Akuyaku Reijou no Oyome-sama - Vol. 2 Ch. 10

[Sunzo]

It seems like this is nearing the story's climax.

 

[Sleepingair]

Mmmmm weird, why does her sister doesn't giving me the trash sister bitch vibe?, unlike the unrecyclable uncultured pathetic swine trash ex fiance looks, Perhaps there is more from her character that were being misunderstood by the FL? Because the way they did their entrance her sister wasn't even shock, its more like she expect them to come and her looks is giving me the green ally signal.

 

[Blackwar]

It's more than likely the prince force Aurora to accept his marriage proposal, or else her whole family will be marked as traitor and executed. The prince also seems to be looking for pretty doll he can fully control, so someone as stubborn as Karina is big no for him, this also the reason they specifically choose low-class noble family. The royal family doesn't want to share their power with other big noble.

 

[llde]

And, their parents also don't seem to hate Karina, or treat one favorably over the other. They treat Aurora as the sickly child she is in the flashbacks, but they don't ignore or abuse Karina; they hold her in high esteem and have great expectations for her, but they don't just demean and deride her.

Aurora was shown in the flashback to use her "sickly child" card to encroach Karina's possessions and gifts, even if it's debatable if she did that with malicious intent. The parents quite favored Aurora, and made Karina shoulder the responsibilities of 2 children instead of one, as well the entire family ones. They weren't there in the most important part of her childhood, the emotional grow part. They were so focused on Aurora that this is textbook Abuse by Neglect. No wonder Karina grew to be an emotionally stunted woman. Hate as well abusing actions aren't actually required to harm, even only emotionally, a child.
Also this means that while we don't know if Aurora was actively malicious toward Karina in a scheme to make her exiled, it doesn't matter on the frame Karina put on her actions. So we have Aurora sending maids to he castle being framed as her trying to encroach another space, even if Aurora may have the perfect intentions, and in fact prevented the prince to send way more people to kill her (something Karina have no way to know).

 

[JustReadingShit]

Assuming this shot is meant to take place from Aurora's POV its funny the first thing she notices is that the wolf girl has her arms around her sister

 

[YukiHomu]

Atm she reminds me of the lil sis in the stoic saintess one where she pretend to go along with the clown prince while biding her time to take revenge for what he did to her sister.

Alas unlike in that one these two didn't seem to be close and Karina is completely obsessed with this revenge so there probably won't be happy moment between them.
My expectation is Karina wreck the shop here then when prince and Aurora escape 'separately' Eve will follow Aurora then get to hear her side of the story for us.

I was wondering which manga/manhwa youre referencing it sounds like a good read

 

[Rafalga]

I mean MC is not really angry because Aurora stole the fuckboy. She is angry because Aurora walked all over her in order to do that. And don't forget that MC is alive due to SHEER chance right now (and got herself help with LOTS of strings attached). No matter what Aurora's plans are/were, there is pretty much no excuse for her. Intentions mean jack shit if you are this incompetent. If author wanted to convince readers about Aurora's compromised position, he should have started way earlier. Right now all we have in the entire manga is 2 panels (one with the ring page and the other when they crush in showing Aurora's "i was totally expecting this" face)

Also MC didn't arrive to this revenge obsession out of nowhere. Her exile was just the last piece of a years long selfishness from Aurora and neglect of her family. She is not a spiteful and hateful person at her core. If Aurora has any kind of ability to self reflect, she should ask herself how did her sister become so hateful. Because "i did this for your sake" won't fly even for a minute.

 

[UdenEmpati]

Aurora was shown in the flashback to use her "sickly child" card to encroach Karina's possessions and gifts, even if it's debatable if she did that with malicious intent. The parents quite favored Aurora, and made Karina shoulder the responsibilities of 2 children instead of one, as well the entire family ones. They weren't there in the most important part of her childhood, the emotional grow part. They were so focused on Aurora that this is textbook Abuse by Neglect. No wonder Karina grew to be an emotionally stunted woman. Hate as well abusing actions aren't actually required to harm, even only emotionally, a child.
Also this means that while we don't know if Aurora was actively malicious toward Karina in a scheme to make her exiled, it doesn't matter on the frame Karina put on her actions. So we have Aurora sending maids to he castle being framed as her trying to encroach another space, even if Aurora may have the perfect intentions, and in fact prevented the prince to send way more people to kill her (something Karina have no way to know).

I don't know if it's the wording you chose, but you make it sound like Aurora, who was all of maybe 5 years old in that flashback with the stuffed animal, was choosing to act in such a way that would see her take everything from Karina. Calling it "encroaching" on Karina's gifts or "encroaching" on Karina's place of exile is a very particular use of wording that very much points to you assuming ill intent on her part, even if you call any potential for malice "debatable".

The entire crux of the current tension in the narrative rests on the veracity of Karina's interpretation of the actions of those around her, so stating that "it doesn't matter what Aurora's intentions were when doing what she did" is just defaulting into taking Karina's side regardless of the truth.

The point is, they do matter, because whatever the outcome, we only have Karina's perspective, and thus an incomplete picture of what has actually transpired that lead Karina and Aurora to the point we find them in here and now.

More pointedly, other than Karina, whose account of things is suspect because of her distorted perspective, we only have secondhand gossip from various individuals in chapters 6 & 7 to rely on for what Karina was like - but most importantly, when Eve meets her mother in chapter 7 (who pretends she was a nursemaid for the Crocus family), she talks about how diligent, obedient, and considerate Karina was as a child; how she always put Aurora first, how she never talked back to her parents, and how she was straightforward and one capable of "holding her head high", which is why her mother and everyone else thought she would make for a great princess consort.
You can say they neglected Karina in favor of focusing on the sickly Aurora and call that abuse, but if Karina really did never speak up and only did what she was told because she herself thought it was best--and all of that couched in the dynamics of a noble family with ties to the Crown where the daughters were trained from a young age to become queen--then the only thing that actually matters is what intentions each party had.

Of course the results are what we see, but we still need the actual reasoning and rationale to make sense of the missing pieces. Karina's reality is one way, but that doesn't mean her way is the correct one, and we've already gotten hints that she might not really have "the actual truth" when it comes to her sister.
I'm welcome to be wrong in all of this, and I suppose we shall see, but. I do not think that everyone is the villain that Karina thinks them to be, and I do to think that the intentions of those like her family are very important, because they change the context of Karina's reality and add dimension to the otherwise single-point perspective we're being given on the story.

 

[Hresvelg_]

I’m really enjoying what I’m seeing, but I kind of wish the author had taken a bit more time with… well, everything? We’ve already had a timeskip, switched the POV to another character for several chapters and now we’re already at the MC making a big entrance at the wedding. This is only chapter 10 lol. It definitely makes me curious about how long the manga is going to be

 

[WhimsiCat]

I was wondering which manga/manhwa youre referencing it sounds like a good read

https://mangadex.org/title/d1573248...-yaku-haki-sareta-seijo-wa-ringoku-ni-urareru

 

[llde]

I don't know if it's the wording you chose, but you make it sound like Aurora, who was all of maybe 5 years old in that flashback with the stuffed animal, was choosing to act in such a way that would see her take everything from Karina. Calling it "encroaching" on Karina's gifts or "encroaching" on Karina's place of exile is a very particular use of wording that very much points to you assuming ill intent on her part, even if you call any potential for malice "debatable".

The entire crux of the current tension in the narrative rests on the veracity of Karina's interpretation of the actions of those around her, so stating that "it doesn't matter what Aurora's intentions were when doing what she did" is just defaulting into taking Karina's side regardless of the truth.

The point is, they do matter, because whatever the outcome, we only have Karina's perspective, and thus an incomplete picture of what has actually transpired that lead Karina and Aurora to the point we find them in here and now.

my chose of words may have been poor and used some words that have some nuances I'm not aware of, as I'm not a native speaker.
I don't think Aurora is guilty for behaving like that at 5... but I do accuse their parents for her actions. At the same time for what little we know we can't exclude deeper reasons, she may as well be a sociopath. My use of the term "encroaching" however didn't want to carry a nuance of assuming malice, and it was more a reflection on how Karina viewed it.

When I say that doesn't matter I mean that Karina frames Aurora actions in a negative way becouse of her history, as well Aurora frame their own action differently, becouse she probably never understood how Karina viewed their past history. The various actions are filtered by their own views, resulting in a frame that may be disconnected of their real motivations.

More pointedly, other than Karina, whose account of things is suspect because of her distorted perspective, we only have secondhand gossip from various individuals in chapters 6 & 7 to rely on for what Karina was like - but most importantly, when Eve meets her mother in chapter 7 (who pretends she was a nursemaid for the Crocus family), she talks about how diligent, obedient, and considerate Karina was as a child; how she always put Aurora first, how she never talked back to her parents, and how she was straightforward and one capable of "holding her head high", which is why her mother and everyone else thought she would make for a great princess consort.
You can say they neglected Karina in favor of focusing on the sickly Aurora and call that abuse, but if Karina really did never speak up and only did what she was told because she herself thought it was best--and all of that couched in the dynamics of a noble family with ties to the Crown where the daughters were trained from a young age to become queen--then the only thing that actually matters is what intentions each party had.

Of course the results are what we see, but we still need the actual reasoning and rationale to make sense of the missing pieces. Karina's reality is one way, but that doesn't mean her way is the correct one, and we've already gotten hints that she might not really have "the actual truth" when it comes to her sister.
I'm welcome to be wrong in all of this, and I suppose we shall see, but. I do not think that everyone is the villain that Karina thinks them to be, and I do to think that the intentions of those like her family are very important, because they change the context of Karina's reality and add dimension to the otherwise single-point perspective we're being given on the story.

I did thought the flashback itself may have been unreliable, it's however the only part where we are shown the past. And we are shown how much Karina even if in the end accepted everything, and chose to be quite. Even when she tried to hold the gift of the uncle, she was basically manipulated to give it. So I don't think their mother is a good testimony. She was shown to be distant and inattentive regarding to Karina, and that she never probed on how Karina feels, while there were multiple times she should have understood that something wasn't wrong. This is neglect, and abuse by neglect is real, even if it's effect may be less evident then different and active forms of abuse. In this case we can see how much Karina grew up to be emotionally stunted, and how she pratically don't see any purpose for herself outside being crown princess before or revenge now.
Case in point: Chapter 1 Page 21. If the mother was a bit more attentive on her, she would have understood immediately that Karina was suppressing herself. The mother requested Karina to give the plushie to Aurora. Everything could be resolved by suggesting that either both could have played with it togheter or making it share (one week aurora one week karina for example). The mother choose one of the worst way, and didn't care for the aftermath. Karina may have ultimately chose to be silent, but it was clear that she was sad. This is also before the crown requested Aurora as the prince fiancee.
This is of course assuming what we were shown is truthful, even if incomplete. At the same time only by assuming it's truthfulness, we can do a proper speculation.

Regarding if they are villains or not... I think there aren't enough elements to properly discuss.
Personally at this point of time, I think Aurora is herself a victim of both the system, the prince and her own parents. I think is now pacific she didn't want for Karina to die.
The prince and the royals are massive assholes, between hiding the truth and sending assassins to kill Karina despite being basically exiled.
Karina's and Aurora's parents are the main culprit on making the sister relationships so stranded, as well preventing a proper development of both character, by neglect for Karina and by hyperattention on Aurora. Even by focusing more on Aurora, understandable considering she was sick, the could have acted in ways to bridge the 2 sisters, at least for the flashback we saw. As the element are still scarce, and guilt by omission is always tricky to judge, I will suspend judgment. And while their reason and intention are important the end result must still be considered. The may not be villains, but they cannot be imho absolved of all responsabilities.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a proverb specific for these situations.

 

[verdare]

Idk im just not feeling it. Her sister doesnt come off as a conniving, thieving bitch. It feels like there’s more going on with her than the story’s telling us. I certainly wouldnt mind a story where she kills her sister only to find out later that her actions were meant to protect mc or something else noble.

I think that’s the point. Something is clearly up with Aurora that we’re not privy to, and they’ve been foreshadowing it heavily. I hope we find out what it is soon.

 

[UdenEmpati]

my chose of words may have been poor and used some words that have some nuances I'm not aware of, as I'm not a native speaker.
I don't think Aurora is guilty for behaving like that at 5... but I do accuse their parents for her actions. At the same time for what little we know we can't exclude deeper reasons, she may as well be a sociopath. My use of the term "encroaching" however didn't want to carry a nuance of assuming malice, and it was more a reflection on how Karina viewed it.

When I say that doesn't matter I mean that Karina frames Aurora actions in a negative way becouse of her history, as well Aurora frame their own action differently, becouse she probably never understood how Karina viewed their past history. The various actions are filtered by their own views, resulting in a frame that may be disconnected of their real motivations.

I did thought the flashback itself may have been unreliable, it's however the only part where we are shown the past. And we are shown how much Karina even if in the end accepted everything, and chose to be quite. Even when she tried to hold the gift of the uncle, she was basically manipulated to give it. So I don't think their mother is a good testimony. She was shown to be distant and inattentive regarding to Karina, and that she never probed on how Karina feels, while there were multiple times she should have understood that something wasn't wrong. This is neglect, and abuse by neglect is real, even if it's effect may be less evident then different and active forms of abuse. In this case we can see how much Karina grew up to be emotionally stunted, and how she pratically don't see any purpose for herself outside being crown princess before or revenge now.
Case in point: Chapter 1 Page 21. If the mother was a bit more attentive on her, she would have understood immediately that Karina was suppressing herself. The mother requested Karina to give the plushie to Aurora. Everything could be resolved by suggesting that either both could have played with it togheter or making it share (one week aurora one week karina for example). The mother choose one of the worst way, and didn't care for the aftermath. Karina may have ultimately chose to be silent, but it was clear that she was sad. This is also before the crown requested Aurora as the prince fiancee.
This is of course assuming what we were shown is truthful, even if incomplete. At the same time only by assuming it's truthfulness, we can do a proper speculation.

Regarding if they are villains or not... I think there aren't enough elements to properly discuss.
Personally at this point of time, I think Aurora is herself a victim of both the system, the prince and her own parents. I think is now pacific she didn't want for Karina to die.
The prince and the royals are massive assholes, between hiding the truth and sending assassins to kill Karina despite being basically exiled.
Karina's and Aurora's parents are the main culprit on making the sister relationships so stranded, as well preventing a proper development of both character, by neglect for Karina and by hyperattention on Aurora. Even by focusing more on Aurora, understandable considering she was sick, the could have acted in ways to bridge the 2 sisters, at least for the flashback we saw. As the element are still scarce, and guilt by omission is always tricky to judge, I will suspend judgment. And while their reason and intention are important the end result must still be considered. The may not be villains, but they cannot be imho absolved of all responsabilities.
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a proverb specific for these situations.

I think we might be more aligned in our stance on this than I first presumed; I do agree that there's just not enough information at present to know the truth - but I also fully believe that's the entire point and the intent of the author.

For my part - I'm taking the position that the First Prince, Orlando, is one confirmed antagonist of the story; and by extension his Father at minimum among the Royal Family. We get a bit of insight into the way the Crown operates with the introduction of Eve, wherein the King approaches her in the Scholar Archives and proceeds to shred the report she was making on the truth behind the "Ex-Princess Consort Scandal".
The King cites that he ordered all records destroyed because they represented a shameful moment in the Royal Family's past, but - that's just rewriting history to hide your own weakness, and I think it's fair to say that any entity willing to go to that extent to control the narrative for future generations is not "good". The King might not be an evil man, and the prince might not be more than simply petty and cruel in the way that a spoiled, doted-upon child of a ruling family might be, but they have power and influence, and have wielded that to unilaterally destroy and then erase someone they find personally problematic for their image among the people - and that's bad, and very much "antagonistic behavior" and thus I think worthy of Karina's ire.

Aurora, I think is a victim of her circumstances, but I do not believe she is a powerless pawn; for one, she was able to dissuade Orlando from sending soldiers after Karina, and instead sent servants to (I think we can assume) make that castle a more welcoming, livable space. So someone like Orlando was willing to listen to her, at minimum.
But I also think she had zero ill will toward Karina, both as a child and now in the present.
And to that end, I think her parents are largely not antagonistic forces, in terms of the "actual reality" of the entire situation. They did what they thought was best with the information they had, and harbored no ill intent toward Karina and wanted her to succeed.

The crux of the issue is that we have conflicting viewpoints in the story - one from Karina who sees everyone as her enemy who sought her destruction; and then we have the very-incomplete perspective of everyone else who knew her in-person; and we have Eve on the sidelines, who is trying to suss out the truth of it all while working with mere fragments of actual information, and the testimony of people who are either biased or wholly ignorant, or otherwise have an invested interest in "spinning the narrative" in one direction or the other.

So from here, I think it is correct to suspend judgment of the main characters, because I suspect we've been lead to this point by the author with the exact expectation that we the readers would have preconceptions about who is right, who is wrong, who is good, and who is bad, and that all of this is not actually what it seems.

Karina's viewpoint is important, but it shouldn't be considered gospel truth. It's correct to say she's been hurt by those in her life, because her pain is as valid as it is evident in how her circumstances have come to be. But, I am skeptical as to whether those who hurt her, did so with intent (other than Orlando, at least). The tension in the story is created out of that disparity between what we've been shown from the protagonist's perspective, and the crumbs of outside viewpoints that we've been fed along the way - which again, I think is the author's intent.

Which is why I cannot wait to see what comes in the next chapter, and I hope that we get a conversation between Karina and Aurora that starts to shed light on the truth.

 

[Osha]

Woo, thank you for the translation, it was worth waiting for it instead of relying on that MTL garbage !

 

[YukiHomu]

https://mangadex.org/title/d1573248...-yaku-haki-sareta-seijo-wa-ringoku-ni-urareru

Thank you

 

[Reina4444]

maybe her intentions don't matter much, but the amount of agency she had matters a lot.

consider two situations:

1) the prince, with no influence from aurora, decides he likes her more and schemes to replace karina with aurora and aurora does not want to replace karina, but is forced into the arrangement with the prince.
2) aurora decides, for whatever reason, it doesn't matter too much, that she wants to replace karina as crown princess, so she schemes to remove karina and become crown princess herself, manipulating the hapless prince.

in the first situation, regardless of aurora's intentions, she's not really culpable for anything that happened, it's all on the prince. in the second situation, regardless of aurora's intentions, she's fully culpable for everything that happened, and the prince isn't.

well i think that all of karina's former acquaintances and relationships have an angle here, so there may be more than 2 scenarios possible.
chapter 3.2 has left me somewhat suspicious that both the prince and aurora are plotting something.
while the prince wanted outright murder, the sister was apparently plotting something more subtle.

 

[Reina4444]

you'll have to point out to me where all the staff and servants openly humiliated and neglected her. I saw nothing indicating that, and even in the castle she was exiled to in the north, the few servants we see, including the main one Karina most interacted with, gave no impression she was even willfully disobedient, let alone hostile toward Karina.
And, their parents also don't seem to hate Karina, or treat one favorably over the other. They treat Aurora as the sickly child she is in the flashbacks, but they don't ignore or abuse Karina; they hold her in high esteem and have great expectations for her, but they don't just demean and deride her.

If anything, Karina's skewed perspective of everyone around her is making her perceive them as hostile. Thus far, the only individual who, independently of her actual viewpoint, actually wants to hurt/remove her is Orlando the Prince.
Aurora, in all of the flashback we see of them as children, seems to look up to Karina, with bright smiles and eyes, and speaks nothing but words of praise and admiration toward her older sister. I'd argue even her giving the stuffed animal back, was an honest attempt to "make up" with Karina, as Karina was forced to give it to Aurora by their mother back when she'd first received it.

And I was actually reading back through to try and verify your hostile servants claim, and I'm now of the opinion that Aurora has had a mostly-passive role in all of this, as far as Karina's engagement annulment and exile.
Orlando wanted Aurora since the engagement was first decided upon when they were children; Karina was put forward instead by their parents because of Aurora's health issues. Karina stepped up and did her best, but Orlando barely paid attention to her - and while it's not yet been explained, I could see it being the case that--once Aurora grew a bit and perhaps got over some of her health issues--Orlando thought "well now she's healthy enough to become Queen" and he cast Karina aside, and took Aurora via his own (Crown-backed) selfish whims.
But Aurora did dissuade Orlando from sending more troops to "finish what the assassins started", and instead sent a bevy of maids and additional decorations/furniture to that castle, turning it from a "darkened and dreary place to one of light and comfort", to paraphrase Karina herself. (Yes, Karina saw it as her sister defiling her last-remaining home and thought of it as an act of mockery, but that's Karina's skewed perspective in all of this.)

Aurora could have been lied to about the machinations against Karina, or she may have thought it was for the best if Karina was tied to Orlando. We don't have confirmation at this point, though I suspect we might get something next chapter, now that she and Karina are face-to-face for the first time in years. We also don't see (at least as yet) what she thinks in the interim, when Karina is presumed dead and her name is scrubbed from the histories by the Crown. But that doesn't mean that she either orchestrated this result, or that even if she tried to help Karina in some fashion at certain points, that she could have foreseen the outcome - especially if she never accounted for Karina's distorted view of their relationship and of Aurora as a person.

In effect, all of the animosity between Aurora and Karina is seemingly all on Karina's end. Aurora is frail and merely engaged to the First Prince, who openly detests Karina. Aurora might not be scheming or making big moves to either dethrone/exile Karina, or to save/protect her, but she's done a few small things that allude to their happier childhood together, seemingly unaware of how Karina would react - and all of them would be within her direct power to do, as opposed to sweeping edicts or unilateral power moves that are beyond her reach.

That is to say - I don't think Aurora's oblivious in all of this; I don't think she's an antagonist toward Karina in reality, and that Karina is blinded/has an otherwise heavily distorted view on who her sister is. Aurora isn't spinning webs of schemes, but looking at this chapter - she wasn't surprised to see Karina, which I think means she didn't believe her sister was dead all this time. But she doesn't look angry to see her, either - and this is on her wedding day/a big step in her becoming Queen.


I did say that I think that maybe Aurora had something to do with the annulment of the engagement - looking through everything again, I would amend that to "she didn't fight against the annulment", and I don't think she had malicious intent toward Karina in light of it happening. But to your original statement of her being at best oblivious, I do think she's more "powerless" in the face of the First Prince to actually help Karina in any quantifiable way, and definitely not in a way that Karina won't misinterpret as malice.

then maybe i was reading too much hostility into chapters 3.2 and 5.
broken trust and backstabbing always end up becoming a serious topic for me.
i also highly dislike supposedly good characters with badly communicated actions like aurora would be in the situation you described.

 

[UdenEmpati]

then maybe i was reading too much hostility into chapters 3.2 and 5.
broken trust and backstabbing always end up becoming a serious topic for me.
i also highly dislike supposedly good characters with badly communicated actions like aurora would be in the situation you described.

I think the entire point is that we've been hand-fed Karina's interpretation of events, where she's being painted as the slighted victim of some orchestrated plot to destroy her - and she implicates the First Prince, her Sister, and everyone else in the Capital alongside.

But, we are only being given Karina's perspective on any of this to any significant degree. We see the discrepancy when Eve is introduced in chapter 6, after she has her in-progress report on Karina destroyed by the King. She goes on to interview people trying to find the truth, and every noble she encounters "toes the line" with accounts of how she was materialistic, haughty & conceited, and so on.
We get our first true divergence when Eve runs into Karina & Aurora's mother, who claims to have been w nursemaid (but her appearance is quite close to how their mother appears in the flashbacks we've been given) - and she talks about how Karina was such a nice child, and how the "official narrative" isn't who Karina really was.

You can certainly disagree with the type of character Aurora is being portrayed as, whether I'm close to the truth or not with my guesses. But I'm not even certain if "broken trust and backstabbing" is even the play here, because all of the actual conflict that we have thus far is borne of Karina's potentially-distorted view of events and the people involved.
It might be that there was no backstabbing or scheming on the part of anyone other than Orlando & the Crown, and that Aurora was also a manipulated victim of the First Prince, forced to replace Karina (since Orlando wanted Aurora in the first place), and thought that Karina would simply be exiled at worst, not hunted by the Crown as turned out to be the case.

Ultimately, we just don't know at this point, though I suspect some light will be shed on the matter starting next chapter, if we get any sort of conversation between Karina & Aurora/Orlando.
What we have seen and can actually verify at this time, though, is that Karina's interpretation is not necessarily/fully accurate, and that includes the behavior and motivations of all of the other main/noteworthy characters (outside of I guess Orlando, who we've seen actually intending harm on her in an independently observable fashion).

 

[llde]

I think we might be more aligned in our stance on this than I first presumed; I do agree that there's just not enough information at present to know the truth - but I also fully believe that's the entire point and the intent of the author.

For my part - I'm taking the position that the First Prince, Orlando, is one confirmed antagonist of the story; and by extension his Father at minimum among the Royal Family. We get a bit of insight into the way the Crown operates with the introduction of Eve, wherein the King approaches her in the Scholar Archives and proceeds to shred the report she was making on the truth behind the "Ex-Princess Consort Scandal".
The King cites that he ordered all records destroyed because they represented a shameful moment in the Royal Family's past, but - that's just rewriting history to hide your own weakness, and I think it's fair to say that any entity willing to go to that extent to control the narrative for future generations is not "good". The King might not be an evil man, and the prince might not be more than simply petty and cruel in the way that a spoiled, doted-upon child of a ruling family might be, but they have power and influence, and have wielded that to unilaterally destroy and then erase someone they find personally problematic for their image among the people - and that's bad, and very much "antagonistic behavior" and thus I think worthy of Karina's ire.

Aurora, I think is a victim of her circumstances, but I do not believe she is a powerless pawn; for one, she was able to dissuade Orlando from sending soldiers after Karina, and instead sent servants to (I think we can assume) make that castle a more welcoming, livable space. So someone like Orlando was willing to listen to her, at minimum.
But I also think she had zero ill will toward Karina, both as a child and now in the present.
And to that end, I think her parents are largely not antagonistic forces, in terms of the "actual reality" of the entire situation. They did what they thought was best with the information they had, and harbored no ill intent toward Karina and wanted her to succeed.

The crux of the issue is that we have conflicting viewpoints in the story - one from Karina who sees everyone as her enemy who sought her destruction; and then we have the very-incomplete perspective of everyone else who knew her in-person; and we have Eve on the sidelines, who is trying to suss out the truth of it all while working with mere fragments of actual information, and the testimony of people who are either biased or wholly ignorant, or otherwise have an invested interest in "spinning the narrative" in one direction or the other.

So from here, I think it is correct to suspend judgment of the main characters, because I suspect we've been lead to this point by the author with the exact expectation that we the readers would have preconceptions about who is right, who is wrong, who is good, and who is bad, and that all of this is not actually what it seems.

Karina's viewpoint is important, but it shouldn't be considered gospel truth. It's correct to say she's been hurt by those in her life, because her pain is as valid as it is evident in how her circumstances have come to be. But, I am skeptical as to whether those who hurt her, did so with intent (other than Orlando, at least). The tension in the story is created out of that disparity between what we've been shown from the protagonist's perspective, and the crumbs of outside viewpoints that we've been fed along the way - which again, I think is the author's intent.

Which is why I cannot wait to see what comes in the next chapter, and I hope that we get a conversation between Karina and Aurora that starts to shed light on the truth.

IIRC Aurora told the prince only to not send the army and that she would handle it. Orlando may not have know what Aurora actually planned, and may not have agreed. Possibly he assumed that Aurora hated Karina like himself.

And who know how many event the royals modified or expunged from official history...

Glad we clarified our opinions, see you in the next chapters, I too can't wait to see it.

 

[helotaku]

Thank you so much for your work you’re the best!!!