And cheesy. And unnecessarily melodramatic. And I kind of hate the main characters.
The story is set up so that it seems like the main character is supposed to be strong and intelligent... but she's actually pretty dumb and whiny. I find it totally annoying that the side characters keep referring to her age and how she is so mature for a 14,15,16-yr-old... in a historical setting where women get married by 15 (her mother did) and are probably considered adults by then. Especially since she is actually SUPER immature for her age, even by today's standards.
She also doesn't seem to understand palace politics or the world around her at all--it doesn't seem like she understands them and is just too cool for that stuff, it's more like she just doesn't get it. Like OF COURSE the other queen might try to poison her or her mom. It's like she has zero street smarts. Or palace smarts, or whatever you want to call that type of intelligence. She's got none of it.
The male lead character is also super undeveloped. Basically, his character traits consist of (1) being a shunned blond foreigner and (2) being obsessed with the main female lead. Just those two things. There is literally nothing else interesting about him. His existence is one of the most important parts of the story, and yet aside from existing he doesn't actually DO much to add to the plot, except for randomly getting rapey here and there. That doesn't make me like him more, but I at least wouldn't mind that in a fictional character if he was at least somewhat interesting.
It feels like the author is trying too hard to add drama to the story. Honestly, given the setting, it shouldn't be hard to make the story super dramatic through plot, but instead the main way the author adds drama is through really cheesy, melodramatic narrations and characters' inner monologues. Having some of that can be great, but here it's just so excessive and it really doesn't flow well.
But even when the drama is through events/dialogue, it's often still pretty dumb. To illustrate with an example (from early on in the story, so it's not much of a spoiler):
When Aki decides to go scouting (and drags Hakurei with her) because she insists that she's useful, they get caught. Hakurei cuts off some dude's arm and Aki freezes and freaks out because apparently she's never seen such violence before. I find that strange, but let's suspend our disbelief and say she was sheltered from that stuff, being a princess and all.
So that's fine... but then she gets all judgemental toward Hakurei for not making a big deal out of it, and her inner monologue is all melodramatic like "No! Oh no, don't say it!" as she says to him that it must be because he's a barbarian... it's just all so stupid, given (a) the historical WARTIME setting and (b) she's the one who was going on and on about how she was going off to battle, and the one who insisted on scouting the enemy's camp when she presumably knew that was dangerous.
I mean, seriously! Girl, what were you EXPECTING to see in a war?
And if she was going to do something like scout the enemy encampment, she should have been prepared to fight/flee in a kill-or-be-killed situation if they got caught. Like any human in that situation with any sense. The author making her all shocked and judgemental over something like this just to add melodrama is just so stupid. Sooo stupid.
Soon after there is a scene where Aki realizes her limitations... which would be great if it was in a more self-reflective kind of way, but instead it's a full page or two of her crying and having one of those super dramatic internal monologues where she's like "I'M SO STUPID BOOHOOO AND IT MADE ME SAY SOMETHING MEAN POOR ME I'M SO DESPICABLE" and is basically not constructive at all. And then the next day she's just sulky and suddenly wants to go home (like, she has ZERO willpower if her conviction was shattered that easily when she'd been planning to lead battles). Then the only reason she stays is because eyepatch-dude drags her to a strategy meeting where she comes up with the oh-so-amazing strategy of using the river... but does she seem to learn anything or grow from this experience? Not really. She does jump off her horse and hug Hakurei in the middle of battle though, because as you know that's the best time and place to reconcile by hugging it out. Pretty sure that scene was supposed to be romantic, but it just seemed... out of place.
I almost dropped it at that point but decided to give it a chance in case there would be character development after that and the story would get more interesting... but no, it doesn't really get better.
All in all, this story is poorly executed. Giving it an extra point because some of the art is cute.
(-2)
(+1)
