The reason why Melissa comes of as one of the most strong/progressive/independent FLs (aside from the fact that she’s just great in general) is because her counterpart MLs from the actual story are all bottom of the barrel trash.
This webtoon didn’t even try to do the whole “oh! The character act differently than in the novel becuase they’re actual people” thing so what actually happens is that all the supposed MLs are these one sided people characterised by a single trait that they don’t stray from.
I didn’t mean for it to sound like criticism, it started out as a complement in my head but I started to think why and all that. Maybe it’s done on purpose and each ML is suppose to go through a sort of character development and this is liek the first arc for the prince (cuz I feel like I’d be repetitive if he just brushed it off and ignored it again and it becomes this whole cycle of him being ignorant)