Royalteen: Princess Margrethe (2023) Movie Review: A Sensitively-Narrated Bewilderment of a Teenager Caught in the Spotlight

Royalteen: Princess Margrethe (2023) Movie Review: ‘Royalteen: Princess Margrethe’ is the second chapter of the 2022 film Royalteen. The earlier film followed Lena’s journey of moving to a different town and falling in love with Prince Kalle while simultaneously getting away from her past traumas. It explored her psyche and her struggle due to the apparent class differences. The 2023 film follows Margrethe’s journey, who was only left to be perceived from a tiring ‘evil sister’ stereotype. Directed by Ingvild Søderlind, the film attempts to capture her anguish through her life in the spotlight.

The script, written by Marta Huglen Revheim, Ester Schartum-Hansen, and Per-Olav Sørensen, shows Margrethe trying to map out her path post a scandal from the prom night. At the end of Royalteen, the camera lingers over her. She is sitting by herself, unbearably anxious. The new film picks up a while afterward when she keeps having flashbacks of an incident from that night. What she considered a fun hook-up with a guy ends up turning into a scandal.

Before getting into the hard parts, the film shows Margrethe’s life as royalty living in today’s world. You might also consider it as a contemporary version of the regency-era romance, Bridgerton – due to some of its thematic similarities. She lives that life of luxury and prestige where secrecy is sacrosanct to maintain a sense of reverence toward them. ‘You must behave a certain way. You can’t be like normal people.’ All of those non-struggles are also underlined in this film, like the previous ones. It almost feels like Prince Harry speaking about his non-problems.

Nevertheless, what strikes me as significant in this Netflix release is the sensitive narration and a winning performance by Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne. Her eyes keep looking for a semblance of normalcy after an incident shifts her life’s trajectory. Her character has to keep a painful secret hidden because of the pressure to maintain her status. It gets unpeeled like a bandage when the guy she meets during the prom denies deleting their intimate moments. He arrogantly keeps using it as leverage against her to make her behave as per his whims and wishes.

Despite being a conventional trope, the narration sensibly handles the PTSD effects on her life from this event. They keep interfering with her love life whenever she falls for someone, she keeps rejecting her own joy. The film does initially follow her character like a damsel in distress, but no prince is brought in to take her out of it. That’s not particularly bold or new. But it is certainly commendable how the writing shows Margrethe’s messy journey toward dealing with this issue, which she should not have felt pressured into in the first place.

There are moments where the family members are shown dealing with the hidden truths for the sake of being royalty. They are fairly formulaic for such royalty-related storylines. What Royalteen: Princess Margrethe still does well is how it handles their conflicts with genuine concern and tenderness. The actors are given enough time to flesh out what their characters are going through, which makes us resonate with them.

There are also certain scenes where Margrethe tries to figure out who she is supposed to be as a person. Her bewilderment is aching since the scandal manifests in her daily actions, where she ends up behaving un-royalty-like. It is not seen merely through the prism of royal vs. normal life and has been given enough emotional support by the actress to believe in her teenage anxieties. It is nothing groundbreaking, but it certainly leaves an impact.

I wholeheartedly agree with Emma Thompson’s opinion on how romance narratives are unfairly the only ones criticized for their cliches and tropes while other genres get a free pass. Just look at the bulk of superhero movies; all of them are reiterations of the same narratives. Although not a genre, they are rarely critiqued, even by seasoned critics.

Royalteen: Princess Margrethe works fine due to its sensitive subject handling of the obvious intricacies of a teenager’s life. The forever spotlight becomes another burden for Margrethe, which isn’t the central conflict. It is rather about how she deals with the scandal’s effect on her life, which the film explores with sensitivity.

Related Read: Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story ‘Netflix’ Miniseries: Recap & Ending Explained

Royalteen: Princess Margrethe (2023) Movie Links – IMDb
Royalteen: Princess Margrethe (2023) Movie Cast – Ines Høysæter Asserson, Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne, Julie Agnete Vang

Where to watch Royalteen: Princess Margrethe