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I think this was really well written. It’s a slow burn with a lot of factors standing between the characters, but their emotional development feels natural. It’s definitely a step above most current romance writing. A true enemy to lovers that actually confronts the moral conflict of the situation with delicacy so that the ultimate conclusion feels reasonable. They dodged all of the usual shallow tropes and plot for ERS which makes the conclusion all the more satisfying. I hope there are side stories, but feel satisfied with the current ending

Bruh wtf. This entire drama was caused by Rishar’s pathetic jealousy spilling an extremely dangerous secret putting Antoine, a helpless bystander’s life at risk for nothing. Him and Mathias openly going against the queen is also insane because there is no way she’s going to let Antoine get betrothed into royalty, but she doesn’t have many options since it’s already largely public.
Rishar knows full well that the queen can torture Etienne all she wants with no consequences, and still provokes her over petty pride. Mathias knows exactly how vicious she is, but still angled his kid into betrothal right before betraying her. She’s obviously going not going to want to let his family accumulate power through the betrothal, which means Antoine needs to be discredited or dealt with in such a way that the marriage isn’t socially/politically viable. Mathias and Rishar are running around with clumsy, heavy handed schemes, but it’s Etienne and Antoine who are taking all the risk.
That being said, I think Etienne drinking the poisoned wine makes more sense than it seems at first glance. He has lived a life of control, deprivation, and isolation on top of severe chronic illnesses from the drugs he’s been forced to take since birth. Those drugs also cause psychiatric symptoms in the past. He has a history of depression and erratic behavior. He’s also just drained from so many years of suffering. His current relationship with Rishar is somewhat superficial. His lover, his closest confidant invalidates his opinions when it’s inconvenient, runs around putting him in danger over petty pride, and really hasn’t done much at all to actually help him beyond occasionally hanging out/f$cking. The only reason Etienne perceives this relationship so positively is because he has nothing better to compare it to.
Etienne is panicking, in survival mode. He doesn’t go to Rishar for help because he has shown himself to be profoundly obstructive/useless in the actual urgent life problems that Etienne has to endure on a daily basis. He’s mentally exhausted and physically sick while being desperate to protect an innocent pawn from his mother. Also remember that in the back of his mind he also knows that he has a shortened lifespan from the drugs. He has to make a split second decision and it’s not as difficult as one would think.
He protects Antoine while potentially exposing his mother. If he dies she will lose all chance of power or standing and the throne will automatically go to Rishar, someone who he knows will be a competent/just ruler. It’s actually brilliant because he may be able to force her hand to save his life with an antidote or telling doctors how to save his life. Even if she acts clueless, the entire interaction between the three of them makes the queen look suspicious since she handed Antoine the poisoned glass. Either way there’s going to be an investigation controlled by the king (who hates the queen) that will shake a lot of damaging secrets loose.
He created a massive opportunity for Rishar, Mathias, and the king to take the queen and house Herace down. I think it was executed in a clumsy way that makes it seem like just a dumb, spur of the moment decision, but in the actual logistics it makes sense with his history/psychology, and could really turn the tables.
Desperate people do desperate things, and anyone would be impatient to escape that abuse when their boyfriend does nothing but say nice things and cause more complications, father is too uninterested to even speak to them much less care, and there’s no end in sight.

Ok but ML is a major jerk. It’s an established fact in this world that if an omega is covered in alpha pheromones long term it messes up their ability to control their own pheromones, resist other alpha pheromones, and screw up their heat cycle. Knowing this, ML drenched MC in pheromones without his knowledge or consent (which is apparently a crime) for YEARS, to the point where MC got in a very dangerous situation because of it.
And when MC is crashing because his pheromones are messed up, ML basically tries to take advantage knowing Juhyeok’s judgement and reasoning are compromised.
On top of all that, continuous stalking and harassment while ignoring the repeated requests from MC for years….
Yeah, trash

Ma saint is totally going to get jealous when MC reacts to Vertio’s transformation lol

I mean, not the end of the world, but it’s always kind of funny how desperate Korean authors are to dump a “they were childhood friends” trope into their romance story.
I say desperate because a lot of the time not only does it not add anything to the narrative, it just doesn’t make sense that one or both characters didn’t remember or took so comically long to figure it out, especially when the memories are from high school.
It almost always feels rushed and sloppy. The story has been developing fine, so it’s not really necessary.

Seong, a gambling addict who barely managed to get a job at a delivery company! On his first day at ...

Ain’t no way my girl put a whole fish into the pie ╥﹏╥

Damn I feel so bad, all that misfortune because of innocent puppy love and a homophobic society that tried to crush it

Wow Rishar is really out here risking Ettienne’s life and safety to mark his territory. Antoine may not be a power player, but he is a member of a powerful third party who are aligned with the empress. Rishar just gave him seriously dangerous info along with a major slap in the face just to make a point to one of the two people who had zero say in the engagement.
Even if Antoine didn’t want the engagement, just like Etienne, he would still be forced along. If word got out of any romantic/sexual relationship between Etienne and Rishar, that would be major political hay on both sides. All Rishar is risking is some gossip and slander, but Etienne could be abused, further drugged, or even crippled by the empress to keep him in line.
It wouldn’t surprise me if she forced a bond with an alpha loyal to her to keep Etienne from disobeying her. She only needs him to outlast the emperor, or long enough to overthrow him. An heir before Etienne succumbs to the poison he’s been fed his whole life would also help solidify her power as well.
Antoine could act out of spite, confide in his family, or just spill it all while drowning his sorrows. It’s a massive bomb that he didn’t even tell Etienne about. The way Rishar acts shows that he places the importance of his jealousy and possessiveness over Etienne’s safety and well being.
These tantrums he keeps throwing could quite literally cost Etienne his life, autonomy, and health. I also dislike how he keeps blaming the weaker parties for events beyond their control. Etienne is fed poison that slowly kills him every single day and there is pretty much nothing he can do about it, so cancelling the engagement his evil mother decided on is an impossible ask. As an omega,Antoine would have zero say in his spouse even if royalty wasn’t pushing for it.
It just seems like Rishar keeps lashing out at the victims instead of supporting them through it or actually finding a way to stop the malicious actors controlling everything.

Not them calling him whelp-clown instead of giving an actual name ╥﹏╥

Addressing Variable as mom at the first meeting is CRAZY WORK ╥﹏╥

Ok but Highschool is not that far in the past. MC seriously has zero recollection even after spending so much time together?!?

He never learned or grew from who he was in the first life. His “redemption” was just a woman putting in an enormous degree of mental and physical labor to prevent the worst tragedies in his life that would have warped him.
He’s just as weak, defeatist, and self centered as before, he’s just got less trauma pushing him over the edge. It’s kind of crazy that it’s supposed to be his redemption when Madelyn is doing everything for him.

Eugene is a crow, confirmed

I KNEW IT. The stable, kind, objectively great love interest with zero emotional baggage ALWAYS gets randomly nerfed with secret degeneracy or closet skeletons to make the FL get back with the toxic trainwreck OG ML

This is really interesting because Luhan is essentially written as an undercover nice guy. He became obsessed with her over a single interaction (with one sided emotional significance on his part).
He deliberately waged an elaborate information war to sabotage every other marriage option she had, to the point it became so well known it negatively affected her reputation in society. Even while this was happening throughout an entire decade, he never actually stepped up to put his hat in the ring. He never tried to court her, confess his feelings, or win her over.
His entire game plan is just controlling her environment until he’s the only option, and once he got there he still didn’t try to make an honest attempt to win her over. He came up with a plan to manufacture a trap to allow him to socially blackmail her family to force a marriage with him.
He gets to the altar and surprise, surprise, a marriage certificate doesn’t magically create romantic affection. He doesn’t understand the most basic realities of relationships. He only knows her superficially and objectifies her while trying put on a “husband performance” to secure her affection. He isn’t actually trying to get to know or connect with her, but panics constantly over her lack of interest/commitment.
He thinks the issue is that he needs to do a good job as her husband when the reality is that she just doesn’t know him and isn’t terribly interested in sparking a relationship beyond what is mandated by their marriage itself. He has a very superficial understanding of what actually creates a relationship.
He puts so much effort into limiting her choices and looking “successful”, but doesn’t bother trying to get to know or connect with her, then gets upset that she’s not head over heels for him.
He’s panicking over the potential for divorce and where are the first places his mind goes to prevent it? Physically imprisoning her and using magic to brainwash her, not trying to get to know her more, not going on outings, not actually pursuing a real relationship like he should have from the beginning.
Luhan does not love her, he does not have a crush on her. He wants to possess her and mistakes that desire for love. He has no regard for her opinions, emotions, or autonomy. Almost every single action he has taken or considered taking to secure/solidify this marriage has been at her expense. He has risked nothing of his own, but done plenty of damage to her.
His interference with the suitors was so well known that she became a laughingstock because she was perceived to be so undesirable that literally not a single person in high society would even consider courting her. She had no choice in her marriage to him because he manufactured a situation that would be extremely harmful to her and her family if it got out, so it really was her loss.
He casually considers chaining her up, preventing her from going anywhere without him as well as full on brainwashing her with magic to be loyal/loving to him. Problematic for obvious reasons, but I think really illustrates exactly what he thinks of her. He has said that he admires her strength, competence, and upright actions, but the second she might slip away from him, he’s considering destroying all of that as long as she can stay in his possession. He’s not interested in a genuine connection because if he was, forced confinement and mind control wouldn’t be on the table.
He wants compliance with his fantasy of a relationship more than he wants an actual relationship. The only reason he has largely gotten away with it is that he has ML privileges. In most stories he would be the villain in opposition to the ML.
He is a chillingly realistic, menacing, and manipulative nice guy character. He is not the type to throw a tantrum after not getting his way and this be rendered unable to find a relationship, but rather the kind whose relationship explodes 10 years in after his SO discovers his grievous deceptions and manipulations.

...

All I hear is him whining about the predictable consequences of his own actions

I don’t like this trend of using amnesia as a plot device to excuse abuse. The fact that he is an abusive rapist doesn’t magically change once he can’t remember what he did and acts differently. In the end, they are willing and capable of acting like that, so no matter how nice, innocent, vulnerable, sensitive, or cutesy they act once their memories vanish they’re still ticking time bombs.
I’ve also seen at least a few comics where the main characters were in a normal/healthy relationship until one of them (always the top) gets amnesia and proceeds to be very hurtful, toxic, and abusive to their partner who is just doing their best to stick it out until the memories and their living partner come back.
Sometimes I wonder if Korean authors are cursed to suffer excruciating agony if they attempt to write a “relationship” with no toxicity, abuse, or SA.

I think this is a unique take because Taebeom is clearly sneaky and manipulative in his scheme to get with MC, but at the last chapter it’s revealed that MC suspected and basically didn’t press it because he didn’t mind since he also got a relationship he wanted.

Usually the MC in this position is written as a naive doormat in the palm of the manipulator’s hand, but in this case he retains his autonomy by being at least partially aware of the scheme and deliberately choosing not to press it since he liked the result.