I know i was like Kenneth maybe the male lead because of the trope u mention, but if he is the male lead the story wouldn’t be that good. Because he is such a typical male lead, Arwin is so much more interesting and the moment i see him on screen i was like.... I want that
you make excellent points. however i dont actually feel any chemistry yet between latte and arwin and attraction from latte's standpoint was majorly physical and superficial. i dont even know if she likes him or not, shes always been so eager to avoid problems and arwin is the definition of problems. and having arwin be the love interest is rather convenient since there would be a logical explanation for him to show up in time to safe her whenever wherever. its just that personality wise, i didnt expect kenneth (not latte) to still be swayed by ibelin so far into the story to this point. i thought he would have been suspicious, sceptic, or anything, and i thought he was that character who would be like "oh dang protag is 1dimensional, latte is more amusing and i see friendly dynamics coming from her instead of ibelin" haha but that would strengthen your argument on kenneth being the obvious trope.
im not taking a stand for or against anything yet since the story is rather slow paced and i think theres still much room for development so i guess we'll see
this is so long though im sorry!!!
at first when this first came out in here i thought kenneth (the warrior duke) was going to be the ML instead of arwin (chief mage) bc i caught a rival to lovers chemistry but i was wrong and it felt odd. but turns out the whole thing is very much chaotic and has almost no order to the plots so i just get on with it haha