By Bisu and Yukiko. Released in Japan as “Tensei Oujo wa Kyou mo Hata o Tatakioru” by Arian Rose. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Esther Sun.
It’s been so long with everyone in the cast adoring Rosemary that it’s sometimes a surprise to remember that there are those who don’t love Rosemary, and part of this is because she’s been kept in bubble wrap for most of her life. It’s only now that she’s married to Leonhart and has a few world-changing innovations under her belt that she can afford to move on to the really, really impossible tasks of shoujo light novels: the grand ball with catty nobility all present and correct. Fortunately, Rosemary is still so utterly gorgeous that almost everyone who sees her either falls in love or gives up. Oh sure, there’s the King’s annoying cousin, who fragrantly tries to get Leonhart to take his daughter as a mistress in front of Rosemary. But clearly he’s too stupid to love, so there’s no way that he’d actually be part of the main plot, right?
Now that Rosemary has used her protagonist powers to not be evil and executed, and to make sure that her family all love each other (well, mostly, the King and Queen still mostly exist as a political marriage), she has to deal with the fact that that family wants to protect her and see her safe, especially now that she’s pregnant.This means her mother wants to help her choose the proper dress for the ball, while her brothers, who want to help but can’t see her change, are left to fume outside. Even her father, who has lived his entire life under the rule of “it doesn’t matter if I’m an asshole as long as the end result is good” spots her exhaustion at the ball and deliberately screws up her hair to force her to leave early and not get sick. This is not even mentioning her husband, or bodyguard, or any of the 80,000 others. Boy, you’d have to be REALLY DUMB to try to go after her!
The bulk of this book is Rosemary setting up a harvest festival for her nearby village. They used to have a big one, but it gradually petered out, and she wants to peter it up again. This is helped by her actually caring about the wives and grandmothers of the village and wanting to see what their traditional foods and crafts are. Speaking of crafts, we also see her interacting with her autistic jewelry designer Ayame (I usually try not to diagnose fictional characters, but sometimes it’s impossible not to) and Ayame’s childhood friend/minder Hiiragi, who would probably be married to her if she weren’t in love with Rosemary and making delicate jewelry pieces, in that order. Oh yes, and there’s even the son of Duke Evil, who is trying his best to save his family and domain from dear old dad’s plotting, and he ALSO falls in love with Rosemary while also seeing she already has the perfect husband.
With all this going on, it’s no wonder she doesn’t give birth in this. There’s no sign of Book 11 in Japan, either. Oh well, we’ve got enough adoration of Rosemary here for three new books. I do enjoy this, but hope you don’t hate perfect characters.
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