After a string of underwhelming manhwas this one finally gave me some hope, but sadly misses the target of being a high quality work. The backstory and the general story outline are actually pretty good here. The whole story of the Oracle and how the Emperor was pushed into being a warmonger since he was a small kid, how the heroine could see the future and how she tries to manipulate the situation to save her own country was promising and notch above the typical fantasy fare. However, a problem that plagues many other manhwas reared it's ugly head even here - namely, what genre are you? What does this manhwa want to be? Is it a high fantasy action manhwa? A romance manhwa? A slice of life? Court intrigue drama? Considering it has only 60 chapters, too much stuff was crammed here, and everything suffers since there isn't enough room to breathe. The worldbuinding feels too thin, the court intrigue frankly never pans out properly, and the romance is given to us in specs, which for what is originally a romance isekai is not nearly enough.
If this was a jumbled mess with no coherent story, none the wiser and you could just peg it for a low quality work, but as I noted, this manhwa has a pretty solid background and some excellent plot points. While it does manage to steer itself to a happy ending, not one aspect gets the comeuppance it deserves. I wanted to know more about the world, and when Charlie was in the Empire and playing court politics, I also expected so much more nuance and complexity in such interactions. We just get a not fully unexpected but not particularly thrilling antagonist and that was that! Game over!
THe art was a bit misleading. While this can be categorizes as a shojou, this should gave been a full pledges josei, and the art should have followed suit. This simple, colorful art indicates something with less depth than this manhwa has. And yes, Casikaff is a low tier yandere. Unlike many other manhwa ML who are merely possessive but not real yanderes, he is a full pledged yandere, but was obviously toned down for the manhwa. I imagine him being more hard core in the novel, but this semi-shojo-semi-josei can't really stomach such an extreme character. Too bad, I wanted to see him do morally dubious things and Charlie actually seeing the real him and doubting his methods. Charlie as a FL was okay, she wasn't an overt Mary Sue, but not top tier. The supporting cast was meh.
Overall, this is an okay manhwa, but IMHO needed 30 more chapters to sort everything out nicely. Now we have a overtly scattered plot crammed into too few chapters.
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