DarkeAOU

So, I was curious about this story, so I hunted down the novel it's based on. It's interesting, but the FL's POV chapters aren't written in a linear fashion, so it's actually easier to follow the plot if you read the other characters' POVs. ╮(￣▽￣)╭

I'm currently at chapter 107 of the current 631 chapters, and the older brother is my favorite, I hope he stays a POV all the way until the end. (づ￣ ³￣)づ

Now, I just have to tell you why I love him, because there's no way that the manga will do it justice!

So, their mother (yes, she's their biological mother) is an abusive monster to the FL, and has been abusing her practically from birth. So the brother gets worried about her and learns healing magic from his father to keep her safe. Note that people usually learn combat magic first, because it's easier. Also, their father is at the top of the mage guild, so he's basically never home--he only comes home a day or two out of the month--but brother bothers his super-busy dad until he personally teaches his son healing magic.

This is important, because the day that the FL and the prince become engaged, she baits him into banishing her from the palace (so she won't have to attend princess lessons). When mom finds out, she literally tries to *kill the FL* with magic, and the brother barely manages to save her life with the healing magic he's barely learned (the mother fired the duchy's healer literally a week before, because he tried to stop her abusive behavior). The father ends up permanently sealing the mother's magic and put her on house arrest for a month, but the duchy basically swept everything under a rug.

The brother ends up getting control of the FL's education, because he knows that their mother will just use education as an excuse to hurt the FL, but of course the FL is an expert at running away, and he can never catch her. Then a little bit after that, their cousin Sienna is orphaned and gets adopted as their little sister, and the brother gets her educated, too.

Sienna gets jealous because the FL can just do what she wants, but Sienna has to study hard for anyone to look past her mother's common blood, which leads to her whole smear campaign against the FL. The brother ends up believing something Sienna said, and decides to punish the FL by banishing her to the annex. (The annex was a cabin his grandparents had built as a place to get away and relax, and brother and FL both vacationed there with his grandparents as small children). He meant it just to be for a day or two, but their mother and Sienna take advantage of the command and force the FL to stay there permanently, and just harrass her repeatedly where brother won't find out (the servants even gaslight him, claiming that FL returned to the mansion and is perfectly fine).

The year FL and Sienna are supposed to go to school, the brother buys them a carriage specifically for them to go to school together, but somehow Sienna is the only one who uses it and the FL has to walk to school. (The brother is the head of the student council, so again, he doesn't know, and Sienna lies constantly so he's too angry to seek the FL out.)

STILL, he's absolutely livid that the prince his sister's engaged to keeps trash talking her, and he repeatedly refuses to become the prince's future aide, because the prince is garbage in his eyes. The only reason he doesn't protest to the Actual Royal Family is because the FL talked to the teachers about how she doesn't care about being talked badly about so long as the abuse is only verbal, and she actually takes care of the prince and *his entire entourage* so their verbal abuse is treated as a joke.

The scene where the prince actually hurt her was actually worse in the novel, because there were students and at least three teachers (including the prince's homeroom teacher) watching, and the FL got permission from the TEACHER to go to the infirmary, not the prince. The teacher actually sat the prince down and spelled out what a horrible person he was, pointing out that he was following in the footsteps of the villainous princess (the FL's past life), and reported everything to the king and queen, and the queen was ABSOLUTELY LIVID. Which basically guilted the prince into *actually reading the reports* about the FL's behavior instead of blindly repeating everything Sienna said, and he actually confronts the brother over the FL's banishment to the annex. Meanwhile, the brother's like "What hut?? It's my grandparents' cabin, it's nice there?? What do you mean she's living there without any servants??" And the brother talks the prince into letting him read the report, too, and he's upset because everything Sienna told him was a lie.

Of course, brother talks to Sienna about the carriage, and she turns it into a whole drama to make the FL look bad in front of the entire student council and her entourage. (Note that he brought it up privately first, in the empty student council room, and was going to drop it when the student council members started to show up for their meeting, but Sienna saw an opportunity to look like a victim and went for it.)

Brother warns everyone about insulting a direct member of a ducal family and fiancée of a prince, and then goes to talk to the FL about literally everything, but she blows him off and he loses his temper and actually hits her. (I'm sorry, baby, physical abuse is hereditary, and your mother's a monster.) BUT unlike the prince, he immediately freaks out, picks her up and carries her to a chair and heals her and apologizes repeatedly, and immediately agrees to pay compensation, and repair the annex and personally enchant it with anti-theft wards. He even gives her a room on his floor of the mansion (where the heir stays), because it's a place full of people loyal to him so his mother can't use the servants to harrass her, and Senna won't be able to get in easily, and of course, her things won't get stolen.

And even then, brother is fully aware that he messed up, and his believing Sienna all this time has done serious damage to their relationship that will take him a long time to make up for.

But yeah, all that just happened in Part One of the novel, starting Part Two now and looking forward to all his POV chapters. ლ(´ڡ`ლ)

Looks like the manga changed things from the novel, as per normal. But in the novel, Rogerio actually did reject dancing that last dance with Amy.

This is because in the novel, there were like twenty chapters about the party before the condemnation. Roge's little brother didn't appear: instead, a knight reported to Prince Ernest (it was the day after the condemnation that Will went to that same knight to confirm the details of his brother's transgressions).

And Princess Patricia went in person to confront Rogerio while Amy was dancing with another gentleman, and accused him of having an affair--which he denied. She then asked him if he was in love with Amy, which made him stop and question his feelings and actions, so he was ALREADY feeling like a heel before the condemnation. But he actually remembered that he was engaged to Lydia and shouldn't dance the Final Dance with anyone but his fiancée, so he rejected Amy and stood up against peer pressure from other partygoers who would have forced him to dance with Amy anyhow.

Lydia's fidelity was never questioned in the novel, this manga just made it up.

Note that Rogerio was still an idiot who deserves everything that comes to him, due to carelessness and poor judgement of character. This is just the one occasion where his character is made out to be worse than it is in text.