@sjmcc13
You've got a point. The mistreatment is pretty obvious in the beginning, though the manga doesn't exactly indicate how long that mistreatment was for.
Given the "fallen noble lineage" context, it becomes more clear that the situation is a
Cinderella-esque, "she's prettier/nobler, so f*ck the ugly one" scenario.
For some reason, I thought the mistreatment was just because "One of our children is about to become famous, and it most certainly isn't the ugly duckling, so screw her right now. We won't need to bother with her anymore once Alice becomes the Miko, since she's not worth the effort."
Your comments have made it clear that this bias didn't just start because "the Miko is in your house". Rather, it's always been that way, and this is just an extension of that.
The reason they hid her is probably because:
1. child abuse is probably not legal in this setting, especially in the eyes of the church. (Given that the dad apparently got arrested when what he did came to light, this is probably the case.)
2. Even if it's not illegal, it's not exactly a welcome sight.
3. noble-commoner bias. *
4. If Lerunda somehow got picked to be Miko, she could totally expose everything they've done to her, and then the church/kingdom might do something to the parents to prevent "divine judgement" from falling on the whole country. (Remember how they exiled the researcher because she apparently upset Alice by trying to make her LEARN Miko stuff? If they're gonna exile people for arguing with the "Miko", what are they going to do to people who straight up abused the Miko?)
@Nep
You've got a point. If they're disgusting and irresponsible enough to literally leave one of their children to die, they're probably just as shameless enough to blame said blameless, probably-dead child for their problems. People are more than capable of being irrational, and these scummy excuses of parents clearly aren't above it.
Still, I'm curious as to whether a single person in the entire starving village will question why all the plants are dying when God's supposed to protect stuff important to the Miko