Ascendance Of A Bookworm / Tropes H to M

Tropes for Ascendance of a Bookworm
Tropes A to G (Foreshadowing) | Tropes H to M | Tropes N to S | Tropes T to Z

• Heal It with Water: Praying to the Healer Goddess Flutrane, the Goddess of Water, or her subordinate Heilschmerz summons Cool, Clear Water that will heal the recipient. Flutrane's water is also used to remove any foreign or dirty substance with the spell waschen (German for "to wash"). As it turns out near the end of Part 5, waschen can also be used to cleanse a victim from the mind-controlling Fantastic Drug trug.
• Healthy Country Air: Especially compared to the lower city of Ehrenfest, the countryside doesn't smell bad, as noted by Justus in his side story in Part 3 Volume 2. Leonore makes the same observation in Part 4 Volume 8, when they visit Leisegang.
• Heir Club for Men:
  • Gender-inverted with the successors of the Gilberta Company. It is tradition for the women to inherit the store, while their husbands act as frontmen. Benno only temporarily acts as the company's successor and has waited for Corinna to marry and produce an heir.
  • Downplayed agnatic-cognatic form for archduke candidates. Women are serious candidates, but they have to outclass their male rivals sizably. This is lampshaded in a bonus chapter in Part 3 Volume 3, when Lamprecht points out that there is a gender barrier that a female archduke candidate needs to overcome (which Georgine couldn't against her younger brother), which is why Wilfried has an advantage over his younger sister, Charlotte. However, Rozemyne is so much more brilliant and has a bigger mana capacity than Wilfried that his retainers worry that she will easily steal his position as heir... But even then they all too easily calm themselves acknowledging that Rozemyne was most likely adopted to support Wilfried as his Top Wife and that she isn't going to be a real threat to him.
  • Brunhilde was raised as her family's heir and it is mentioned in the narrative that the things that she studies at the Royal Academy and what she does as Rozemyne's attendant will help her as the future Giebe Groschel… But then her future plans all come to a stop when her half-brother is born and her father decides to make him his heir instead.
• He Knows Too Much:
  • In Part 2 Volume 4, the archduke of Ehrenfest makes Myne and her family sign a magic contract that forbids them from interacting like family. A more ruthless man would have just had her family killed, but he still allows Myne's family to meet with Rozemyne on business matters.
  • At the end of Part 3, Damuel has to take back his marriage proposal to Brigitte when she asks him whether he would go to Illgner with her once they were married. Damuel knows too well that knowing Rozemyne's commoner background makes it impossible for him to leave her side alive. Ferdinand outright notes in his thoughts that Damuel would have died in an "accident" if Rozemyne had given him her blessings to go to Illgner.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • In Part 1 Volume 1, Myne suffers one after Effa burns her mokkan wood with which she wanted to make books. Myne was ready to die, though Lutz reminded her of the promise she made him.
  • In Part 1 Volume 2, Lutz is shocked into silence and cries when he realizes that Myne's life is in serious danger. Benno cheers him up, telling him to not be a burden to Myne, and Lutz recovers.
  • At the end of Part 2, Gunther can't cope with the fact that Myne was taken from him. He beats his superior, and is sent home for a few days. Effa gets him back on his feet.
  • In Part 3 Volume 3, Ferdinand executes Hasse's traitors in front of Rozemyne's eyes, as she saw them slowly turn to stone and break. When she gets back to the monastery, Gunther offers her his cloak and she goes to sleep while wrapped up in it.
  • Due to the conflict that happened in Part 5 Volume 7 and 8, Leticia is traumatized. Her retainers, including some that came with her from Drewanchel, were killed in front of her and she was tricked into killing Ferdinand (unsuccessfully).
  • In Part 5 Volume 9, Hannelore and Rozemyne suffer from guilt and PTSD after having participated in a war. Just seeing a feystone traumatizes Rozemyne, as it reminds her of how many people instantly turned to feystones when they were killed. The two of them share a tea party at night in Ehrenfest's greenhouse together, where they talk about their experience and mourn the dead.
• High-School Dance: The dedication whirl features archduke candidates who dress up like the primary gods and dance at the graduation ceremony.
• High-School Sweethearts: Since it's expected that noblewomen marry shortly after graduation, they usually have met and already are betrothed to their partner in the Royal Academy, which is especially true for interduchy marriages. Such is the case for Ehrenfest's archducal couple, as well as Damuel and the fiancée he lost to the fallout of the trombe incident. Other cases in the present are for instance Eckhart and his late wife Heidemarie, Lamprecht and Aurelia, Cornelius and Leonore, or Hartmut and Clarissa.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum: An effective way to rapidly increase one's mana capacity is to compress mana when one is almost "full". Since holding mana back instead of releasing it is very taxing on the body though, nobles would usually never do this. Myne is doing it unintentionally because she initially doesn't have the tools to release her mana.
• Home-Early Surprise: Invoked. Dirmira, who suspects that Hortensia's husband Raublut is sending her to work away from home for an extended period of time to be able to discreetly cheat on her, at some point suggests pretending to have forgotten something and return unannounced to get it. Dirmira herself is eventually sent back to their home to stock up on various items, partially for that purpose. Raublut isn't seeing a woman during that time, but the incident results in Dirmira serving tea during a "work meeting" that shows several signs of not being official business.
• How Is That Even Possible?: Everyone's reaction around Myne when they see just how much mana she has.
• Humble Pie:
  • Wilfried's "High Bishop for one day" day in Part 3 Volume 2 ends up being one. Neither the attendants nor Ferdinand are willing to spoil him, and due to his illiteracy and laziness, he and Lamprecht end up being humiliated. The cherry on the top is when he returns home, when he hears his father seriously considering to disinherit his son. Wilfried vows to change and with Rozemyne's help improves drastically in only a few months.
  • Happens to Charlotte at the end of Part 3. Charlotte was told that she was more skilled than her brother, Wilfried, and since she is only one year apart from him and Rozemyne, she wants to take Rozemyne's place while her sister is absent. She quickly learns that she is still too inexperienced and Rozemyne's skills are far beyond her capabilities. Even Wilfried fares much better than her in the playroom and when they replenish the foundation, so she starts copying Wilfried and tries to not overestimate her abilities.
• Humiliation Conga:
  • Damuel goes through one after he failed his mission to protect Myne in Part 2 Volume 2. He is demoted back to an apprentice knight (which comes with a paycut) for a year and has to pay a quarter of the cost for Myne's new (and very expensive) ceremonial robes. Since he is a poor layknight, he has to go ask his brother's future concubine's family to lend him that money. On top of that, he will have to guard Myne at the despised temple during his apprenticeship. Since Damuel now has a criminal record and is an apprentice again, his engagement with a noblewoman from another duchy was canceled, with the bridewealth that he already paid being lost.
  • In Part 4 Volume 2, Traugott resigns as Rozemyne's guard knight. Traugott isn't initially aware of this, but he humiliated himself and his family, since his resignation is practically a dismissal. While Rozemyne does not seem to exact any further punishment, Traugott's family does. Not only does Bonifatius cancel Traugott's engagement with Angelica, the family decides to send Justus to the Royal Academy as Traugott's attendant. Justus henceforth disciplines Traugott and doesn't really attend him, and Traugott is isolated by everyone in the dormitory.
• Hypocritical Humor: Among the people Myne meets, there are people who are just as weird as her by her new world's standards. Cue her First-Person Smartass calling those characters weirdos, a word that plenty of characters have used while talking about her. Things get especially interesting when she has a conversation with one of her fellow weirdos and gets a reminder that they are among the people who think she's weird:
  Rozemyne: ...Wait just a second. You, the biggest weirdo I know, are treating me like a weirdo?
• Idiotic Partner Confession:
  • During her third year at the Royal Academy, Rozemyne does plenty of things that would earn her a scolding from Ferdinand if he knew about them. To soften both the extent and the blow of the inevitable lecture, she cherry-picks the events about which she writes to Ferdinand, having a specific time and place in mind for telling him the rest. Before that time comes, however, Rozemyne and Ferdinand fortuitously both participate in a conversation with Hannelore, who was present for the lecture-worthy acts and starts talking about them. Since she knows Ferdinand has other people he wants to talk with before the end of a fairly short time period, Rozemyne asks Ferdinand if he needs to leave yet.
  • To counter Dirmira's suspicion that Raublut sent his wife Hortensia to do extra work in the Royal Academy library to be able to see another woman, one of Raublut's subordinates tells her of an incident upon which serveral of them were offered time with a High-Class Call Girl and Raublut chose literal flowers from the establishment, instead. Many details from the anecdote point towards Raublut's alliance with the story's final villain. Horstensia, as noted above, works in a library, which gives her easy access to a lot of obscure information that allows her to connect dots that Raublut, who was absent while the anecdote was being told, wants nobody to connect.
• If Only You Knew:
  • There is an early case that takes a second reading to catch. When Myne gets her new temple attendants, Gil is shown to be jealous of Delia because she is set to become a concubine, which is the best position possible from the perpective of an orphan who has no idea what being a Sex Slave is like. He also mentions that only girls can become concubines. It later turns out that Fran, who is male and was in the room when the conversation was happening, was regularly sexually abused by the female blue robe he served when he was younger.
  • Another Rewatch Bonus induced case. Little after meeting Sylvester, Myne tells Damuel she'd like to stay away from Sylvester as much as possible during the trip they are going to have together. Damuel replies that she has no idea how much he agrees with her. As it later turns out, Damuel and Sylvester are at opposing ends of the noble hierarchy, with Sylvester being the one of highest status. This means that the leeway Damuel has to resist Sylvester's spoiled grade-schooler personality without extra damage to his status is close to non-existent.
  • Rozemyne secretly being born a commoner occasionally causes such moments:
    • After she saves two pairs of orphaned siblings from being separated by the setting's overlap between "orphan" and "slave", one of the boys gets angry upon discovering that dormitories in their new home are sex-segregated, which greatly reduces the time he will spend with his sister. In the midst of his rant, he assumes that Rozemyne doesn't know what it's like to be separated from one's family, which is a fair assumption going by her publicly-known situation. This gets the boy slapped by someone who is Rozemyne's Secret-Keeper on a high enough level to know that in fact, she does and she has to deal with it to a degree much bigger than the boy has to.
    • Rozemyne at some point discusses the extent to which she's aiming for her noble adoptive father's seat with her head attendant, Rihyarda. Rihyarda tells her that if she wants it, she has the same right to it as her adoptive siblings and her bloodline doesn't bring too many problems because her adoptive and "biological" fathers share a grandfather on the side of the family that matters. Rozemyne's internal response can be summed up as "Don't get me started on the political problems with my real bloodline".
    • Upon pointing out that Rozemyne tends to be softer on those younger than her, her adoptive brother Wilfried, who is a season older than her, wishes for a similar treatment. Covering up Rozemyne's commoner origins included shaving an entire year off her legal age, so Wilfried is unknowingly three seasons younger than her.
• I Have No Son!: Part 3 Volume 4 reveals that Count Groschel does not acknowledge Bezewanst, a convicted criminal who was sent to the temple shortly after birth, as a member of his family, which is why the latter has no grave.
• I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: In Part 5 Volume 1, a student from the former Veronica faction tries to use the advancement ceremony to warn his parents of the upcoming purge of the faction's adults, all while only being still alive because the academy-age students are given the chance to swear fealty to Ehrenfest's archducal family to escape Family Extermination. Considering the circumstances, Rozemyne decides to ignore the incident just this once and not have it leave the Ehrenfest dormitory, as it risks affecting the extent to which that student's family will be punished, which could literally mean life or death.
• Improbable Antidote: Myne stumbles on a cheap treatment for the Devouring by accident: taue fruits. Just handling one is enough to drain some of her excess mana off. Of course, the fruit then sprouts and becomes a dangerous trombe plant, so it's not a treatment that can be used casually.
• Incest Standards Are Relative: In addition to having a Not Blood Siblings attitude similar to real-life Japan, Yurgenschmidt only truly considers children siblings if they share a mother. Alstede's husband is also technically her paternal half-brother and Ferdinand can get engaged to a blood-related niece because he only shares a father with her mother.
• Inconsistent Spelling: A given, considering it's a Japanese work that uses names based on other languages like English, German, or Italian. Oftentimes, the official English translation balances accuracy and consistency against ease of pronunciation, which is why for instance the country's name is written as Yurgenschmidt and not Jurgenschmidt, when usually the German 'J' (jureve, Jenni, Johann, Judithe, etc.) is used.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Invoked in Part 1 Volume 2; after Myne washes Otto's wife's hair, Otto suddenly wants to have a "private moment" with her and asks if Myne has any reason she needs to leave immediately.
• Infodump: Myne lampshades this at one point when she decides to nerd out about the metal prints for her printing press.

Even if they don't ask about it, let's explain it in great detail!

• In It for Life:
  • Unlike lehange contracts, which last three years, leherl contracts last eight years and come with greater benefits. The employer promises better pay and provides the apprentice with food and a place to live. They also receive further training. After their contract runs out, the apprentice is guaranteed to stay employed and get work, and may even potentially take over the store or workshop one day. However, the apprentice in turn is bound to the store or workshop for the rest of their life. They cannot open their own store, nor can they join another store. Ingo, for instance, always wanted to open his own store, which is why he always signed lehange contracts and moved from workshop to workshop until he earned his beruf certification and was allowed to open his own workshop. In Part 3 Volume 4 this becomes an important matter for Tuuli, as she wants to stay close to Rozemyne, but since the Gilberta Company will always remain in Ehrenfest, and there is no guarantee that Rozemyne will too, Tuuli hesitates to sign on as a leherl.
  • At the end of Part 2, Delia has to stay in the orphanage for the rest of her life, as punishment for her involvement with the High Bishop and him attacking Myne. The alternative was the death penalty, and by staying in the orphanage, Delia at least gets to raise her adoptive brother, Dirk.
• In Medias Res: The anime begins with a flash-forward to the scene of the Apprentice Shrine Maiden arc in which the High Priest uses magic to check Myne's memories, at which point the story chronologically begins.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • In Part 1 Volume 3, Myne learns that the female members of the temple are called "shrine maidens". Only the male members are called "priests".
  • A meta example: The translator insistently calls the rooms where the books are stored "book rooms". He intentionally avoids calling them "libraries", as the number of books is nothing compared to a library on Earth or the library in the Royal Academy that Rozemyne visits in Part 4. This is due to the Japanese version of the Light Novel invoking this by using three different words for book collections:
    • 図書室 (lit. Map/Diagram + Writing + Room-as-in-bedroom), "Reference Room", "Library Room", or "Book Room" is the most common and it's used for almost all of the book collections that Myne knows about.
    • 図書館 (lit. Map/Diagram + Writing + Room-as-in-ballroom-building-or-mansion) "Library" is only used for the Royal Academy library and the Royal Palace Library.
    • 書庫 (lit. Writing + Storehouse/Warehouse) "the Stacks", "Archive" is used for special collections, undisplayed, damaged, or out of date materials, and excess book storage. But it has only come up for parts of the Royal Academy library's collection.
  • Rozemyne is eventually given ownership of a noble estate that contains a fairly large book collection. She starts working towards making the place into the library that she's always wanted. However, between the fact she can't open the place to the public quite yet and the fact that it's technically a house, its library status is quite close to in name only. When she uses the estate as an impromptu war shelter for her commner associates and family, who understand it as being one of Rozemyne's homes, Damuel regularly needs to correct whichever word they use to talk about the building to "library."
• Instant Messenger Pigeon: Nobles use modified feystones or magic parchment, which then turn into ordonannz (German word for "order" or "command"), white birds that will fly to the intended receiver and then either play a recorded message or turn into the written letter.
• Internal Reveal: Each book has a prologue, an epilogue and various side chapters told from the point of view of characters who aren't Myne. This can result in a significant lag between the moment a reader is made aware of something and the moment Myne is. It happens often enough that only keeping the moment Myne finds out the information is a recurring way for the anime to compress the story.
  • The prologue in Part 2 Volume 1 is narrated from the High Priest's point of view. The reader already learns in this chapter that his name is Ferdinand, something that Myne only finds out at the end of the volume. That same chapter reveals that the High Bishop is his Wicked Stepmother's younger brother, something that neither becomes truly relevant nor is discovered by Myne before the end of Part 2.
  • Justus being Ferdinand's attendant is already revealed in his side chapter in Part 3 Volume 2. Rozemyne only learns this in Part 4 when he is assigned as Traugott's adult attendant at the Academy.
• Interrupted Intimacy: When Ferdinand and Rozemyne visit Brother Egmont unannounced after suspecting him of foul play near the end of Part 4, he's found in the middle of "something indecent" with one of his gray shrine maidens.
• Invisible Writing: In Part 4 Volume 4 Rozemyne and Ferdinand work on magic ink and accidentally discover ink that turns invisible and only turns visible when it comes in contact with their mana. Rozemyne uses it on Schwartz and Weiss' clothes, and it later becomes important in Part 5 when Rozemyne and Ferdinand start exchanging secret letters.
• Irony:
  • During her first outing with her mother, Myne doesn't care much about the temple, while her mother considers that the Noble's Quarter and their Lord's castle don't have much to do with their lives. Myne eventually joins the temple and later moves into the castle in question.
  • While Crushing him with little care about possibly killing him, Myne comments that there are probably plenty of people who would like to have the High Bishop's job. There turns out to not be that many candidates for the job once the High Bishop's execution is decided, so Rozemyne herself is made the new High Bishop.
  • Cosmic. When introduced in Part 2 Volume 1, Johann's employer mentions to Benno that Johann is looking for a patron. When Benno glances towards Myne, the employer dismisses the suggestion because "she's too much of a twerp" and that the patron needs to be an adult and have enough money to support someone. One guess as to who becomes his patron within a year.
  • When Myne asks for Ferdinand's opinion about her version of Cinderella, Ferdinand dismisses it as ridiculous, as there is no way a rich commoner would ever get to marry a prince in their world. Marrying upwards is practically impossible. There is a slight twist to it in Myne's case. Myne was the rich commoner engaged to a prince, but she's not the one with the Wicked Stepmother...
  • In his first side chapter, Damuel remembers the period during which parue cakes, which he acquired a taste for, can be made ending and Myne consoling him by telling him they will be available again the following winter. He muses that when saying this, Myne had been clearly forgetting that his sentence to be her bodyguard for a year started in very late autumn and hence would be done before the following winter. By said following winter, Damuel has been permanently assigned to be Rozemyne's guard, but Rozemyne no longer has access to parues.
  • In Viscount Joisontak's desire to move his house up in the social ladder, not only is he unbelievably rude to people who outrank him, he also ends up condemning his family to Family Extermination, as his kidnapping of Charlotte marks him as a grave criminal.
  • In a more situational case, one of the duties of archdukes is to take part in a ceremony in which they gift capes and brooches to new Royal Academy students and encourage them to study hard. Ehrenfest's archduke is well-known to be Brilliant, but Lazy among those who work for him.
  • Lutz mentions after the charity concert in Part 3 Volume 1 that Ferdinand refused Rozemyne's offer to share profits of his printed illustrations because he has no need for "loose change" despite the profits being over 10 large gold. After hearing that, Rozemyne started yelling curses at the rich people in the world. In Part 4 Volume 7, Aub Dunkelfelger asks Rozemyne how much money she invested to transcribe and rewrite the history book of Dunkelfelger that he lent her. She mentions that it cost around 18 large gold. She spent more on one book than she earned in that concert.
  • Rozemyne has a secret noble birth mother, who exists partly so her name can be given to any allies who figure out she's not actually the daughter of her official noble birth mother to help hide the fact that she's actually a commoner. There are however plenty of nobles with whom it's best to stick to the official story, including the secret birth mother's own family, who are among those who figured out her "real" parentage.
  • One of the reasons the Ehrenfest duchy stayed neutral in a country-wide war was that the leaders of the two main factions involved in a decades-old internal strife were rooting for different sides.
  • Eckhart initially doesn't think very highly of Angelica. He doesn't understand why Rozemyne goes so far to save Angelica from a failing grade. He eventually comes to respect Angelica so much for her loyalty and strength that he finds Traugott to be unworthy of her, and he doesn't mind marrying her at all.
  • In Part 4 Volume 5, Rozemyne intends to make Effa her exclusive dyer. She goes through lots of hoops to organize an event where she can make this happen without drawing suspicion. Since Effa actually knows what kind of color fits Rozemyne best, she does offer a work that perfectly fits Rozemyne, but Rozemyne doesn't actually recognize her mother's work. Brunhilde eventually chooses for Rozemyne, and she does pick Effa's work, but since Rozemyne can't allocate the cloth to her mother, she claims she can't decide on a final winner. Two volumes later when Tuuli comes to visit with Corinna, Rozemyne still can't tell which cloth was dyed by Effa.
  • In Part 4 and Part 5, after Veronica's fall, House Leisegang becomes more prominent and aims to make Rozemyne Ehrenfest's aub, as she is connected to the archducal family (as Bonifatius' granddaughter) and is descended from their line (as Karstedt and Elvira's daughter) and has absolutely no connection to Veronica. Rozemyne is actually of commoner origin and not connected to them at all, and neither Sylvester nor Rozemyne want her to become aub.
  • Starting in Part 4, the Leisegang faction is trying to make Rozemyne Ehrenfest's future aub and eliminate Ahrensbach's influence. At the end of Part 5, Rozemyne does become aub, but she becomes Aub Alexandria, having taken over Ahrensbach.
  • In Part 4 Volume 6, Rozemyne gets worried at the idea of Ferdinand seeing a proposal she's considering for her betrothed that has turned out to be more "adult" than she intended and scolding her. She is told to not worry because only her husband-to-be will ever see the proposal. Cut to the end of the story, Ferdinand and her husband-to-be have become one and the same.
  • In Part 4 Volume 9, Rozemyne mentions that she sure doesn't envy Ferdinand's bride-to-be, Detlinde. One of the reasons is that she doesn't like embroidering things, and that she would have to embroider Ferdinand's cape (and Ferdinand has very high standards). At the end of the story, Rozemyne is engaged to Ferdinand and her engagement stone reads that she would like to embroider his cape.
  • Sylvester and Georgine don't want to be like Veronica. But they are more similar to her than they realize. The former wants to make his son Wilfried his heir and completely neglects his daughter, Charlotte. The latter hates how her mother preferred Sylvester over her, but she is implied to have done the same with her son Wolfram, while her daughters Alstede and Detlinde are incompetent and puppets to her.
  • Hannelore, who is apparently cursed with the worst timing ever, of all people, gets Dregarnuhr the Goddess of Time's divine protection. It doesn't help with her timing at all and feels more like mockery. In the Spin-Off, Hannelore is also viewed as an avatar of Dregarnuhr, as Dregarnuhr temporarily had to borrow her body to contact Rozemyne.
  • Throughout Part 3 to 5, Rozemyne's guardians are so busy trying to pick the right people to keep her under control and make sure that she doesn't become aub, yet they largely neglect Wilfried (who Sylvester wants to become his heir) and give him retainers who do not help him grow. Making Wilfried the designated heir made Wilfried lose all motivation to even try, and Sylvester never once questioned whether Wilfried even wants to become aub and Wilfried eventually gives up. Charlotte meanwhile always had to play second fiddle despite her earnest wish to be aub, and in the end Rozemyne ends up becoming aub anyway.
  • Ehrenfest's archduke is a known master at shirking the Pen-Pushing President part of his duties, mostly via managing to vanish from his office without people being the wiser. In later installments of Part 4, he's shown sneaking out to actually do another part of his job. The second time, it turns out that his sneaking out is partly reliant on passages meant for him to escape genuine threats.
  • Lutz's father has a very indirect way of speaking by poor commoner standards. In one of his Part 5 point of view chapters, Lutz internally remarks that of all things, spending a lot of time around nobles, among whom indirect communication is the norm, has done wonders in helping him understand his father better. On top of this, his father initially disapproved of him taking the job that regularly brings him in contact with nobles.
  • As is explained near the end of Part 5, Gervasio seeks refuge in Yurgenschmidt, since many people of Lanzenave use people with mana as a Living Battery for their tools. At the end of Part 5, for invading Yurgenschmidt and attempting to steal Yurgenschmidt's foundation, he and his allies are sentenced to become living mana batteries for the country's nobles.
• I Thought Everyone Could Do That:
  • Myne frequently forgets that several skills that were basic in her life as Urano are relatively rare specialized skills in her new world. While some other characters present will simply be some mix of impressed and surprised by them, some cases aren't revealed until chapters told in alternate points of view, which are typically at the very end or very beginning of volumes.
  • Rozemyne's understanding of magic is based on her past as an apprentice blue shrine maiden and her imagination of how magic works. She thus keeps doing things that she thought were normal, but are actually outstanding things no one has done before her. She thinks that all she has to do to make magic happen is to pray to the gods after she accidentally gave Status Buff blessings with just her ring (and not with her Magic Wand) to channel her mana in Part 2 Volume 2. She also can bestow the divine protection of the God of Darkness to others by reciting the prayer that she read in the bible, which has a nice secondary effect that allows her to transform her weapon without losing the divine protection. The divine protection is usually received by using a certain spell that only a select amount of knights learn, and once the divine protection is obtained, the schtappe can't be transformed into something else without canceling the divine protection.
  • Lutz needs to be told he has acquired a very useful skill simply by becoming Myne's Cloudcuckoolander's Minder and doesn't realize that he's actually picking up the skills involved in the merchant trade quite fast for someone who didn't grow up in its midst.
• It Seemed Trivial:
  • A combination of such events culminates in the introduction of one of the antagonists of Part 3 onwards. After landing the job of a deceased previous antagonist, Rozemyne finds a bunch of old letters in her predecessor's office, including some that she assumes to be a secret Long-Distance Relationship correspondence. Out of a misguided sense of respecting the privacy of both sides, she doesn't include the assumed love letters when she hands over her predecessor's correspondence to Ferdinand so he can sort through it. Later, she gets a letter from her predecessor's assumed lover and announces the death on a provided answer sheet that promptly turns into a sent ordonnanz. After that, she double-checks with Ferdinand to make sure there is no gag order on her predecessor's death while not saying anything that would make Ferdinand realize that the assumed lover isn't just a random acquaintance of the deceased who can be told of the death with no issue. It later turns out that Rozemyne's predecessor had a cherished female relative who was sent to another duchy for an Arranged Marriage; Rozemyne's adult allies simply never got around to telling her of the woman's existence or the fact that they needed to be careful about the circumstances in which she learned about the death.
  • A historical case turns out to have been a factor in the royal family's Grutrissheit going missing. A single Zent omitted to tell their heir that the item would return to a location accessible only by those who have both royal blood and the standard qualifications to be Zent if its owner died. That information then proceeded to be irrelvant for long enough that a non-chosen potential heir got the idea that killing the item's owner to steal it was an option, when the now-unknown property of the item meant that doing this was never going to work unless specifically planned for.
• The Jailbait Wait:
  • The noble to whom Freida is to become The Mistress isn't expecting her to move in with him until she has her adulthood coming of age ceremony. It's when she becomes fifteen years old and also the age at which people can start getting married.
  • This is mentioned to be a source of frustration for couples in which at least the youngest half is born in summer, as the adulthood coming of age ceremony for lower city dwellers born in summer happens after the summer yearly ceremony during which all marriages are performed.
  • Rozemyne's "biological" brother Lamprecht has this going on on top of the risk that the girl's family might not approve of the marriage. He's sixteen when properly introduced and the age gap between him and the girl he loves is big enough for her to not have come of age yet.
  • After the events in Part 4 Volume 3, in which Ferdinand, Rozemyne, and her attendants come to Philine's home to save her and her little brother Conrad, Philine has fallen in love with Damuel. After Damuel had to take back his marriage proposal to Brigitte, Damuel has not found a partner and increasingly becomes more frustrated, so Rozemyne later asks him in Part 5 to wait a few more years, as Philine plans to propose to him once she comes of age.
  • In the latter half of Part 5, Ferdinand tells Rozemyne multiple times that he will wait for two more years when she has graduated before marrying or sleeping with her (although she both times doesn't get it).
    • The first time happens when she is copy-pasting parts of her Grutrissheit into his Grutrissheit, while pouring her mana into it. He gets aroused while she is doing this, and when Rozemyne asks him to let her copy his parts of Grutrissheit she is missing, he tells her to back off and at least wait until she's come of age.
    • The second time happens close to the end of Part 5, after Rozemyne declares that she will stay together with Ferdinand and marry him. She wants to return his name to him, after explaining that family shouldn't have a subservient relationship and that him carrying her name in return is not very practical should one of them die. Ferdinand leaves it at that and just tells her that she can keep her "Shield of Schutzaria" until she's come of age. He is insinuating that he could make a move on her before they get married, so she can keep his name to keep him at bay.
    • Funnily, Sylvester is led to believe that Ferdinand has "celebrated winter before autumn" before being blessed by the King and Queen gods (i.e. Ferdinand had premarital sex with an underage Rozemyne). Sylvester has no idea Rozemyne was permanently dyed with Ferdinand's mana because of extraordinary circumstances. Rozemyne's vague statements don't help, since at one point she tells Eglantine that she will just let Ferdinand redye her with his mana (which is another thinly veiled euphemism for sex). When Eglantine later visits Rozemyne and Ferdinand, she thought they wanted to ask her to accelerate their Starbind Ceremony, since they apparently are already sleeping with each other. Rozemyne quickly clears up the misunderstanding then.
• Japanese Politeness:
  • In Part 1, Myne assumes that the right way to refuse to move to the store run by the guildmaster's family is to apologize and put forth the fact that she owes Benno for the help he gave her and Lutz, giving the person she's talking with the chance to back off in the process. Both Guildmaster Gustav and Freida assume this to be a negotiating position and offer to repay Benno whatever she owes him if that's the main obstacle in Myne joining their store. During both discussions in which this comes up, Myne needs to be told to firmly refuse by someone else ^note This is an extremely common situation in Real Life during cross-culture negotiations with Japanese partners, which makes those instances border on a meta joke.. The fact that Myne has yet to learn her lesson by the time Benno needs information on how to make impurity-free oil into shampoo is how she ends up being paid three small golds for said information; she was trying to not share the information at all because she knew it would cause a Spotting the Thread moment concerning her knowledge, while Benno understood it as her wanting a good price for the information.
  • Myne initially still exhibits unique Japanese etiquette like bowing down to superiors and elderly people, though she quickly realizes that this is a very uncommon practice. Nonetheless, at the end of Part 2, she deeply bows to her family after finalizing her adoption into Sylvester's family and saying her goodbyes. While Sylvester doesn't recognize the gesture, he knows it must have been a sign of respect and gratitude.
• Job-Stealing Robot: When Myne displays her printing press, Ferdinand explains to her that it takes several workshops of skilled laborers to make a book out of parchment. The ability to mass-produce books, which can be done in a single workshop by orphans with little to no training, will put all of those people out of work.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In Part 4 Volume 2, Rozemyne allows Traugott to resign as her guard knight without any further punishment. On the contrary, she promises that she will teach him her mana compression method. Freed from the burden of guarding her, not having to marry Angelica, and getting what he always wanted, Traugott feels satisfied that he seemingly got away with his actions besides a scolding from his family. What he doesn't understand is that he actually Resigned in Disgrace. Traugott's family sends Justus to the Academy as his attendant to discipline him, and Justus harshly tells him that he has ruined his future, as no one will ever want to take him on as a guard again. His family is also through with him, as whenever Bonifatius hears Traugott's name, his mood sours, and Rihyarda is ashamed that she recommended her grandson to Rozemyne.
• Killing Intent: People with enough mana can start releasing it like an aura that suppresses everyone around them and can choke people out. Mana users also do this subconsciously if their emotions run rampant. This usage of mana is known as Crushing, and it is first demonstrated by Myne after Fey and his friends trample on Myne's clay tablets. At the end of Part 1, when the High Bishop begins threatening Myne's family, she gets fed up and releases her mana that terrifies everyone there in a fit of Unstoppable Rage. The High Priest manages to calm her down before she accidentally kills someone.
• Kingmaker Scenario:
  • In Part 4, Eglantine, an archduke candidate from Klassenberg (the most powerful duchy after the Sovereignty), becomes an important political figure. Whichever prince marries her will gain strong political support for the throne, since Eglantine is actually the daughter of the late third prince. She was adopted by the former Aub Klassenberg after the death of her parents.
  • The fifth prince won the civil war after he married Magdalena, an archduke candidate from Dunkelfelger. Before that, Dunkelfelger was neutral.
• Lap Pillow:
  • Myne is given one at the beginning of Part 2 by Benno, after she collapses at the end of his meeting with High Priest Ferdinand.
  • Discussed in Part 3. There is an incident upon which Rozemyne notices her attendant Fran is overtired, asks him to rest and makes him choose between two available options. She more or less threatens to have him sleep on the piece of furniture on which she's currently sitting and use her lap as a pillow if he refuses those options.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Arcs are referred to on this very page by their Part number rather than their proper name because the first one is the only one with a proper name that is not a spoiler. To wit, those with a title that got a proper English translation are:
    • Part 1: Daughter of a Soldier (Light Novel) / If there aren't any books, I'll just have to make some! (Manga)
    • Part 2: Apprentice Shrine Maiden (Light Novel) / I'll even join the temple to read books! (Manga)
    • Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke (Light Novel) / Let's spread books through the duchy! (Manga)
    • Part 4: Founder of the Royal Academy's So-Called Library Committee (Light Novel)
    • Part 5: Avatar of a Goddess (Light Novel)
  • The cover illustrations can be guilty of this, as well:
    • Myne's clothing in illustrations from Part 2 onwards is a definite upgrade on the Pauper Patches she wears in the Part 1 illustrations.
    • Readers who have been introduced to the temple will notice that the temple robes worn by Rozemyne on some covers from Part 3 onwards are High Bishop robes. Manga and later light novel covers also don't bother to hide the fact that those same robes have the Ehrenfest family lion in the spot meant for family crests, which Myne had to fill with her workshop's crest back when she was a blue shrine maiden.
    • A few covers show Rozemyne alongside at least one other character wearing the same nice-looking Non-Uniform Uniform that is definitely not temple robes. Figuring out which known in-universe institution would have such a uniform causes another spoiler.
    • One of the manga covers for Part 3 depicts Myne's entire family, including the member who is born during Part 2. Said family member also shows up on promotional art of Season 3, with Season 2 ending while Effa is still pregnant.
• Late Pregnancy Realization: The entire pregnancy of one of Rozemyne's female acquaintances from outside Ehrenfest goes entirely unnoticed by her despite her running into said acquaintance during the Archduke Conference at the end of spring, then seeing her again at the beginning of the following winter during the Royal Academy term. This happens because the baby was born at the end of autumn and the mother herself didn't know she was pregnant at the beginning Archduke Conference, which would have happened right around the end of her first trimester.
• Let the Bully Win: Deconstructed in various situations.
  • Sylvester, being the Manchild he is, greatly dislikes the fact that lower status people are expected to let higher status people get the good positions in the yearly hunting competition in the Noble Forest. This is coming from the person everyone else in the duchy is expected to let win.
  • Rozemyne does her best to avoid having this happen with her adoptive brother's retainers, as he's set to inherit a seat in which he will need to be surrounded by competent, Honest Advisor-type people rather than Yes-Men and it's hard to tell which people are the competent ones if everyone is holding back in hope of getting on her brother's good side. She makes the same demand of people who want to become her own retainers.
  • Rozemyne herself still does this from time to time if she feels her opponent risks no longer enjoying the game if they lose too often and the game is good for developing skills she wants her opponent to have.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste:
  • When a blue priest ransacks the temple's book room to harass Myne, Myne spends some time being furious. Then she realizes that whoever will be cleaning up the mess will be able to choose where to put things back and decides it's a good time to introduce a classification system.
  • During the Interduchy Tournament of Rozemyne's second year at the Royal Academy, a student from another duchy with a resentment towards Rozemyne's retainer Hartmut launches an attack that accidentally hurts Rozemyne instead. Later, the fallout of an even worse event results in some of the country's higher-ups wanting Rozemyne to officiate the Royal Academy's coming-of-age ceremony. Rozemyne's Delicate and Sickly nature combined with the fact that she had to use a lot of mana to protect and heal the people from Ehrenfest during said even worse event falls short of convincing the higher-ups to let her sit things out. Ehrenfest's archduke convinces them by mentioning the fact that she was personally attacked before the even worse event and the ceremony would leave her unprotected.
• Like a Son to Me: Stated in Part 1 Volume 3 by Mark that Benno views Myne like family, even if he would never admit it.
• Liminal Time: The style of clothing changes with one's age. Girls who turn 10 have to wear skirts that reach their shins when before they were allowed to reach their knees. When they reach adulthood at 15, all women have to bind their hair in some way and their skirts are supposed to be as long as they can be. For practical reasons, women from lower classes follow the second rule much less strictly than those from higher classes.
• Literally Shattered Lives: In Part 3, this is how Ferdinand executes the mayor of Hasse and his collaborators. He casts a spell with which their medals are dissolved, causing the victims to turn into stone and then shatter, leaving nothing behind.
• Littering Is No Big Deal: The citizens of Ehrenfest's lower city just throw garbage and excrements out to the streets, which is why the stench in the lower city is horrible. None of them care about hygiene and no one is getting punished for it. This changes in Part 4, when Rozemyne starts interacting with other duchies after she enters the Royal Academy. With Ehrenfest becoming a new and important trading partner, the capital needs to be presentable, so Sylvester adds a sewage system to the lower city, and Rozemyne and Ferdinand clean the streets and buildings with a large water spell. They then inform the commoners that they must use the designated garbage disposal places and keep the streets clean or else the archduke will completely rebuild the city with magic and destroy all of their homes in the process. The commoner soldiers then decide to threaten any citizen with the revokement of their citizenship if they are found littering.
• Little Professor Dialogue: A common criticism of the story is characters like Lutz and Tuuli are only about six or seven at the start of the story, but often use much more advanced vocabulary than you'd expect for their age, which isn't helped by their high mental maturity and complex thoughts. Some of this can be explained by children being forced to mature more quickly in medieval times (such as being apprenticed to learn a trade or helping in the family business while still young), but not all. With Myne however, the fact that she does this in-universe is intentional, and indeed becomes a plot point.
• Living Battery: Beings with mana can be used as living batteries to fuel magic tools or fill the land with mana, which is necessary to have a good harvest. This is often the fate of prisoners, but also of commoner slaves who suffer from the Devouring. Myne could have ended up like this if she had been unlucky. True nobles with a lot of mana to spare are expected to be a more voluntary version of this. Blue priests are a borderline case as they have a much better life than the aforementioned prisoners and slaves, but it's literally the only way they are allowed to use their mana and they are considered to be Locked Away in a Monastery, if only on paper.
• Living Is More than Surviving: Myne would literally rather die than live in circumstances that entail losing her liberty and/or separating her from her family.
• Locked Away in a Monastery:
  • Nobles that are born with too low mana levels are typically sent to the temple, where they still can help society by offering their mana to the duchy as blue robes.
  • In general, it's viewed as shameful to anyone with noble descent to go to the temple. Angelica for instance is the subject of jealousy because her fellow female knights assume they would only have to guard Rozemyne in the Noble's Quarter, when in truth Angelica only hasn't gone to the temple yet because she isn't of age. Damuel's Reassigned to Antarctica punishment involved guarding Myne in the temple for a year, which kind of ruined his already low reputation. On the other hand, since Damuel is privy to Rozemyne's commoner past and Rozemyne got attached to him, he became an obvious choice as one of her guard knights. Guarding the adopted daughter of the archduke, who is appointed as High Bishop, in the temple is an honor and raises his reputation again.
  • In Part 4 Volume 2, Rihyarda is furious at her grandson, Traugott, for not respecting Rozemyne as his mistress and only thinking of himself, which makes him a liability. She asks Rozemyne to dismiss Traugott and strip him of his noble status by sending him to the temple as punishment. Rozemyne doesn't comply mainly for two reasons: One, dismissing Traugott will not only affect him but also his family, and she has no intention to hurt Rihyarda and Bonifatius' families (which is why she asks him to resign voluntarily instead). Two, the temple is a place of comfort and peace for Rozemyne, and she really doesn't want to see Traugott's face again after he arrogantly looked down on Damuel.
• Logical Latecomer: Whoever joined Myne's circle the most recently will frequently have a least one scene of witnessing the group's strangeness as a newcomer before becoming part of it themself. Those who have quirks of their own before joining aren't necessarily immune.
• Long-Distance Relationship:
  • Lamprecht is in such a relationship with a girl from another duchy that he met at the Royal Academy. However, since she is two years younger, she hasn't come of age yet, he is still waiting before he can marry her.
  • Hugo is kind of in one with his girlfriend Kirke at the start of Part 3, while he is away in the Noble's Quarter to work as a chef at the archduke's castle. When he returned to the lower city, he saw his girlfriend started dating a neighbor though, which is why he quits the Italian restaurant and decides to permanently become a noble's chef.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • This is frequently used by merchants or nobles when they make people sign contracts. Since most commoners are not literate and don't understand noble euphemisms, they are prone to fall for this. Benno first demonstrates this to Myne in Part 1 Volume 2, when he shows her boards that teach her about the principles of contracts. Myne then notices Benno did not give Lutz or her the money to buy the new paper-making tools and calls Benno out for trying to break their contract and tricking her. Benno tells her that he tested her memory and that he wanted to teach her to always make copies of contracts. He only would have broken the contract if he had refused to pay, not if Myne had paid the workshops first and then forgot to ask Benno for the money back.
  • The magic contract preventing Myne's family from interacting with Rozemyne as a family member doesn't include Lutz, so Rozemyne can still interact with him as a close childhood friend as long as they are out of the public eye and the only other people in the room are in on the secret. Lutz also becomes an important messenger between Rozemyne and her birth family, as they are still able to exchange letters.
  • After Ferdinand forbids Rozemyne from selling prints of him, she continues providing illustrations of him to people via means that don't technically qualify for what she was explicitly told not to do. Since Ferdinand only forbade Rozemyne to print illustrations of him, Rozemyne subtly tells Elvira that she can print anything she wants with her own workshop.
  • A magic contract only has an effect within a certain area. Merchants for instance are typically given contracts that are only effective within a city. Theoretically, this means that Rozemyne's contract with her biological family is only effective within the Ehrenfest duchy.
  • Archduke candidates are naturally the only people who are allowed to take the archduke candidate course at the Royal Academy. However, adopted children of the archducal family are also archduke candidates. The greater duchy Drewanchel makes use of this fact, as the archducal family adopts any archnobles that show promise. Those who are not chosen as heirs later become giebes.
  • During Part 3 and Part 4, there are several different interpersonal connections that apply to Rozemyne and Ferdinand. In one of those connections, Rozemyne is technically of higher status than Ferdinand, while the reverse is true in all other cases. Once in a while, Ferdinand takes advantage of the one instance in which their status difference is reversed to spin situations to his advantage.
  • Guard knights are not allowed to be present during religious ceremonies, which is a problem for Rozemyne when she's ordred to perform one in a place that contains a bunch of people who are hostile to her to various extents. Someone however points out that anyone who wears blue robes is assumed to be a priest by the average person, so she should be able to figure something out. That person knows that Rozemyne is already having proper nobles from her entourage who aren't officially part of the temple wear the proper garb while helping her with religious ceremonies.
• Lord Country: Duchies are named after the ruling noble family. Thus, the Ehrenfest duchy and its capital are named after the archducal house Ehrenfest.
• Lost in Translation:
  • A peculiarity exists that differentiates the way commoners and nobles talk, where nobles refer to the floor of a building that is level with the ground "ground floor", while the floor above is the "first floor", like in British English. In the official English translation, this detail went unnoticed, which is why the floor where the pre-baptism children at the orphanage are kept is incorrectly called "basement" instead, when it's actually on the same level as the ground.
  • Due to different and inconsistent romanization or Dub Name Changes, it is often not obvious that commoners use shorter versions of noble names. For example, there is Deid (Diet) and Detlinde (Dietlinde), Freida (Frieda) and Wilfried, or Leise (Liese) and Lieseleta.
  • In Part 4 Volume 2, Rozemyne encounters a schnefeld (snow field) feybeast. A more accurate romanization would probably be "schneepferd" (snow horse), as it's similar to a hippopotamus, which in German is directly translated as "Flusspferd" - river horse.
  • In Part 4 Volume 4, while visiting Haldenzel for Spring Prayer, Rozemyne is woken up by thunder. In the official translation, a joke about her covering her belly button was removed, as it's an uncommon Japanese cultural reference. ^note "Hide your belly button or the God of Thunder will steal it away." means something like "The temperature drops when a thunderstorm is coming, so cover your body properly or else you will catch a cold."
• Love at First Sight:
  • Otto fell in love with Corinna the instant he saw her.
  • In Part 4 Volume 5, Third Prince Hildebrand immediately develops a crush on Rozemyne when he first sees her, as he mistakenly believes she is around the same age as him.
  • In Part 5 Volume 7, First Prince Sigiswald sees Rozemyne who went through a Plot-Relevant Age-Up. He is immediately smitten with her.
• Love Is Like Religion:
  • Nobles use many euphemisms that are related to the gods, and since the happiest pairing in the pantheon is between the king and queen gods, it is not uncommon for a noble to refer to their partner as their God of Darkness or Goddess of Light.
  • Although their romantic relationship is opposite to the divine harmonious marriage between the God of Darkness and the Goddess of Light, both the God of Life and Goddess of Earth are also commonly used to talk about love and romantic longing. Asking someone who their "Geduldh" is, is basically a noble's way to ask who or what is most important to them. Even Ferdinand ends up linking the lyrics of an anime song Myne sings to him that talks about friendship and platonic love to Ewigeliebe falling in love with Geduldh and wishing to know her better.
  • Referring to someone as one's "Flutrane", by contrast, is referring to them as a lover.
• Loved I Not Honor More: At the end of Part 3, during the Starbind Festival Damuel tells Brigitte that he cannot marry into the Illgner household, because he would have to give up being Rozemyne's guard knight, which everyone interprets as him choosing honor over love by staying loyal to his mistress. While his loyalty to Rozemyne is one reason, he simply cannot be dismissed so easily, because he is one of Rozemyne's biggest Secret Keepers.
• Low Fantasy: Played with and ultimately Subverted. Magic is such an unimportant part of commoners' everyday lives that outside of the occasional Fantastic Flora, it takes a long time for Myne to even realize that it exists. It doesn't actually affect people's lives most of the time and is generally only used for important things like religious rituals. This may be just a matter of perspective, as the nobles seem to hoard the secrets of magic for themselves, so the use of magic seems to rise the higher up the social ladder you are. This is more the case for people in the city rather than the country, as some of the biggest rituals magic is used for are performed on the fields during planting and harvest.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Bonifatius has Super-Strength due to Magic Enhancement. People hit with his punches frequently explode in a shower of gore.
• Magically-Binding Contract: Magic contracts exist that need to be signed with blood or mana (the former has the highest concentration of mana for commoners). They may range over a city, a duchy, or even the whole country, depending on its importance. Adoption and submission contracts with nobles are also magically binding. Once they are signed, they burn up. Violating the contract leads to dire consequences, sometimes even death.
  • Merchants typically only get access to city-wide contracts from their archduke, but although magic contracts are horribly expensive, they are the only effective way for commoners to protect themselves against nobles. Myne signs several contracts with the Gilberta Company, assigning them various financial and trade rights to her innovations, and carrying similar guarantees for her. This is as much to her advantage as the company's, since as long as she is under contract, she can't be "stolen" by nobility or other highly placed people, which would otherwise be a real danger for her and her "creations".
  • At the end of Part 2, Myne unknowingly signs an adoption contract with Sylvester before Count Bindewald tries to make her sign a submission contract like he did with the orphan baby Dirk. After Bindewald is defeated, Sylvester summons Myne's family and makes them sign a contract that forbids them from treating the newly-adopted and renamed Rozemyne like family.
  • In Part 3 Volume 5, Rozemyne forces every noble who wishes to learn her mana compression method to sign a country-wide contract that forbids them from harming Rozemyne or teaching other people the compression method.
• Magic Potion: Potions can come in many variants and have different functions. For instance, there are Mana Potions, stamina potions, potions that restore mana and stamina, poison and antidotes, etc. The first potion Rozemyne makes is a jureve, which she needs to remove the hardened feystones in her body.
• Magic Wand: The schtappe (actually Stab, the German word for "wand" or "staff") is the classic tool nobles use either as a Morph Weapon or to focus their mana to cast spells. To obtain one, a special feystone called the Divine Will is needed, which is only given to someone once in their life, and it needs to be fully absorbed into the body. Only people who can use a schtappe are recognized as nobles. Students who fail to graduate at the Royal Academy have their schtappes sealed. In the past (like during Bonifatius' time at the Academy), the schtappe was given to nobles when they graduated, while during Ferdinand's time it was in their third year. In the present, the schtappe is already obtained in a student's first year, at the suggestion of the first prince. In the first half of Part 5, the time to get the schtappe is moved back to the third year, as Rozemyne discovers that her schtappe that she got is of too poor quality after she kept compressing her mana and went through the divine protection ceremony in her third year. In the Spin-Off that plays after Part 5, Hannelore notes that the schtappe is given to students at their graduation again, to prevent minors from becoming aub, just like Rozemyne did.
• Magitek: Registered merchants carry a magic-powered debit card.
• The Magocracy: While it isn't generally known to the public, virtually all nobles are mages, with the primary duties of the nobility being to build, charge and utilize magical devices (those without sufficient magic to do so are cast aside). While there are common-born mages, having enough magic to be useful can be deadly to children if they can't discharge their power somehow, and the only commonly known way to do so is through the magical tools used by the nobility. Which means that most common-born mages die before anyone realizes that they have magic, and the rest end up pledging themselves to a noble house in exchange for access to the tools they need to survive.
• Make an Example of Them: In Part 3, Ferdinand and Sylvester allow Rozemyne to spare the citizens of Hasse who bear no ill will and manage to pass through Schutzaria's wind gate. However, he executes those who cannot pass in front of everyone's eyes to show them what will happen if they ever defy the nobility again.
• Mama Bear: Ella's mother fully supported her decision to work in the temple as a chef, despite Ella's uncle's protests, as she didn't want her daughter to end up like her and become a bar waitress (i.e. acting as a prostitute by night).
• Marriage Before Romance: In Part 4 Volume 4, it becomes obvious that Karstedt has become much fonder of Elvira. Their marriage was arranged to protect Elvira from Veronica, and before Rozemyne entered their life, because of certain events they didn't have a very good relationship.
• Marriage of Convenience:
  • In Part 4 Volume 3, Angelica gets engaged to Eckhart. While it was Bonifatius' desire to bind his favorite disciple to his family, the engagement suits both Angelica and Eckhart. Both must not stay single, but while Angelica doesn't like female social activities and wants to stay a knight as long as possible, Eckhart has sworn off romance and children since his first wife Heidemarie's death. They can thus delay the marriage for many years (until Angelica approaches 20) and Eckhart has an excuse to not find another woman to be his Top Wife, to the dismay of Elvira. At the end of Part 4, their engagement is dissolved as Eckhart leaves for Ahrensbach and she is too devoted to Rozemyne to quit to get married to him, but at the end of Part 5 they get back together since Angelica and Eckhart's masters will also marry and stay together.
  • In Part 4 Volume 5, Aurelia's side story reveals that she became acquainted with Lamprecht when he asked her to introduce him to the older archknight girls from her duchy, as he was under Veronica's orders to get a bride from Ahrensbach. Aurelia warned him though, that it would be hard to find someone interested as most of the girls already had a partner or wouldn't want to marry into a low-ranking duchy like Ehrenfest unless they were as desperate to marry out as she was to get away from Ahrensbach, since she was bullied because of her looks, personality and her mother's homeduchy being Frenbeltag (an opposing and losing duchy in the last civil war). This prompted Lamprecht to ask her if she would then like to marry him as it would benefit the both of them, and as time went by they did fell in love with each other..
  • In Part 4 Volume 7, Hartmut introduces Clarissa of Dunkelfelger to Rozemyne and Ferdinand. Hartmut and Clarissa don't really love each other, but they share a love for Rozemyne and both wish to serve her. Clarissa wanted to marry an archnoble who is Rozemyne's retainer, so she can move to Ehrenfest, and Hartmut thought having a partner who is just as devoted to Rozemyne as him is perfect. Even their engagement stones say, instead of a romantic message, that they wish to serve Rozemyne together, and instead of giving their names to each other (which is a very romantic gesture), they'd rather be connected by giving their names to Rozemyne.
  • Eckhart's marriage to Heidemarie had elements of this. Heidemarie was one of Ferdinand's retainers. To keep serving Ferdinand, marrying Eckhart was perfect for her. Eckhart did love Heidemarie, too, though, and her death broke him.
  • In Part 5 Volume 4, Brunhilde proposes to Sylvester to take her as his second wife. Brunhilde is a Groschel descended from the Leisegang family, and she can help stabilize Sylvester's rule after Veronica's faction was purged and Sylvester lacks support. Sylvester needs a wife who can socialize and who is okay with not consummating the marriage for a while, since Florencia is pregnant (and Sylvester needs to support Florencia for two years). Since Brunhilde is still attending the Academy for two years, this isn't an issue for her. Brunhilde on the other hand protects her mother's status this way, since her father's second wife just gave birth to a son, and Count Groschel intends to make him his heir. She also can spread fashion and set trends as the archduke's wife.
  • Tuuli's engagement to Lutz can come off as one. Merchants try to marry her to get close to Rozemyne and there is no one in her neighborhood but Lutz who is similar in status and closeness to Rozemyne. The same is true for Lutz.
• Marry for Love: Commoners usually marry out of convenience a partner that they are close to, but they have more freedom to marry someone they like. While rarer, nobles also sometimes marry just for love.
  • Gunther and Effa married for love. Effa was the daughter of Gunther's captain and Gunther one day fell in love with her. He spent time with her and proposed several times before she eventually started to love him, too.
  • Otto marrying Corinna was purely out of love. Benno initially suspected Otto wanted to take over the Gilberta Company, but Otto didn't even know it's tradition for the daughter to take over the store. Otto's commitment to Corinna is what convinces Corinna and Benno that Otto is serious about it. Corinna comes to love Otto, too. As a convenient side effect, she can also permanently rebuke any more suggestions from Gustav to marry one of his sons.
  • The archduke's marriage with his first wife Florencia is one of love. His mother wanted him to marry someone from Ahrensbach, but he stubbornly tried to woo Florencia until Florencia said yes. His advances have become legendary in the Royal Academy.
  • At the end of Part 3, Hugo realizes that he loves Ella, who has been in love with Hugo for a long time. He proposes to her and they marry in Part 4.
  • Lamprecht and his girlfriend from Ahrensbach deeply love each other and would love to be able to marry if her parents were to approve the marriage. After being compelled to break up, they later end up being able to get married once her uncle Aub Ahrensbach forces the issue in Part 4.
  • Cornelius' betrothal to Leonore is revealed to actually be this. As they are both archnobles from the same faction and act as Rozemyne's guard knights there is no one who could be against their marriage, which at first makes Leonore believe that Cornelius simply chose her because she is the most convenient option for him. But just as she tries to make peace with the fact that her love for him would remain unrequited even after being married, he showcases that he actually has romantic feelings for her too and that's why he wants to marry her.
  • Magdalena from Dunkelfelger was once supposed to marry Ferdinand. She refused as she was basically being used to just save him from Veronica, when she knew fully well he was more capable of saving himself, and instead went for Trauerqual, the fifth prince at that time, whom she truly loved and actually wanted to be of help to.
  • In Part 4, Second Prince Anastasius proposes to Eglantine successfully after being honest with her. He does not want to marry her for political reasons, he just loves her.
  • Philine plans to marry Damuel once she comes of age, having fallen in love with him after he came to her rescue in Part 4 Volume 3.
  • Ultimately at the end of the series, Rozemyne's marriage with Ferdinand is one out of love. Ferdinand realized his feelings when they were separated at the end of Part 4. After she rescues him in Ahrensbach, he sees that he is now engaged to Rozemyne and sets a plan in motion where no one can stop him from marrying her. Rozemyne also loves Ferdinand, she just is too dense to realize it.
• Meaningful Name: A lot of names of the gods, spells, animals, plants, and places are based on German. For instance, Lohenberg is German for "burning mountain", which is a very fitting name for a volcano.
• Mechanical Horse: The highbeasts used by nobles are essentially magic-powered moving statues shaped like winged horses or other ridable animals.
• Medieval Universal Literacy: Averted. The story has a realistic level of literacy and Myne is reincarnated as one of the large majority of poor and illiterate people in the population. Add in that books are created one at a time by trained craftsmen plus both paper and ink being expensive, makes books rare and expensive. One book costs roughly what Myne's father would earn in 40 to 50 years. Myne does however retain her memories of reading and writing in Japanese.
• Memento MacGuffin:
  • Rozemyne always wears a hairpin that was made by Tuuli, showing that her sister is always close to her.
  • In Part 4 Volume 9, Rozemyne gifts Ferdinand a seven-colored charm that she and Hartmut made from the scales of a feyfish. Ferdinand coincidentally made a similar item for Rozemyne... except his gift has five of those seven-colored feystones. She can always wear it together with her hairpin, and it symbolizes their close relationship, as in the previous volume Rozemyne made it clear that Ferdinand is family to her. Others who are not aware of their relationship would immediately assume it's an engagement gift, which is why Rozemyne tells everyone that Wilfried gifted it to her.
• Metaphorically True: At the end of Part 2 Volume 4, Myne's family tell their neighbors that Myne is gone and that the nobles took her. This is technically not a lie, as Myne was adopted by Aub Ehrenfest. Myne, the commoner, is dead, and the person that was Myne is now Lady Rozemyne, daughter of Karstedt and adopted daughter of the archducal house Ehrenfest.
• Microts: The temple's bells will ring throughout the city after a certain amount of time has passed, based on the sunlight. The bells ring roughly every 2-3 hours, which is how people arrange the time for meetings.
• Milholland Relationship Moment: Downplayed. Eckhart is understandably worried that his new fiancée Angelica would be upset that he doesn't immediately marry her, as he still mourns his deceased wife, but she is fine with it for which he is grateful.
• Mills and Boon Prose: In-universe romance novels are prone to this. When Rozemyne first reads her noble "birth" mother's work, parts have the already euphemism-laden language of nobles get so convoluted that she gives up on understanding it. Said parts later turn out to be the scenes in which the couple is being intimate. When she has her own go at the genre, she's asked to burn the manuscript because it's too explicit... for spelling out that the couple is having physical contact.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Myne's Past-Life Memories are subject to this after some of the most powerful people in the Ehrenfest duchy become aware of them. Several factors play into this:
  • If it doesn't contribute to increasing the number of books produced in her new world or recreate something she misses from modern-day Japan, Myne has no interest in introducing it.
  • If she had no interest in a subject at any point in her life as Urano, chances are that she didn't bother memorizing much about it if she ever read a book on the subject. For instance, she's at a relative loss when her mother becomes pregnant because Urano was an only child with a Disappeared Dad and no interest in finding a romantic partner of her own, which resulted in her not giving much attention to pregnancy and childbirth.
  • Many of the things with which she could help are completely foreign concepts to the powerful people in the know.
  • Several major disruptions are being caused even by underutilization of her Past-Life Memories, so the powerful people in the know may not be able to handle the consequences of using their full potential.
• Misplaced Retribution: It is common practice for nobles to not just punish a person if they are guilty of a crime, but their entire family and anyone associated with them as well.
  • At the end of Part 2, after Sylvester sentences High Bishop Bezewanst to die, all of his associates are to be executed as well.
  • In Part 3, citizens of Hasse attack the newly built monastery, which is a direct attack on the archduke's family, as Rozemyne is Sylvester's adopted daughter. Ferdinand wants Rozemyne to destroy the entire town and kill its people, but changes his mind to let Rozemyne experiment on Hasse and have her learn how to become more manipulative.
• Missed Him by That Much: The anime bonus episode that adapts Justus and Eckhart's investigation of Myne in the lower city (a fact only revealed to Rozemyne in Part 3 Volume 2 in the novels) adds this element to the story. Much like in the original, Eckhart is being The Load due to the lower city's stench literally making him sick while Justus does most of the work. In the anime version however, Justus comes very close to seeing Myne twice. The first time is outside of Benno's shop, which she had left seconds before. Later, near the end of his search, he walks right past her without noticing, because she's carrying a huge loaf of bread in front of her face.
• Mistaken for Profound: Rozemyne ends up producing two divine instruments one after another after overloading herself with mana and desperately wanting to get rid of the excess before making herself into a light show. Pragmatic reasons, but every other noble in the room ends up thinking she earns the moniker of Saint of Ehrenfest because of this.
• Morph Weapon: The schtappe is the magic wand nobles use which can turn into any weapon like a knife, a spear, a sword or even a giant scythe.
• Mugged for Disguise: In late Part 5, Georgine is able to reach her objective via Ehrenfest's temple, which has a large number of commoner employees who all wear the same outfit. She kills one of the female employees and steals her clothig to be able to go around the building without being immediately identified.
• Muggle in Mage Custody: This is the situation each time a noble buys a commoner orphan. Where the relationship is on the spectrum from "not that much different from the orphan's pre-purchase situation" to a signifiacant upgrade in lifestyle depends entirely on the noble. In the worse-case scenario, the orphan might actually have been better off pre-purchase.
• Multilayer Façade: Rozemyne being in a reverse Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe situation means that if someone already knows or suspects that her official noble mother is not her biological mother, they will be told or come to the conclusion that she's actually the daughter of a different woman who is deceased in the present day, but actually existed. However, on top of her enemies publicising her real origins in a move to discredit her, that extra layer of secrecy isn't enough for her smarter allies, some of whom have gone full Secret Secret-Keeper.
• Mundane Luxury:
  • After being stuck in a home without a single piece of writing in it for days, Myne is overjoyed merely from seeing what is essentially a price tag. The lack of things to write on also makes posession of a stone slate a big upgrade.
  • For Urano, shampoo was a basic fact of life; for the people of the new world, it's completely unknown. The lack of shampoo drives Myne to make a homemade version, and the others whose hair she washes go nuts for it.
• Mundane Utility: Trombe, a malicious magical plant that grows impossibly fast and tries to ensnare humans, turns out to be ideal for making paper, if you survive the process of killing it (a freshly-sprouting trombe can be cut apart by children with knives if they're fast, while a full-grown tree takes magic-wielding knights to put down). Benno doesn't take it well when Myne tells him about this secret ingredient.
• Murder by Mistake: As revealed in Part 5 Volume 9, this is officially the reason given why Myne was kidnapped and murdered at the end of Part 2: she resembled the archduke's adopted daughter, Rozemyne. This is why Gunther's subordinate Leckle thinks Rozemyne feels bad for Gunther, who lost his daughter, and why she shows favor towards his family.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In Part 4 Volume 8, several duchies support the idea of Ferdinand marrying into the greater duchy Ahrensbach, to escape Ehrenfest's temple. A strong advocate for the motion is Heisshitze, Ferdinand's friend and rival from Dunkelfelger from his Academy days. He meets Ferdinand again at the Interduchy Tournament in Rozemyne's third year in Part 5 Volume 3, where Ferdinand thanks Heisshitze for getting him engaged to Veronica's granddaughter and gives Heisshitze his cape back with a big fake smile on his face. Heisshitze is the only Dunkelfelger noble who realizes what he has done to his friend and turns pale.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Justified. In Part 5, Cornelius starts to keep Rozemyne away from male suitors, specifically Ferdinand, and especially after Rozemyne starts to look her age. He is worried that this will otherwise damage his sister's reputation, as entering a Secret Room with an unmarried man or flying with him on his highbeast elicits nasty rumors. That doesn't concern Eckhart though, probably because one, he just does whatever his master orders him to, and two, he may even ship them together.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The woman from the shop next to the pawn shop in which Myne sees her first book is shown handling wine bottles. In the light novel, Effa buys a alcohol from her and gives it to Myne after she faints at the market.
  • The first ending of the anime mostly takes place in a landscape consisting of wavy water and flowers. In the light novel, Myne's blue shrine maiden ceremonial robes are embroidered with waves and flowers. That element was omitted from the anime version of the robes.
  • The single-use magic tool Myne gets from Freida in the anime is a bracelet rather than the necklace it was in the light novel. The light novel explicitly mentions that as the result of her contract with a noble, Freida owns a fully functional bracelet-shaped magic tool that isn't shown in the anime.
  • In the bonus anime episode based on a Part 3 side story, Eckhart complains about the smell of the clothes purchased in the Lower City and talks about using a washing spell on them. In the original side story, he's seen actually using the spell.
  • The bonus episode mostly based on Justus and Eckhart's investigation has a scene that is adapted from another short story that includes Gunther and Otto drinking to the news of Corinna's pregnancy. The anime version of the scene briefly shows the tavern's dog chewing on a bone with a little meat still on it while another such bone is being tossed at it as one of the means of showing that the place is definitely not up to Justus and Eckhart's hygiene standards. In the original story, Gunther and Otto themselves are seen feeding the tavern's dog with the food remains their table's previous occupant left behind.
  • In the final frame of the anime's second ending, when the entire family is facing the viewer, Myne's bun is sticking out of her head from her left side. In the early light novel illustrations, the position of Myne's bun ranges from the left side of her head to almost the back of it, rather than the "completely to the back" position it has in the anime.

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