Unpopular Opinion: I don’t think the abdication arc is a real ending
This is gonna sound very pessimistic but I never saw it as a realistic or even definitive ending for the characters. Wilhelm is still a minor meaning there is no way he can officially abdicate at this point. Besides having the first openly queer prince abdicate this soon will be pretty bad PR for the royal family even if he insists it was entirely his decision.
Like Farima mentioned Wilhelm coming out was a great opportunity for them and having being overtaken by a random cousin would not be a great look. With the way the royal court interacted with August I thought it was clear they only saw him as a last resort.
Also the royal family in the show has barely any people since the closest after Wilhelm was his second cousin. So realistically they would still need a spare(which was initially Wilhelm’s role) to be there. I really do not see them just letting Wilhelm go. The show mentioned so many times how the royal court had crazy power to fuck people over I don’t see them letting go of Wilhelm. So in some way or the other Wilhelm will have to work as a royal probably under August if he manages to abdicate.
Plus Wilhelm’s relationship with Simon suffered mostly cause of the public scrutiny they were subject to which will only get worse if he were to abdicate. So mostly what I think is it was a nice fairytale ending with the school closing and Wilmon being freed from the monarchy but I don’t think it aligns well with the overall realistic and raw vibe of the show.
Fun fact but the real life Hillerska in Sweden was also allowed to operate soon after it was exposed for the type of stuff that we see in the show. This only furthers my belief that the ending was deliberately hopeful and showed a rosy version of what life could be for the characters instead of what is realistic. And I usually don’t have an issue with idealistic endings but I always loved YR for how things were shown to be realistic and the ending just didn’t have that.