By Shiki and Wan Hachipisu. Released in Japan as “Jishō Akuyaku Reijō na Tsuma no Kansatsu Kiroku” by Regina Books. Released in North America by Hanashi Media. Translated by Ethan Holms.
Villainess stories generally tend to either be narrated entirely from the perspective of the villainess herself, or they do that thing where we get her POV for a while, then we get the POV of all her love interests going over the same ground from their perspective (see Bakarina as an example). This series, on the other hand, is entirely from the POV of Prince Cecil, which works very well, not only as he’s easily the most interesting character in the series, essentially an evil villain who has never had the “this is when I became a villain” moment, but because he does not have the memories of otome games and shoujo novels and all the other things that Bertia has that makes her act… well, “more” eccentric would be an accurate phrase. But this also means that, because he’s merely dealing with a particularly stupid foreign prince, he doesn’t realize why he’s so stupid till the final scenes of the book.
Cecil and Bertia are still in Seahealby, having spent the last book trying to heal the awkward, poor relationships between the crown prince and his fiancee and the second prince and his fiancee. Unfortunately, that leaves the first prince, and he proves to be a real piece of work. Things are not helped by Bertia, drunk off the sake that she gifted the crown prince and his wife at their wedding, accidentally giving some to a snake spirit who turns out to be the country’s god. Now the god is obsessed with Bertia, and so is the first prince, who seems to assume that Cecil and Bertia are merely tolerating each other, so essentially says to him “let me marry your wife and take her off your hands”. Cecil then destroys the entire country and kills everyone in it… well, no, but he does get very angry indeed.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Cecil is essentially a sociopath with minimal empathy whose sole chain linking him to being a good person is his wife, whom he adores. Every time that he gets angry because something is happening to Bertia, everyone around him recoils in horror, as his face is that of someone about to commit murders. He’s even warned not to go to Bertia right away as he’ll terrify her. That said, their relationship is mutual – thanks to the first prince’s manipulations, Bertia has a meltdown when she believes Cecil might abandon her, and he has to reassure her. There’s also a nifty twist at the end, not just because of why the first prince is the way that he is, but the fact that the shoujo novel Bertia was thinking of happens two years LATER than their current year. Once again, Bertia makes everything better by accident.
The next volume should be out after the anime premieres, and we’ll see if the anime helps or hurts it. I’m enjoying it a great deal, at any rate.
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