personally I appreciate that they are separate far more. it's incredibly hard to maintain the 2 tones of the different points of view and to get people to appreciate the important bits when you are constantly jumping from misunderstandings to truth reveals. given how different the 2 saints behave I think many readers would have just gotten confused, complained and dropped the story before we finally get all the details.The more I read this, the more I consider not putting many of these scenes in the main series is doing such a massive disservice to the readers who only know of the main series. This all provides some very necessary context on the main characters besides Anna, and even with Anna, knowing this version of her is necessary to understand the relationships going on in this previous timeline.
Her concerns mostly lie in the going ons of the noble society, especially in regards to the noblewomen, since that's where most of her battlefields lie, so she never gave a thought about the commoners and considered the subject beneath her ilk. It doesn't really help that one of her closest confidants is the bitch Katrina.
And said concern is probably molded by the bitch Katrina.
I don't think it's so much the losing everything that brought her down and more the bitch Katrina finally revealing herself that made Rachel realized what twisted monster she was molded into.
Molded by bitch Katrina yes, but her realization was definitely from losing everything.
She only realized what kind of a conceited lifestyle she herself had after losing everything, getting her most loyal maid killed right before her own death, and regressing only to lose every single drop of magic power she had. Only when she had basically nothing left, she was able to look back on her own conceitedness on having all that power, using it for her own gains and not for the betterment of the commoners.
And I think she only realized how much of a venomous snake Katrina actually was due to her encounters with her after the regression. Like, before then Rachel knows Katrina was out to get her specifically for her status as the prince's fiance (especially when her entourage berates her after losing the engagement in the previous timeline), but only after knowing the extent of the things Katrina would do to bring her down again (since Rachel refuses to get along with her anymore) did she know how deep that rabbit hole goes.