Thank you for the hard work!
Because I've seen this FAR TOO MANY TIMES: THE TERM IS
"VALET" — A BUTLER IS SOMETHING ELSE! (
Ah, cultural confusion and ignorance.)
"Head butler"… yeah that's just called a
butler. A male servant is a
footman; a male personal attendant is a
valet (pronounced "val-lay"). Also: the female equivalent of a valet is a
lady's maid; "head maid" is just a culturally ignorant term for a
housekeeper.
All this easy to find out, even on Wikipedia. The Japanese language may lack the proper terms for a Western setting, but English does
not. Maybe I'm too much of a history-lover: this makes me cringe
Every. Damn. Time.
To anyone worried about a predictable development for the plot: don't fear, neither Cyril nor Sophia are stereotypical characters. (Don't be fooled by the novel's colour second illustration for volume 1 either: each of those panels are illustrating separate unrelated scenes.)
@potatophish
It's just that the novel has a
different artist: the novel is illustrated by Murakami Yuichi, the manga is drawn by Shoubu (I too prefer to LN's art, but that's a different matter). Additionally, the novel is translated by Sloth Translations: historical terms aside, they're very through and good quality (they're a speed < quality translator; I think it's honestly worth the wait). If you just want speed,
the WN is free, so feel free to use block MTL — it isn't one of those series where the abundance of idioms and other such difficulties renders that method unintelligible. I don't know what kind of differences there are between the WN and the LN, but, from what little I do know, they don't seem to diverge
that much.