That's the part I don't get. Do witches replace another person or do another person just bloom out to be a witch? What the princess talked about sounded more like a transformation. If the fiancé was just playing a part, why did she get scared of the tree, and why didn't she try to defend herself? She just looked distressed to me.
He tries to kill them too but yeah, strictly speaking they probably started it. But to me, that's not really the problem either. They are rivals to the throne, so I understand why they are fighting. The problem is that the story seems to frame the witches as antagonists, but they haven't really given me enough reason to hate them, and instead I kinda sympathize with them. It makes it difficult to read.
I'm having problems to seeing the witches as antagonists. Have they done anything truly horrible for me to dislike them? I'm only at ch. 39-40 but I'm not sure whether I can continue. I see potential in this story, but I dislike the vilification of witches, as they're typically a symbol of female power. Estelle pitted against them, having no strong female character besides her, and being good with swords, which is typically a masculine symbol, just doesn't sit right with me.
To me it's not even clear whether they "possess" a body or just evolve like some sort of pokémon. It's hard to hate them, and therefore also hard to sympathize with the mc and ml. I still like them as characters, but I find the witches intriguing and I want to know more about them as people. Basically, I can't pick a side, but the story clearly picks a side and that makes it hard for me to read.