“He is embarrassing the entire royal family for fuck sakes” : A multimodal discourse analysis about the construction of love in the Netflix series Young Royals

The study strives to clarify and problematize the construction of love in a Swedish produced tv series for youths with homosexual main characters. It examines the six episodes of the Netflix show Young Royals, which premiered in 2021 and has been acknowledged for its depiction of homosexual characters. With help from multimodal discourse analysis and the analytical tools lexical choices, emotionally charged words, attributes and settings the study examines how homosexual love is constructed in the show and how norms about sexuality and masculinity are expressed in this depiction. The study uses the theories “Heteronormativity” and “Hegemonic masculinity” in order to help see the different discourses from the series. The results show four different thematic discourses connected to the construction of love between the main characters; inner conflict of sexuality, loneliness, power relationships as obstacles to romantic relationships and invincible love. The conclusions drawn are that love is not constructed in the stereotypic way which is common for homosexual relationships in media. The love is rather constructed like in typical romantic movies and shows in which the main characters are heterosexual.