since you reminded me of it and my November resolution was to try to post more things, here is a Simme Chaos tour snippet that is (mostly) the positive stuff <3 😅
(And for the reblogs, this is a prequel snippet to Everybody Loves You Now @ AO3)
He has his first solo concert in Europe. Not counting the promo events, or the industry shows, or the monopolized Open Mic Nights.
The first show in a concert venue, which was booked in advance, with tickets sold that have his name on them, printed in all-caps.
Of course it’s tiny compared to the stadium they were in last night opening for Ariana. A theatre most used for plays with a single bathroom backstage in place of a dressing room and where Candace had had to drag them all out to the alley where the van was parked for the pre-show pep-talk so they couldn’t be heard on stage over the support act.
But Simon has a support act now. There are other solo shows booked, in and around the Ariana dates. Every day Candace is making calls and emailing contacts and adding things to the calendar pinned up on the inside of the van. Filling up all the gaps.
Which is good. It’s great. They’re gaining momentum and Simon is getting better at jumping from show to interview to show, at catching sleep in bursts crammed between commitments, at finding products that cover up the exhaustion on his face. And now he’s got a solo show, and Candace is In Talks about the second album that he might be able to work with a songwriter to put his own songs on, and he’s in Europe again for the first time in… months.
“This could be the start of bigger things,” Candace had said in the alley, while Simon bounced on his toes to keep warm, already dressed in his show outfit of a black mesh tank and jeans slashed open on the sides. “So drink it all in tonight, we’re only going bigger from here.”
He’d thought he was used to it by now, the noise of the crowd, the sight of phone lights spread out before him like stars, but it turns out it’s different when they’re all there for him. When they’re screaming his name before he’s even stepped on stage, rather than him having to slowly win them over. When he runs out onto the stage and the screaming ramps up and hits like a wall and he can feel the smile stretching at his cheeks that he can’t even pretend to hold back. He might cry, actually has to sniff a few times, turning away from the crowd to pull himself together.
There were so many moments he thought he wouldn’t get to have this. When the label said his songs weren’t good enough, when the graphs showed sales were falling, the shows where he opened and the crowd barely seemed to notice, the phone call in Texas to ask what the plans were for the tour break only to get Rachel’s Assistant ‘Ms McKenzie has decided to cull her list and focus on acts with more commercial appeal.’
“Sim-me! Sim-me! Sim-me!” The crowd chants, falling into rhythm and his heart seems to speed up to match Sim-me Sim-me and it doesn’t matter that it’s three hundred people rather than ten thousand, he spins around to the mic and there’s enough light from the spots and the phones to pick out faces. Girls with glitter dots around their eyes, boys in black eyeliner edged with gold, people in Simme T-shirts, waving signs saying DANCE LIKE THIS, people who came to his show who traveled and paid money and got dressed up because they wanted to see him.
“Oh my god, hi. Hello. Hi. I love you.” There was a script, he thinks, but he has absolutely no idea what it said. It’s only thanks to the set-list taped to the floor by his mic stand that he can even remember what he’s meant to sing. “Hello Cologne. This is the first official show of what I think we’re all agreed is the Chaos Tour.”
They laugh along with him and they cheer and Simon can only hope he’s still capable of singing around this wild, insane grin on his face because it absolutely isn’t going away. “Thank you for coming. Thank you for supporting me. The fact that I’m here, the fact that we can do this at all, is all because of you talking and filming and sharing and streaming and this was my dream for so long I can’t say thank you enough for making it come true.”
The fight is lost, the fight is over, he is absolutely crying as they scream again, someone shouts 'Simmers forever,' and more people shout 'Simme,' and the exhaustion melts away like it was never there.
He’s not cold, or tired, or lonely, or afraid. It feels like getting his song picked for the jubilee, like seeing Wilhelm running after Sara’s car, like everything.
“Now I hope you’re all here to dance,” he says. “Because all of us up here, We Wanna Dance.”
Kevan hits the intro, the backing track hits the beat, and every single person in front of him starts singing. Every word, thrown back at him. Screaming, applauding, chanting his name.
And it’s all worth it. Whatever it takes. To have this.
Young Royals fics are destroying me emotionally!!!!!!! Everybody Loves You Now?!???!?! every time Omar talks about being busy now i think about Simme and want to cry(😭😭🫠🫠🫠🫠).
I WANTED TO WAKE UP WITH YOU echos in my brain
Idk how much more i can take of this 😭 i just want them to be happy 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭maybe i need to go back to reading fluff lmao im not cut out for this /hj
hi ! first of all; i read ELYN over the easter weekend and stayed up till like five am waiting for it to get happy so i could sleep (i gave up) and i loved it so so much. It just feels like such a tangible, realistic outcome for them (if we ignore s3) it made me ache in that exact anxious yearning way the actual show does. Big ask and 100% appreciate it if the answer is no but are you planning to write more for them in that universe? Would love to see them when Wille is at university, or see Wille simply make some (oblivious?) uni friends, or see Sara and Simon interact again or honestly literally anything and everything.
secondly, and who knows maybe (probably) you’re aware of this but the photos/images in the fic do not appear as images but just as a text/error box? Is that intentional or did they break? I kept finding myself curious as to what image was put with the chapters haha
Hi!!! I hope you had a good easter... and went to sleep at some point... 😅
Thank you for alerting me about the images! I was not aware of that :( Although I guess that makes all those hours hardcoding the text threads and tumblr posts so they would work without images worth it 😂
I have gone through it all again and updated the image links so they are working for me now (let me know if they're still broken for you?).
There's nothing in them that's required to follow the fic, you just get to judge the time I spent procrastinating by making album covers and then sorting all the random pop songs I'd invented into albums (something that was definitely vital even though no one but me cares about the difference in vibe between Simme eras 🤣).
If you are just interested in the art, these are the 4 covers I used in the fic:
Sadly this fic was always destined to lose canon status after season 3 (although I am going to keep believing August's arc could go the ELYN route until proven otherwise).
Regarding sequels, prooobably not? Sorry :( I have more notes for Simon pov scenes during and before than anything set after because I'm not sure what more I have to say, (other than wanting to write something of ELYN Wille with Edvin's new haircut but basically all I've got is this:
For a moment Simon thinks Wilhelm isn’t even here, then the bleached blond head turns and it’s Wilhelm’s face and Wilhelm’s eyes and Wilhelm’s mouth dropping open in surprise at seeing Simon in the doorway.
“You’re here,” Wilhelm says. “How are you -?”
“You cut your hair.” It’s dumb. Obviously. But Simon hasn’t slept and Wilhelm’s hair is almost white, sharp and bristled, and Simon wants to touch it, to see if it hurts.
“I…” Wilhelm hesitates. “There were always rules about my appearance, about how I was allowed to look, and I thought…” he reaches a hand to his hairline, his face falling a little. “Do you hate it?”
The bristles give under his fingers, impossibly soft. He looks older, but also somehow younger, like he’s reclaiming the rebellious teen years that the crown never let him have.
“I want to kiss you,” Simon says. The coffee shop is full of people. At least four that Simon can see are looking at them, not even trying to be subtle. There’s a camera tilted in their direction, but it’s not close. “Can I kiss you?”
“I-” Wilhelm starts doing the same glance - who’s watching, who’s filming - then seems to catch himself, snorts a soft laugh and pulls Simon in.
It's too short for Simon to catch hold of, but he can run his fingers through it and it's soft or ghost them over to catch the sharp edges of the tips, and it's Wilhelm and he's here, they're both here.
And they're going to be okay.
I love the laura bonus ficlet! Do you maybe can write about her thoughts of when she found out that it was Wilhelm who was there with Simon in Bjärstad?
Thank you for loving Laura! (The previous Laura ficlet is here to give context)
Also for the reblogs, this is a bonus ficlet from my longer YR fic Everybody Loves You Now!
This picks up from slightly later in the conversation in the car between Simon and Laura.
Laura considers her next question for all of thirty seconds before going with her gut. “Is ‘Fuck this Motherfucker’ about Candace?”
Simme laughs. She made Simme laugh! There's a little buzz of pride in her stomach. “Is that what people think? You guys know I didn’t write it, right?”
“I know, but you said you always try to have a concept in mind when you sing, to make the songs about something.”
He gives a little nod, acknowledging her point. “True. I guess it’s about Candace a lot.” He shrugs. “But one time it was definitely about this stretch of highway we’d been on the night before that was so full of potholes -”
“Atlanta to Nashville,” she says, instinctively, like this is some Simme trivia game and not just her knowing a weird number of facts about his actual life. “Sorry. I just… I saw the video.”
She glances sideways at him again. He looks amused rather than mad, and he hasn’t refused to answer any of her questions yet so she kind of has to. “Can I ask… Who do you think about when you sing the love songs?”
“Wilhelm.”
There’s no hesitation to it. No equivocations, no questioning. Just the name, said so softly that it takes her a moment to connect it to the reality of Crown Prince Wilhelm who gives speeches on Year with the Royal Family and gets photographed in suits hugging babies and opening hospitals.
It’s a weird crossing of streams, realising The Crown Prince is a person and there are people he dated in high school who say his name like it’s something precious they want to keep hold of.
But like, that was four years ago. And Simme hasn’t even been back to Sweden since. “Still?” she finds herself asking.
“Yeah.” He’s looking out the window, at the shadows of trees in the darkness. “He’s the only… there’s never been anyone else.”
There have been four years of constant wall to wall news coverage of Simme with this popstar or that actor or this reality TV star. Simme laughing off his high school relationship with the Prince of Sweden like it was nothing at all. “I thought… I mean we all heard about Alfonso…”
He laughs something bitter lingering at the edges to it. “I thought it was a marketing stunt, he thought it was true love. We didn’t last.”
“But you and Wilhelm are still…”
“No,” he says. “We’re not.” His fingers drum against the door handle. “Can you pull over? Just for a minute. I need to do something.”
*
She’s at that point where she’s basically awake but is refusing to admit it, nestled down into the covers trying to avoid opening her eyes, half thinking that if she does everything that happened last night is going to turn out to be a wild dream and she’ll be back in Gothenburg about to wake up and drive to Stockholm to meet Stan and see the show.
Then there’s a gentle knock on the door and an unmistakable voice says, “Hey? Can I come in?” and Laura opens her eyes to a closet-sized bedroom with posters of horses on the walls.
She’d found a nightshirt to sleep in that falls all the way down to her knees, so she’s decent enough to sit up and say, “Okay?”
Simme steps into the room. He’s changed into a purple hoodie, but otherwise he looks much the same. Like he hasn’t slept or showered since he dug out a silk pillowcase from the depths of the linen cupboard. His eyes catch on the horse posters, lingering a moment too long before he looks down at her. “There’s lunch. If you’re hungry.”
She wants to ask ‘are you okay?’ but his eyes keep darting back to the walls, his hands are twitching and he had to pull over multiple times so he could snort a powder that she’s really hoping was not cocaine so she’s not sure she’s ready for the answer.
Also now he’s mentioned food, she’s realising she’s starving. “Sure.”
He nods, takes a step back so she can stand up and then leads her back down the tiny hallway, past family photos that she resists the urge to stop and peer at, and into the kitchen where there are two strangers setting the table and one of them is Crown Prince Wilhelm.
She lets out a noise that might be a yelp, starts a, “You’re-” but thankfully cuts herself off before she can say something completely idiotic like ‘you’re here’ or ‘you’re the prince’ or ‘you’re taller than you look on TV.’
It turns out there is a difference between knowing there is something going on between Simme and the Prince and actually seeing said prince in the flesh wearing Simme’s white hoodie instead of a neatly pressed suit and setting out plates on the kitchen table.
Only the hoodie was oversize on Simme but clearly fits Prince Wilhelm just fine so that’s… a thing.
“Hello,” she says, trying to get back to normal only this isn’t normal because he’s a prince so like. “I mean, your majesty.”
Prince Wilhelm smiles. Up close, it’s the same kind of smile Simme keeps giving her, the one he seems able to paste over whatever he’s really feeling in the moment. “Your majesty is my mother,” he says. “Call me Wilhelm.”
Which of course just reminds her of being in the car the night before, the way Simme’s voice softened on Wilhelm’s name. And Simme had said they weren’t still… but Wilhelm is here, in this middle-of-nowhere town. Not Simme’s team, not Candace, just Wilhelm.
A good half of the internet would pay a large fortune for a glimpse of what she's seeing now. The way Wilhelm's eyes track Simme's progress through the room, the way Simme's whole body seems angled towards the Prince even when they're not interacting at all.
"Have you told anyone you're here?" Wilhelm's bodyguard asks her.
She hasn't. And as Wilhelm and Simon both reach for a plate at the same time and flinch back a moment before their fingers brush, she knows she never will.
This is not actually the final chapter, there is a sneaky epilogue that'll come out in the next few days!
(also I stole this screenshot from chapter 5 and you should know that one of my greatest ELYN regrets is not giving Relentless a top ten spot because that (imaginary) song is a banger XD )
Today's bonus scene is a post-epilogue snippet, because Kevan is one of my favourite characters who barely appeared in the actual fic XD
Under the cut for maaaajor ending spoilers! Go read ELYN first!
“The band should have arrived,” Simon checks his phone, for about the twentieth time since getting out the car that had picked them up at the airport. “Normally we’d meet in the bar, have a drink.” He looks across the lobby to the hotel bar, racks of liquor stretching up to the ceiling.
Wilhelm catches his hand. “The schedule I got said we were meeting for dinner,” he says. He’s pretty sure Simon knows that, but sometimes it helps to have someone else say it out loud. “So let’s check in, and you can have a shower while I ask Farima what time.”
“Right.” It takes Simon a second too long to drag his eyes away from the bottles. He keeps tugging on the straps of his backpack, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
Wilhelm had asked widely around for advice on how he could support Simon going back to playing live shows but the consensus from everyone was just, ‘It’s going to be hard, but if he wants to tour again you have to start somewhere.’
“Hey! Si…imon!”
Wilhelm barely has a chance to jump before someone is bounding across the lobby. He’s a huge man with long black hair dressed in a leather jacket with silver studs and for an instant Wilhelm wonders if he should be throwing himself in front of Simon - where are the bodyguards when you need them?
Then he registers that Simon is laughing. “You can keep calling me Simme,” Simon says, stepping past Wilhelm so the man can pull him into what looks like a bonecrushing hug. “I don’t mind.”
“Oh thank god,” the man says, letting Simon go and stepping back. “Farima keeps sending emails about ‘Simon’ and I’m like ‘who?’ every single time.” He notices Wilhelm for the first time, slightly off to the side in his carefully nondescript jumper and jeans combo. “Let me guess, you’re the boyfriend formerly known as Prince?”
Simon snorts. “Kevan, this is Wilhelm. Wille, Kevan. He plays guitar.”
And now Wilhelm remembers him from the Faktory, standing off to the side of the stage with a red guitar. And the name, too. Kevan was the person Simon called in Bjarstad, the one who told Candace where to find them. Wilhelm’s first instinct would be to keep him far away from Simon, but he’s aware that - as much as he doesn’t like it - the Candace Issue is more complicated on Simon’s side.
Simon met her for coffee, when he was in L.A. and Wilhelm was stuck in class a million miles away, and Wilhelm’s phone left imprints in his palm he was gripping it so tight waiting for a phone call that didn’t come, just a text two hours later: she’s gone, all still standing and heading to the airport. See you soon xx
Here and now, Simon seems relaxed for the first time since they entered the lobby, flicking the studs on Kevan’s jacket and saying, “Did you listen to the EP?”
“I did. Not really my thing,” Kevan says, but with a grin as though this is some shared joke between them. “But we can add more guitar solos when you record the full album.”
Simon snorts a laugh, like he hasn’t been up all night for the last week worrying about The Full Album. “Let’s get through these shows first.”
“Speaking of, I did need to catch you.” Kevan’s smile drops. “There’s a problem with my schedule.”
Fuck. Wilhelm steps a bit closer to Simon as his laugh dies and he casts a desperate look towards the check-in desk and escape. “The schedule isn’t really my area,” Simon starts. “Can you talk to Farima about it?”
“No,” Kevan says. “I think I need you.” He’s already pulling out his phone. “See, I’ve got the dinner tonight, rehearsals tomorrow, shows Friday and Saturday, but in the middle I have something called a ‘day off’? I told them, this is a Simme tour we don’t do that here -”
The tension drops entirely out of Simon’s body. "Oh my god," he says, shoving at Kevan’s shoulder, the kind of easy roughhousing that he would've done with Ayub or Rosh back at school. “You’re such an asshole.”
Kevan uses his height advantage to ruffle Simon’s hair then takes off running before Simon can retaliate. Simon is laughing, but pauses to kiss Wilhelm’s cheek and shove his backpack into Wilhelm’s arms before chasing Kevan across the lobby, scattering guests and hotel staff in all directions.
Wilhelm slings Simon’s bag over his shoulder and heads to the desk, only glancing back every other second. “Simon Erikkson and Wilhelm Kassel, I think our bags have already been dropped off.”
She digs out some paperwork for him to sign - he’s still figuring out his signature, still forgetting to respond for a minute when he hears ‘Mr Kassel’ - and she’s coding up two keycards when Simon stumbles back up against the counter, breathing hard.
“Hey, sorry. Didn’t mean to abandon you,” he says, and Wilhelm can’t blame him for it when he’s still smiling like that, lighting up his whole face.
He had kind of understood what Simon said about wanting to be back on stage - in that he could see it was something a person might want, even if the idea of doing it himself made him want to throw up - but he’d thought the touring was a necessary evil that went with that, not something that could possibly be enjoyed. When Simon had arranged these first shows for Spring Break so Wilhelm could come along, Wilhelm had just assumed it was so that he’d have someone other than Farima there to fall back on.
But as Kevan falls into step with them on the way to the elevator, talking about dinner plans like booking a table at a restaurant is the most outlandishly posh thing that any person has ever done, he realises maybe for Simon it was about showing Wilhelm this other side of his life. To show that he’s not alone out here.
“Di was asking if we need to dress for dinner,” Kevan says. “I said I didn’t think we should go naked but I’d check with you.”
Simon elbows him in the side. “I think we can be us,” he says. “It’s not -” he pauses as Wilhelm presses the button to call the lift, waits for the doors to open and them to step inside before he continues. “It’s just to keep it out of the bar, you know?” Wilhelm steps closer, so their knuckles touch and Simon gives him a sideways smile. “Things are going to be a bit different this time.
Wilhelm half expects Kevan to make another joke, but Kevan nods, like he gets it. “You let us know what you need, yeah? We’re all rooting for you here.”
I'm done with my re-reading of ELYN, and THE line I will keep with me is this one :
“I don’t want anything from you.”
Simon pulls back to look at him. He’s applied concealer to the bags under his eyes, this close Wilhelm can see the streaks of it on his skin as he gives a weak smile. “You want the most of anyone.” Which isn’t fair and isn’t true. Except that it is. “I just want you to be happy.”
“Yeah,” Simon says. “That.”
This is sooo powerful ! The weight of the expectations of your loved one... 😭❤😭❤
And I would love to know why Simon gave Wille a key for his room... What was he expecting ?
And if it's not too much, what do you think made August get clean and turn his back to royalty ?
Again, thank you so much for this story ! ❤
Hiii, sorry this took so long. Can't believe I am expected to work a job instead of just having fanfic related feelings on tumblr all day every day. Very rude. None stars.
(if your ask is in my inbox I promise I am getting to it! If you still want to submit questions for any of the memes I reblogged, I will happily ramble all day every day so the ask box is always open <3 )
"I just want you to be happy."
(I need you all to know that doing this meme is really reinforcing the 'a first draft does not have to be perfect or even good' mantra because guess what was also not in draft 1! All of this!)
There is a side of Simon's character that I think is justified in canon which is that he doesn't like letting people down. He switches schools to support Sara, he agrees to date Marcus even though he clearly doesn't want to because Marcus asks. So this moment starts with Simon talking about how he started on coke because he didn't want to let the fans down by being exhausted. Originally there was another step in the middle where he talks about how Candace wanted him to get clean but also be the superstar (and do a documentary!) and he couldn't see a way to have both. And then that his breakthrough was hiring Joseph, and Keira and realising that having money means you can pay people to care about you in very specific ways.
Wilhelm swallows. “Sometimes people help you just because they want to.”
Simon’s mouth quirks slightly off to the side, like Wilhelm’s said something amusing. “That’s what they tell you. But they always want something from you, you just don’t realise what until it’s too late.”
“I don’t want anything.”
Wilhelm I think genuinely believes that he's telling the truth here, but Simon has had to become a lot more aware of how he is perceived and the expectations of him from having this very public career. Like, for all Wilhelm saying 'you can take time, the fans won't disappear if it takes you more than 2 months to make an album', Simon has also seen the fan tweets complaining when the tour skips certain cities/countries, when they have to wait for the album, when they don't release a tour vlog. (One of the big reasons he doesn't have a phone is to stop him from reading all of that because at a certain point you can't satisfy everyone and Candace is like 'this is not helping you so let's put a stop to it.')
So in this moment Wilhelm is saying 'I don't want anything' but also he wants them to be together and happy and Simon is very aware that the easiest way for him to be happy is by drinking and taking the drugs. He's spent the last week and a half in coke withdrawal which is basically just being miserable all the time and going into rehab is going to be more of that. And then, the Simon who comes out of rehab is going to be very different from Simme-the-popstar and different to Simon-from-high-school and current-Simon has no idea what that person will look like or if it will even be someone Wilhelm likes.
So for Simon getting clean means getting away from anyone else's idea of who he should be. And that's hard. And sometimes you hit on the perfect line to articulate what would otherwise be 5 paragraphs of rambling tumblr post and those moments are the best part of writing for all that they come so rarely <3 (and also they do not always come in draft 1 and that's okay)
2. Why does Simon invite Wilhelm to the hotel room
I think SImon's base logic is the same as why Wilhelm went, this sense of 'if we can get away from the cameras we can be Us instead of Simme and Crown Prince Wilhelm and things will make sense again.' But on top of that is this thing that Simon is doing where he is attempting to use sex to solve his problems (arguably this desire is coming from the same place as the drinking and the coke. It's the 'I don't know how to feel good when I'm not performing, but if I invite someone up they'll tell me I'm amazing and then we can have orgasms and that'll feel good for a little while').
So Simon is thinking 'I need to see him in private' but then he doesn't have any plan beyond that so it's back to the usual plan of sex=feeling good, with a side line in 'if I give him a good enough time he won't notice anything weird or ask any questions and everything will be fine.'
(I do have a while Simon POV scene of the hotel after Wilhelm leaves that will probably be posted somewhere at some point so here is a teaser:
Wilhelm must have left by now. And if part of Simon was hoping that he’d still be there when Simon opened the door - so SImon could say what, he doesn’t know - that part is quiet enough not to show surprise when there’s just Gareth in the hallway in his perfectly pressed suit with his perfectly neutral gaze. Does Gareth feel emotion? Nobody knows. He has all of one facial expression so if he’s judging Simon for bringing the prince of Sweden up to his rooms or judging him for failing to keep the prince of Sweden there for longer than an hour, or not judging him at all because he has full respect for the whore lifestyle, Simon never has to know.
3. August
Oh hey! I thought this choice might get me more hate so thanks to everyone for coming on board with me for the off-screen August redemption arc 😅
So fundamentally ELYN (and, yknow, YR) is a story about legacy and inheritance. Both the big glaringly obvious thing of the crown, but also the other things: the secrets, the class culture, and the genetic predisposition to addiction. (I can't remember right now if August's father's suicide was drug-related in the show, but for the fic I definitely had that in my mind).
So August functions as a parallel for both Simon and Wilhelm. The obvious 'was taking drugs to cope with stress, stress kept increasing, ultimately broke under it' . But also on Wilhelm's side, August is desperately trying to live up to the legacy of a dead man. He's idolising his father, wanting to make him proud and unable to acknowledge that this culture of appearing perfect and not talking about problems is what killed him.
The way I always pictured August's arc was that he hit rock bottom somewhere in the military - he'd been relying on pills to get him through stress, this was infinitely more stress than high school, plus the fallout from Sara's confession (which had been covered up by the court, but was still impacting him). I never had a concrete idea of what the exact rock bottom was (maybe stealing pills?), but he was dishonorably discharged and checked himself into rehab where he basically got a big dose of Welcome to Real Life. Meeting normal people. Realising they're not so different. 'There's a whole world out there that's not our careful circle of cultivated Heirs and Heiresses and people have problems but they also have whole entire lives where none of these things you're so worried about matter at all.'
And he did the work. He re-evaluated his biases. He grew up. He met a girl, who I think was class-adjacent but more practical than the Hillerska-royalty types (I like to think she was maybe an art assessor who came to help him auction off large parts of the estate holdings) and they got talking. Their relationship seems to have moved pretty fast, but hey August took some pride in the elements of being prefect that involved taking care of people so maybe he's ready for a family. (Originally there were going to be 8 years between the show and the fic so I gave him 3 kids, and then when I cut it down to 6years it felt mean to delete a baby so that's why he has twins.)
The 12 step program has a step for 'making amends', I think August probably got in touch with Wilhelm and was like 'I owe you an apology and amends, and I understand if you don't want to talk to me but if I can ever help you or Simon, I'm here.' And that went ignored until Wilhelm called him from basic training, and then five years later when he got a call from Simon in hospital like 'So Malin gave me your number...'
One other bonus August ELYN headcanon I have is that Wilhelm phoned August from the car on his way to the debate and was like:
"I think if I do it now I can bring it all down, but if I can't they're going to come after you, and then the children. I'm sorry I can't protect them anymore."
"It's my job to look after my family," August says. "And I promise I will not let any of this shit touch them. You have my full support, go do what you have to do."
(there is a whole other tumblr post about how I don't believe in writing bad people just people who sometimes make bad choices but this is already Very Long and I'm not sure if I actually answered the questions so we'll leave it there 😅)
