[email protected]'s manga / #Childhood Trauma(2)

*summary* dude with too much misguided anger toward innocent victim turns into dude with too much self-pity, obsession, and misguided anger toward innocent victim. *spoilers* Just off this manga I think it’s pretty decent - the style is nice, it updates pretty frequently (enough I don’t forget about it lol), and it’s coherently translated. HOWEVER!!!! This does not apply for the novel. I’m not trying to say the author did a bad job or whatever, I’m trying to say the male lead sucks and the author did a great a job in making such an awful ml. Since there are great spoilers and novel translations on different websites, I won’t say too much specifically. There are 5 volumes(?) *it seems like the manhwa is nearing the end of vol 1/beg of vol 2* In Vol 2 the male lead and female lead get closer together through tea time and bed sharing (like they spend the night with each other). The fl still can’t disobey the duke, sees her mom (fl visits a powerful wizard who keeps her obedient and the wizard has the imperial brooch and an antique magical necklace that are obviously stolen/not his), and is told to slowly poison the emperor during teatime, get rid of the queen, and fuck the emperor to conceive a child all for the duke. Volume ends with duke rebelling against empire and empress being locked up. Vol 3. The empress starts out in a boarded bedroom but emperor feels betrayed by her nonexistent aid toward the duke, and after visiting her once sends her to the prison. The empress is extremely worried for her mom, like she’s thinking wtf, is the duke doing, and pleads to go back to duchy, but because the emperor knows about the magician know that not only lived there but visited the empresses palace, he thinks like hell no ur just going to betray me again. Anyway it’s a lot of bad feelings, the emperor says he wishes the empress were/stayed dead(after the tea incident where she saved him and the queen) and cries a lot in his office thinking about the “boy” who saved him when he was young and the empress. *it’s worth mentioning that by this point the emperor totally thinks the “boy” is dead and he killed him by giving him the royal brooch to pay for medication for his(boy’s) mom. Empress receives a letter that her mom is not doing well and is like oh fuck I gotta escape. Vol 4. Empress escapes with Asher (position or power is sort of like the red haired guy in “The Abandoned Empress”) and they travel to the duchy, along the way Asher figures out the magic controlling the Empress and sends a letter detailing her situation. When they’re at the border to the duchy the magic is released (which is an uh-oh cause it means either the duke or the magician is dead) and the empress persuades Asher to wait for back up while she goes to see her mother. Ok, so the duke rebelled and the rest of the empire was like woahhh that’s expected but now we still have to war it out, so the duchy is crammed full of soldiers preparing and the empire is gathering up soldiers surrounding the duchy preparing - and THEN the emperor hears of the empresses escape and is like oh no no no, I’ve got to check this out myself. So he does. He’s real pissed off when he sees Asher on the border but then Asher explains the empresses double life as “the boy who the emperor thought was dead” and then the emperor is like gah! What a terrible asshat I am! And chases after the empress. He finds her nearly unconscious on the floor next to a dead magician and an equally dead duke (that the empress killed after finding out her mother killed herself) the duke cries, the empress distrusts him. The rest of this volume is the nobility/admin trying to figure out what to do with the empress and the emperor crying as his actions further torment the empress who grieve her mom. Vol 5. The empress eventually leaves the palace and moves to somewhere else still within the empire. The emperor slowly goes mad without her and his attendants persuade him to visit the female lead. He sees that she’s happy without him and is even more depressed. The empress moves again to a neighboring kingdom and stays in the palace there. The emperor is invited to a dance there where they meet and attendants push them to meet more. It ends with both the emperor and empress returning to the empire’s palace, though the empress only bcs of how much her absence affected the emperor. Thoughts? Tbh I think this book/manga is mainly for people who just don’t understand how unromantic and devastating trauma — especially childhood trauma — can be.