This Is an Obvious Fraudulent Marriage - Ch. 15

[Meri08]

Her armpits-!
She's on crack. They're both on crack!
It was serious then funny.
They suit each other well tho
They're both crazy!

 

[ultraleaf]

Is she a goldfish taking 3 steps and forgets I thought she already knew who he was wtf

 

[Chet31]

Lady, you have known his full name since chapter two, signed contracts and stuff. Too bad being that old makes you senile.

 

[QueenKumQuat]

I swear he told her his name like 3 times... GIRL.

 

[Writerfromanotherstar]

And she's also extremely weak minded?? She's believes anything and everything and doesn't have the common sense to compare his behaviour with her?

 

[Hameul]

Is she stupid? I-

 

[Lohengrin]

Gap moe will get you every time. Sensitive predators are my weakness. T_T

 

[Svelandria]

I loved how she called him a twat. Gave me a good chuckle. :3

@QueenKumQuat I think he mispronounced his own name on purpose those times. There seems to be a bit of a language or dialect barrier between the former Sofen kingdom and the empire, so she's been misreading and mispronouncing names left and right.

@TheDragonLord I'm pretty sure she still has her title, it's just that while she is the Countess of Efran, she is also Archduchess of Sofen now. Also, since he married into her family, I believe it technically should be Archduke Efran instead of Kaleid and the heir will be of the Efran dynasty name. Usually, matrilineal marriages have the mother pass on her family name instead of the father, and that is the kind of marriage they agreed to.

I suppose it would depend on the laws of the empire and such, but they could also have it where two separate children inherit one title each with both children having different last names. This could solve a potential succession dispute if they have more than one child so long as neither child is ambitious enough to want the other's title in addition to their own and any other children do not desire land.

 

[TheDragonLord]

@Svelandria

That would make sense, except,

Spoiler

later on it's revealed that now she has to take on his name because he is of a higher title, and the Emperor effectively orders it by proxy, which while creating a subplot that you'lvsoon read about her trying to use it as an excuse for the marriage certificate and others being null in void (that epically fails due to technicalities) but that ultimately results in her having to go by his namezl, thereby creating the ambiguity. Heh

 

[Svelandria]

@TheDragonLord

Spoiler

I noticed this development once I read the following chapters and considered deleting my post, but opted not to. However, I'd still like to think there is a possibility where she negotiates with Kaleid and gets to keep her title as a separate thing, where the Archduke title is under his name and the County title is under hers. The idea that she was basically cheated out of her home doesn't sit well with me, and if we take into consideration the idea that she will still divorce him by the end of the year(which he obviously won't let happen without a fight) then doing so would effectively make her lose everything since the title may very well belong to him now, if not because of the fact that everything is now under his name then because he is her direct liege and could revoke it at any time for any reason. Kind of a shitty situation she's in.

 

[TheDragonLord]

And thus, @Svelandria (note spoiler inside of a spoiler),

Spoiler

we have a pretty accurate rendering of what life was like for women pre-1980 in the US where men could effectively have near total control over a woman. This trope was done in another comic (Iris: The Lady and Her Smartphone)

Spoiler

where the original male lead steals her title (via marriage), then frames her and has her executed so that he can marry her cousin whose family was stealing/hording her wealth all along.

It's pretty much a given that she's a prisoner as this has been going on for eons for women. It makes me cringe. Let's hope a meaningful solution presents itself soon.

 

[Svelandria]

@TheDragonLord

Spoiler

I knew things were bad for women in the past, but 1980? Has it really been only that long? I mean, I know women's suffrage was pretty damn recent within the last 100 years and all, but I thought things got significantly better by at least the late 60's. To be fair, I'm not a history expert and I don't remember everything I learned back in school, but 1980 doesn't feel that long ago for women to have a better station in life(Which is funny because I wasn't even born yet to get a feel of what it was like to live back in the 80's. I was short by about a decade or so). It just feels like things should have already been better for women sooner than that by at least 10 years.

As for our main character, I also hope a meaningful solution is found. Since our male lead loves our main heroine then perhaps that significantly increases her odds of him being amicable about giving her more power over her own life and home. Fingers crossed.

 

[TheDragonLord]

@Svelandria I recently read a good description of the problem:

I always used to think that Belle was such a horrible role model to have in fairy tales. Like, she becomes a prisoner in a castle, is locked with a grump of a beast and somehow learns to like him despite the way he treats her and the way he threatened her father. He doesn't deserve the love at all, really, but somehow it happens. Now I wonder if there's some unfortunate truth in something like Belle. Perhaps we learn to love as a survival instinct. To make our situation better.

Sold To The Dragon Kings: A Romance Collection by Daniella Wright

As such, perhaps this is a partial explanation of the protagonist's subconscious mindset?
Either way, with regards to the history

Spoiler

Husbands could not legal commit rape to their wives until about 1980---See the Notorious RBG on this topic. Husbands had near total control over their wives and wives were lawfully expected to offer themselves in order to please their husbands. It was quite sick. In about 1980, wives could finally seek legal recourse for a husband who raped her (forced her to have sex without consent). Until that time, by legal definition, a husband could not rape his wife. Hell, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) was only passed in 1990. It's taken 30 years to have much if any meaningful impact on society. In the not so distant past, husbands had total control over their wives finances, could open bank accounts in their names, take their paychecks, gamble or drink it away, or whatever, and the wife could effectively do little or nothing. It was all deemed within the husband's "lawful rights", hence why guys like me legit cringe thinking about those "Dark Days". (Gets chills) My own father was quite progressive and even he displayed some of the toxic cap (by no means even remotely in the magnitude of the majority, but still, it was there).

I find these stories a throwback to the Dark Days. I mean, shit! "Women's Lib" didn't really take off until the 1970s. When my Mom entered college in 1967-1968, her grades were sent home to her parents, she was not independent (nor was my Dad for that matter after two years service in the Vietnam War), and she had to wear skirts past her knees, there were curfews in the all female dorms, she was effectively a glorified pinup prisoner" as were effectively all women. You just ed hoped & prayed that your prospective husband was not a "bad man". Guys would "change" after marriage once they had "captured" said female (What is this? Competitive Wife Angling?). It's not widely broadcast and unless you have women who would talk about it in your life, few I expect know. Then there was the "Cult of Purity" and how women who got "knocked up" were treated. Lord the stories I could tell...

It is sufficient to say that between Roe v Wade (privacy between a doctor and patient) and other legal rulings, it wasn't until the late 1970s to early 1980s that women had meaningful independence, and even then, it wasn't until really recently that things changed. Yes, there were always the feminist who won her independence, but those were the exception (and some of the worst people keeping women in these systems of injustice were in fact women). Heh.

 

[Kryspy_Kreme]

You idiot psycho, I know she's adorable like this, but clearly tell her your intentions! Especially, she's a foreigner, you asshole!

 

[4sarah1212]

I'm kind of relieved that the misunderstanding was cleared.... But at the same time they were so cute before!!! I miss her clueless attitude 😭

 

[roxanneayy]

"my pits are sweaty right now, so grabbing there is a bit"
I died. This is her first thought after getting picked up by the crazy killer. 🤣

 

[ShadowWalker]

That baron was asking for that....idiot.

 

[ItsHanabi]

dont worry dear he's soft for you

 

[shanshane2006]

sorry but how stupid would you need to be to not even realize that he's a murderer seeing that his name was exactly like the murderer like sis?!

 

[Falynn]

I think I kinda understand now. The reason why she didn't think that he is the crazy killer is because of how it was pronounce. (We wouldn't notice it since we are reading it.) I remember in the early chapters she's having problems pronouncing the empire's language. So that's why she wasn't able to connect the dots. (Plus the fact that he was too kind to her.)