Okay just read some other comments and I wanted to make my opinion on the the FL clearer.
I get she was just told that she’s just beneath everyone by the people around her and that weighed down on her mentally however she still KNOWINGLY had authority and made the active choice to use none of it. She knows she never had to listen obey the words of the tutor but she still CHOSE to. Everything is a choice no matter how abused and manipulated you were. When you’re an accomplice in murder saying you were manipulated into helping would mean nothing in court when you still have free will and made the choice to aid when you knew it was wrong (like unless she was threatened with her sons life or something which she wasn’t it just wouldn’t work). She knew she was failing her kid and made the CHOICE to not do anything about it. I rest my case.
You keep going on and on about 'choice', choice is dependent on so many different factors. Including: context, history, society, memories, trauma....
Victims often aren't emotionally and/or practically empowered with choice. They are confined and do what they can within said confinement.
You see choice, I see someone who was literally *locked* away from her son, after having her son *ripped* out of her arms at birth and denigrated.
Why does she seem to have power behind her position to seems now?
1)The ML is visibly and behind the scenes *FINALLY* supporting her. Showing the servants she's 'in favour' now. Her power remains entirely dependent on him.
2) Sheer desperation.
She genuinely thought her presence would harm her son and trusted that her son was being raised in the best circumstances possible.
However, seeing how devastated her son seemed in the future, she resolved to change his fate.
Just like before she was willing to be ignored and mistreated if it kept her son safe and happy.
So too now she is willing to make noise and risk engaging with powerful voices in the palace if it enables her son to grow up happy & safe.
And I understand what you are saying I really do and this probably maybe has to do with our irl viewpoints on things. But yeah for me unless there are truly extenuating life or death circumstances or some kind of mental disorder that truly absolves you of responsibility everything has always been a choice.
“1)The ML is visibly and behind the scenes *FINALLY* supporting her. Showing the servants she's 'in favour' now. Her power remains entirely dependent on him.”
- I didn’t hide the fact that I definitely think that the majority of this situation is the ML’s fault.
Except for the part where before she even spoke to the ML literally in chapter 1 all she had to do was wave around her status and authority to give punishments and suddenly the guards let her in suddenly the maids started to go along with her.
It was that easy all along which tells me she really had no motivation to even try and see her child and just gave up every single time someone told her no. She never actually needed the ML or his “favor” in fact I wonder if she even tried discussing seeing Yuuri with him after he was taken away. So yes I definitely see that all her just choosing to wallow in her feelings for the rest of her life.
“2) Sheer desperation.”
- What happened to her is terrible. I don’t deny that everyone who participated in that atrocity should be skinned (including ML). But in her willingness to passively accept what happened and “tell herself” that she was doing the right thing (and if that doesn’t say she knows it was wrong idk what does).
A child was hurt in ways we only got a glimpse of from the tutor killing his pet and trying to hit him. I can only imagine how much worse it got as he grew up. I feel like that takes precedence over everything else that happened.
The fact is Yuuri was hurt and she did nothing to help no matter what she was going through at the time she is still his parent and therefore still bears some sort of responsibility for what happened. How much depends from person to person.
Let’s agree to disagree yeah? I don’t think we have a chance of convincing each other. But thanks for being civil with your argument. (๑•ㅂ•)و✧
“So too now she is willing to make noise and risk engaging with powerful voices in the palace if it enables her son to grow up happy & safe.”
PS. Was the tutor really so powerful if she was disposed of so easily. She was the Emperor’s aunt and a tutor nothing more nothing less. However if ML actually investigated her in this life that means he most likely did in the last life as well so why didn’t he say anything to FL. He literally sucks ass. I hate him.
Inconsistent af literally nothing makes sense. It’s generic from the art to the characters. Ugh the characters piss me off especially the mc and ml.
Logically no matter what kind of brain dead loopholes the author tries to come up with it wouldn’t make sense if the mc couldn’t see her son if she actually has authority as empress WHICH SHE APPARENTLY DOES if the guards and servants are actually afraid of getting punished by her. So it’s clear that she just never cared or had the drive to actually TRY see her son in her past life which automatically makes her a doormat pos who deserved her death. I bet her ass just walked away from that door every single time someone turned her away. Obviously yes the ml is more at fault for this situation than she is but let’s not absolve her.
Ml is the typically awful no emotion red eye black haired dumbass who pays zero attention to what happens in his household. Especially for assigning the abysmal tutors who took away the kid in the first place. I can already come up with some bullshit ass plot armor that basically absolves him of everything like he was “just so busy the people he assigned had taken advantage of him the whole time and he just knows nothing cause he’s such an AnGeL”. I bet there was probably some misunderstanding in the past that made him think the FL hated him the whole time and would probably not want to take care of a kid that belonged to him and he listened because he actually “lOvEd HeR tHiS wHoLe TiMe”.
Stereotypical, generic, bullshitty, and bad.