Ascendance Of A Bookworm / Tropes N to S

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

• Named After Somebody Famous:
  • Rozemyne grants people who have greatly contributed to spreading books and printing the title "Gutenberg", after Johannes Gutenberg, who brought modern movable-type printing to Europe.
  • In a similar way, she named Benno's new print and publishing company after Christophe Plantin, a famous book printer and publisher.
  • Rozemyne names her project to collect stories told among commoners "Operation Grimm" after The Brothers Grimm, who are behind one of the three most famous collections of fairytales in Europe.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: One of the nobles introduced at the end of Part 3 Volume 4 is named "Grausam", which is German for cruel. What he and the rest of Veronica's faction plan to do with Sylvester's family and Rozemyne is truly befitting of that name.
• The Needs of the Many: In Part 3 Volume 2, Rozemyne is faced with a problem where she can either stay passive or actively cause someone's downfall to save lives. Hasse is set for execution after they rebelled against the archduke. Ferdinand orders her to cause the mayor's downfall, but this goes against Rozemyne's values and makes her sick. After a talk with Benno, Mark, and Lutz, she realizes that Ferdinand is soft on Hasse, whose citizens attacked a building of the archduke, and gives her the choice to save the town from being eradicated. By fulfilling the task she is given by Ferdinand, she can at least save some lives by only bringing down the mayor and his faction.
• Nepotism:
  • Defied when children turn 7, the age at which they are supposed to get their first apprentice contracts. Their parents or other relatives usually introduce them to a friend who will take them in instead of their parent's own workplace. For instance, Tuuli's first seamstress contract was with a place whose employees Effa knew from being a dyer, while her second one is with the Gilberta Company, to which she was introduced via Myne.
  • Played straight with High Bishop Bezewanst. He got his high position largely because of his very influential older sister.
  • Strictly speaking, Traugott, one of Rozemyne's guard knights in Part 4, only got his position because he has strong blood relations to both Bonifatius and Rihyarda. Rozemyne had no other reason to recruit him. Since he has no real intention to serve Rozemyne, he resigns after she promises to give him what he wants.
  • Similar to Traugott, Hartmut was largely taken in by Rozemyne because his mother is Ottilie.
  • Subverted in Part 4 Volume 5. Rozemyne clearly wants Effa to be her exclusive dyer and admits it's nepotism, but her plans are foiled by everyone around her.
• Neutrality Backlash: The Ehrenfest duchy didn't take a side during the nobility's civil war. On one hand, it is in a better position in the duchy rankings than it was before the war due to the duchies who lost it being in worse positions than they used to be. On the other hand, Ehrenfest has little to no influence on other duchies and the only ally it has is one that was made through a political marriage.
• Never Learned to Read: "Wilfried's day as High Bishop" in Part 3 Volume 2 is this. Rihyarda and Rozemyne in the castle, and everyone in the temple learn that he is illiterate, which makes him worse than every single orphan but Dirk (a baby). When Rozemyne, Rihyarda, and Ferdinand report this to his parents, they accept that they raised him improperly and go with Rozemyne's stricter education plan.
• Never Lend to a Friend: Discussed in Part 2 Volume 2, when Myne prepares to buy clothes for her winter preparations at the temple. Myne runs short on money, which forces her to sell more books to Benno than she wanted to. Lutz offers to lend her money, but Myne refuses, remarking that this can ruin friendships. Lutz goes around this and instead pays for her clothes, stating that while it's not good for friends to lend money, giving gifts shouldn't be a problem.
• New Baby Episode: Late Part 2 has both the birth of Myne's baby brother Kamil and the temple's orphanage getting its first Doorstop Baby, Dirk, during Myne's tenure as orphanage director. The chapter focused on Kamil's arrival focuses on the practices surronding childbirth in Myne's neighborhood, while those focusing on Dirk deal with the fact that the High Bishop's idea of saving money for the temple involved getting rid of all gray shrine maidens who knew how to care for a very young child.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • At the end of Part 2, Delia takes it upon herself to find someone who would adopt Dirk. She brings him to the High Bishop, who sells Dirk out to Count Bindewald, who forces Dirk into a slave contract, as Dirk has the Devouring. If Delia had waited until Myne had been adopted as a noble, she could have been able to take care of Dirk.
  • The entire mess with the town of Hasse starting in Part 3 Volume 2 happens due to some unfortunate decisions Rozemyne makes based on a few misunderstandings. First, she asks for a workshop and orphanage, similar to the already established workshop in the Ehrenfest Capital temple. Second, she takes in orphans that were about to be sold, in the belief that this would save the orphans from mistreatment and relieve the townspeople of a financial burden. However, the orphans were already promised to other nobles and they are considered the shared property of the town, which she just stole from them. The mayor thought he would have former High Bishop Bezewanst's backing, which incited him to retrieve the orphans that were taken from him. By sending a few of his citizens to attack the monastery, he committed high treason. While Rozemyne manages to prevent the entire annihilation of Hasse and its people, she has to isolate and execute the mayor's faction, and the town must pay more taxes for the next decade with no help from priests to revitalize the land for next spring.
  • At the start of Part 4, Ferdinand laments the fact that he didn't get much further with his investigations regarding Viscount Gerlach's involvement in Rozemyne's kidnapping. The reason for that though is that Ferdinand was too busy with paperwork, since Bonifatius had Damuel and Eckhart going through some Training from Hell, while the archduke summoned Ferdinand to the castle more often (without Rozemyne being there to keep the archduke from doing just that) to delegate work to him again. On top of taking over Rozemyne's duties, it was all too much for Ferdinand to investigate.
  • The beginning of Part 5 shows that a couple of successful Marry for Love events that happened within the royal family resulted in Prince Hildebrand, who is set to have an Arranged Marriage, wanting the same thing with the girl he has a crush on. This makes him more open to a suggestion to aim for a throne whose future occupant is already decided than he otherwise would have been. Hildebrand's own mother, who has has already praised one of the Marry for Love events in his presence due to being part of the other, only fans the fire by giving him good pointers and reminding him of his Proud Warrior Race heritage when he asks her for advice without giving any specifics about his ambitions.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • The abuse Ferdinand got from his Wicked Stepmother included constantly being told that he needed to work hard to deserve being part of his father's household. However, Ferdinand's inherent gifts are bigger than those of his older half-brother, who went on to inherit the family title after their father's death. Ferdinand having been pushed into actually using his full abilities to survive his own childhood means that in the present day, from the perspective of his Wicked Stepmother's enemies, his family has a potential head of household with a triple advantage: being more competent than the current one, not sharing the Wicked Stepmother's blood and being very unlikely to stop anything that would be bad news for her. The situation is also implied to have made Ferdinand's half-brother work harder on some of his skills than he otherwise would have to avoid falling behind him to a socially inacceptable degree, while his mother was aiming to make him into a political puppet.
  • Another unintended benefit of Ferdinand's Wicked Stepmother's actions is that her many attempts on his life gave him Acquired Poison Immunity good enough to survive a poison that is instantly lethal for everyone else.
  • Due to the events at the end of Part 3, with Rozemyne being poisoned by Georgine's people and forced into a two-year-long jureve sleep, Georgine's plans to infiltrate the temple have to be cancelled. Not only are her requests to visit Ehrenfest refused, Rozemyne is recovering in the temple, which is why the temple is on high alert and the presence of any nobles that do not belong to Ferdinand or Rozemyne would cause suspicion.
  • At the start of Part 5, the students whose parents were purged by Sylvester due to their allegiance to Georgine can escape execution by offering their names to one of Sylvester's children. While initially some want to give their names to Rozemyne, Barthold advises them not to, since Rozemyne is a Leisegang and weak, and this bears a risk, as people will die with their master if they give their names away. This deters several of the students except Matthias, Laurenz, Gretia, and Muriella. Barthold, who later turns out to be a schemer who tries to sabotage Ehrenfest's archducal family and get revenge, unintentionally filters out all students who have no loyalty for Rozemyne.
  • In her quest to make the life of the Ehrenfest students harder, Professor Fraularm suddenly switches to an old syllabus for the purpose of ruining their streak of good grades. Later, returning to an old syllabus for Royal Academy first and second year courses turns out to be part of the solution to one of the country's major problems. The fact that Fraularm already did something similar for her own classes between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next shuts down any possible protest about such a deadline being too short. Fraularm technically belongs to a faction of characters who have interest in the problem having no solution other than the one they have to offer.
• Nice Mean And In Between: The Gilberta Company trio of Mark, Benno, and Lutz act this way towards Myne. Mark is always friendly, Benno is loud and keeps scolding her, and Lutz may sometimes scold Myne, too, but he is always there to give her a hug.
• Nice to the Waiter: Myne is beloved by all gray robes because she treats them with respect unlike the High Bishop or other blue priests like Egmont, who view them only as exploitable tools. Myne has no need for Sex Slaves, nor does she treat the orphans as expendable. Before Myne arrived in the temple, pre-baptism children were not recognized as humans, and ugly or pregnant shrine maidens were sold or executed, because the High Bishop couldn't be bothered to feed them.
• Nobility Marries Money: This is what Freida will do once she comes of age. She technically doesn't marry the poor laynoble her grandfather chose for her, but her children with said noble will be baptized and treated as nobles if they have enough mana.
• No Body Left Behind:
  • In Part 2 Volume 3, Karstedt's attack turns out to be more powerful than intended (due to Myne and Ferdinand strengthening him) and completely annihilates the assailants that attack Myne's attendants.
  • At the end of Part 2, Ferdinand's Beam-O-War with Count Bindewald obliterates all Devouring soldiers and the High Bishop's attendants that weren't hiding behind Myne's shield of wind. Ferdinand then tells Myne that this is how one gets rid of any evidence and witnesses.
  • In Part 3 Volume 3, Ferdinand casts a spell on the Hasse traitors, which turns them into stone, then shatters the bodies, leaving nothing but dust behind.
• No Longer with Us: Inverted. After High Bishop Bezewanst dies, there is an attempt on Rozemyne's part to inform one of the deceased's commoner allies of the fact. The first message she sends uses the standard noble Deadly Euphemism, "Climbing up the towering stairway". When the commoner ally responds by trying to contact the deceased with an actual letter, Rozemyne correctly guesses the euphemism wasn't properly understood and mistaken for the news that the deceased got a promotion.
• Non-Uniform Uniform:
  • Baptism clothes are only really required to be predominantly white with trimmings and/or decorations of the color corresponding to the child's birth season. Families very much do what they want with that depending on the resources, money and sewing talent at their disposal. The incident that gets Myne mistaken for being richer than she actually is happens because the alterations brought to Tuuli's gown from the previous year so it would fit her wind up making it excessively decorated for a poor commoner's gown. On top of this, she's wearing one of her own elaborate flower hairpins for the occasion.
  • The Royal Academy uniform only seems to have a few clear requirements: the outermost layer must be black with gold trimmings and a cape, that is of a different color depending on the duchy the student is from, must be worn.
• North Is Cold, South Is Hot:
  • The northernmost province in Ehrenfest, Haldenzel, is notoriously harsh and known for being Grim Up North. The snow only completely melts when it's summer and feybeasts are rampant. The knights of Haldenzel have to regularly hunt the feybeasts to weaken the power of the emerging Lord of Winter each year. Illgner, which is in the south of Ehrenfest, on the other hand has mild winters, making it possible to use the river to make paper during winter.
  • Besides Ehrenfest, the Lord of Winter also appears in Gilessenmeyer and Jossbrenner, which are all duchies located up in the north. Klassenberg, the northernmost duchy borders Haldenzel and is also a very cold place. Dunkelfelger on the other hand is the southernmost duchy. It's a very hot place and they have to fight a Lord of Summer each year.
• Not Blood Siblings:
  • There are a few scenes in which Rozemyne suspects that her adoptive father is planning to have her marry her adoptive brother. Some of her adoptive brother's retainers are shown to be assuming this is the reason for which she was adopted. In Part 4 Volume 4, she indeed gets engaged to Wilfried to prevent other duchies from taking her.
  • Later books make it quite clear that when it comes to royalty and archducal families, adoption of a prospective in-law is sometimes necessary to give the person enough status to be a suitable candidate. Once the adoption is done, nobody in the adoptive family who is both the right sex and technically available is off-limits for marriage.
  • Another thing that gets spelled out later on is that thanks to mana mostly coming from the mother, marriages are good to go as long as the people involved don't share a mother. For instance, the family tree of the known characters shows that the archnoble that Detlinde's older sister married is actually their demoted paternal half-brother. That same logic results in uncle-niece (and presumably aunt-nephew) marriages also being acceptable as long as the person is marrying their paternal half-sibling's child.
• Not Now, Kiddo:
  • There eventually turns out to be an archive containing a lot of information useful to the current king, who came to power after a civil war, in the Royal Academy's library. Solange, the sole remaining librarian from the time before the civil war, tried get the king to come to the Royal Academy's library back when he came into power, only to be told the king had better things to do. After getting rebuffed for three years in a row, Solange gave up on trying. When Rozemyne's present-day curiosity about that same archive causes the Royal Family to finally pay attention, they respond as if Solange could have been actively hiding important information from them all this time, which frustrates Solange.
  • Near the end of Part 5, an unnamed lumber merchant from Illgner spots Georgine's infiltration party embarking into a merchant ship headed for Ehrenfest city. Brigitte ends up being the one relaying the information to someone the Ehrenfest archducal family will listen to because both Giebe Illgner and the province's knight commander were too busy to speak with the merchant. Busy with preparing for an announced Georgine-led invasion of the Ehrenfest duchy, specifically.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Part 2:
    • Multiple times in a row during the trombe extermination mission in Volume 2. First, Shikza and Damuel realize they screwed up when a second trombe appears. Second, Karstedt realizes that the guards he assigned to Myne endangered her life and neglected their duty, and that Ferdinand is furious. Third, Shikza realizes Ferdinand does not accept his non-excuse for hurting Myne and that he just blatantly admitted he committed insubordination.
    • In Volume 3, Benno visits the Myne Workshop, as Myne wants to introduce him to a few visiting blue priests. He sees Sylvester and gets so scared that he immediately gives away he knows Sylvester's real identity is Aub Ehrenfest.
    • In Volume 4, Bezewanst and Bindewald realize they are in deep trouble when Ferdinand pulls out his wand to fight Bindewald. Bindewald was not aware Ferdinand was not a lowly blue priest, but a graduate of the Royal Academy. He also breaks out in a cold sweat when he learns the identity of Sylvester, who moments later arrived, even more so when Sylvester reveals that Bindewald attacked Myne after she already made an adoption contract with Sylvester, which means he directly attacked a member of the archducal family.
  • Part 3:
    • At the end of Volume 1, Rozemyne realizes she is going to get hell from Ferdinand for printing and selling illustrations of him without his permission.
    • An off-screen moment in Volume 2, when Fran unambiguously tells the mayor of Hasse that after infuriating Ferdinand for protesting against him and Rozemyne, the temple will not send any priests for Spring Prayer to revitalize the land with mana.
    • In Volume 5, Wilfried's retainers turn pale and panic when they realize that he visited and talked to his grandmother, Lady Veronica. They all know doing so without Sylvester's permission is treason, and retainers are punished along with their masters.
    • At the end of Volume 5, Viscount Illgner recounts how Brigitte becoming Rozemyne's guards lessened the abuse his region had to suffer and how expanding the printing industry in Illgner first will bring much prosperity to the economy. He therefore turns pale when he hears that Brigitte told Elvira that she intends to go back to Illgner after she and Damuel marry. Even Viscount Illgner realizes that Brigitte isn't doing what is expected of a knight and that Elvira subjected Brigitte to a Secret Test of Character which she failed. To not be viewed as an enemy and to keep receiving Rozemyne's support, he has no choice but to accept Elvira's offer to find a suitable husband for Brigitte.
  • Part 4: Rozemyne initially assumes Hartmut, the senior among her two scholars, to be basically a younger Justus (Ferdinand's quirky, but competent scholar) with more common sense. Then Hartmut turns out to be a complete Fanboy of her and implicitly the reason everyone she interacts with at the Royal Academy is Expecting Someone Taller.
• The Oldest Profession:
  • Bar waitresses also work as prostitutes.
  • While the temple is not open about it, the High Bishop uses attractive gray shrine maidens to offer "flowers" to noble guests. The "flowers for the gods" part of the budget in the ledger Myne and Ferdinand work on refers to the money that is used for the gray shrine maidens that offer flowers.
• One-Steve Limit: Enforced when the temple orphanage's new Doorstop Baby needs a name and Ferdinand tells Myne she can pick the one she wants as long as it's not another orphan's name.
• The Only Way They Will Learn: Rozemyne realizes in Part 4 Volume 2 that Ehrenfest's apprentice knights are clueless about cooperation in warfare and extermination missions. Leonore might have read about tactics in books, but even she does not know how to apply this practically. Rozemyne would have wanted Ehrenfest to suffer a loss against the much better Dunkelfelger in their treasure-stealing ditter match, but has to go for victory since they are fighting for the possession of Schwartz and Weiss.
• On Second Thought:
  • Royal Academy Stories shows Cornelius having such a moment right before Rozemyne picks her retainers. At first, he doesn't like the idea of Hartmut becoming one very much because of the extent to which Hartmut is a Rozemyne fanatic. Later, he sees Rozemyne asking about the Veronica faction children and decides he'd rather have her choose Hartmut, who is at least guaranteed to not deliberately harm her, than one of them.
  • Aurelia, a bride from Ahrensbach, has several reasons to hide her face behind a thick veil, one of which becomes more prominent once she moves into Ehrenfest. However, because of the tensions between the two duchies being quite bad as a baseline, she's intially in a Morton's Fork: be considered suspicious because she refuses to show her face, or make the reason she keeps it hidden publicly known, which would be almost as bad as the consequences of actually showing it. As she's considering a Take a Third Option via getting a new veil made with Ehrenfest fabric, Elvira remains convinced that Aurelia is overestimating the extent to which showing her face is a bad option. After seeing Aurelia's face for herself, Elvira tells her that she'll be happy to take her under her wing as soon as her new veil is finished.
  • While Rozemyne is learning how to make an engagement feystone, Hirschur insists upon making her come up with something else than a generic proposal, her reasons being a mix of Rozemyne being quite well-read and her already being betrothed. Rozemyne's attempts at coming up with a good line run into the clash between her values and that of the setting's noble society, resulting in Hirschur suddenly being perfectly fine with her using a generic proposal.
  • At some point during Part 5, an incident results in Ehrenfest being in the position to ask something of Dunkelfelger. Rozemyne and Hannelore both like the idea of taking adavantage of this to resolve the fact that the Dunkelfelger noble Rozemyne tentatively commissioned to illustrate one of her books backed off because he didn't like the idea of his art being altered to be printable. Aub Ehrenfest tells Rozemyne the demand is very much wasting the favor, and they could ask for something that would be much more useful. Dunkelfelger's archduchess then feigns suddenly remembering that Rozemyne destroyed one of Dunkelfelger's oldest and most powerful magic tools during the incident, prompting Aub Ehrenfest to suddenly be fine with just having the aforementioned illustration art at Ehrenfest's disposal.
• On the Money: When Rozemyne drags her three other guard knights into a project to better Angelica's grades, she decides to give each of them some sort of bonus for their trouble. While she needs to bring out some of her own creations for Brigitte and Cornelius, she knows a relatively large sum of money will do for Damuel. When payment time comes, Rozemyne finds out that the money is just enough to pay back a debt Damuel incurred earlier in the story. She briefly considers giving Damuel something else on top of the money because the debt was caused by Damuel needing to pay part of the cost of her new blue shrine maiden ceremonial robes after the trombe incident and she only stayed an apprentice blue shrine maiden for only about two seasons after that.
• Orphanage of Fear: The temple's orphanage before Myne takes it in hand. Its sustainability depends on there being a certain number of blue priests in the temple to dribble down food and money for its upkeep. Circumstances over which the temple had little-to-no control resulted in the population of blue priests dipping below that number, resulting in the orphans getting less food. The pre-baptism children, who are fed after all other orphans and aren't considered human beings by the blue priests before they are old enough, are literally starving to death. Things are so bad that turning it into a workshop, that by modern-day standards is using child labor, is a step up because the money made is actually going towards providing better care for the orphans.
• Overly Long Name: Nobles need to have names that are a bit longer than commoner names, which is why Myne is asked to choose a new name for her new identity as an archnoble. Nobles also all have family names that state their relation to the families they were born, adopted or married into. As an example, Rozemyne's full name is "Rozemyne Tochter Linkberg Adotie Ehrenfest", which means "Rozemyne, daughter of House Linkberg, adopted into House Ehrenfest". Elvira's name is "Elvira Tochter Gutheil Frau Linkberg", which means "Elvira, daughter of House Gutheil, first lady of House Linkberg".
• Panacea: Part 3's main plot revolves around gathering materials for a jureve potion, which is one of the strongest rejuvenation potions in existence. It can restore even a person on the brink of death, which is why Rozemyne needs one to fix the hardened mana that formed inside her body while the original Myne was overwhelmed by the Devouring. Nobles, especially knights and the archduke, always carry a jureve with them, which becomes very important in the second half of Part 5, as a jureve counters the effects of a deadly poison used by Lanzenave if one did not directly inhale it.
• The Paralyzer: Schtappe users can use a spell that creates bands of light, which act like rope and restrain an enemy. Ferdinand first uses it at the end of Part 2 on High Bishop Bezewanst to keep him from moving and protect him from Ferdinand clashing with Bindewald. He later uses the spell again in Part 3 Volume 2 on his nephew, Wilfried, who tries to run away from studying.
• Pauper Patches: Poor commoners such as Myne's family and the non-baptized orphans from the temple orphanage have patches on their clothes. This also applies to any background or bit character of sufficiently low status.
• Pent-Up Power Peril:
  • This is the how the Devouring kills its hosts. Someone afflicted with this condition (like Myne) generates more mana than he or she can release on his or her own. Once said mana overloads, it causes the sufferer to die. The severe symptoms include constant fevers, lethargy, hypersensitivity to harsh weather, stunted growth, and an ominously yellow aura with glowing rainbow irises in times of stress and despair. In fact, children with this illness are not expected to live beyond seven years old, at least in commoner households. Another sufferer, Freida, explains to Myne that it is possible to control the overloads so that they don't become lethal. However, this is largely unsustainable since the magical items needed to siphon the excess mana are rare, prohibitively expensive, and those available for sale to commoners tend to be damaged or defective ones that each works only once before breaking into little more than crumbs and powder.
  • At the start of Part 5, in her third year at the Academy Rozemyne goes through a ceremony to acquire the divine protections of the gods. Not only does she get the divine protections of the 7 primary gods, she is given 43 divine protections of subordinate gods. Getting divine protections has several benefits such as a Reduced Mana Cost for spells of the corresponding element. In other words, it indirectly means Rozemyne's mana capacity has suddenly more than doubled. Her mana vessel however is still almost as small as before she went into a two-year-long sleep. She is leaking mana and in pain because her body can't handle her extreme mana compression, and her schtappe, which she acquired in her first year, is of too poor quality. She is thus forced to compress less mana (which in turn lets her grow more noticeably) until her schtappe is upgraded after visiting the shrines of the primary gods in Part 5 Volume 5. To prevent this from happening to other students, the schtappe acquisition is moved back to the third year at the Academy, after students have already learned compression and do the divine protection ritual.
• Perspective Flip: As side chapters are written from other characters' point of view, their inner thoughts and reasoning is laid bare, giving the reader a new understanding of them.
  • A chapter from Corinna's point of view shows that she is not as nice as she pretends to be and looks down on people with poorer status like Myne. She is still a coldhearted merchant at heart.
  • A side chapter narrated by Mark gives the reader an early notion that he is far more ruthless than his gentleman-like behavior would make one think, and that his loyalty to Benno is so deep that he may resort to extreme measures if his master is harmed.
  • According to the chapter written from Guildmaster Gustav's point of view, he was genuinely trying to help Benno's family business through tough times with his marriage offers, but poor forethought and timing with the first two resulted in the subsequent ones being mistaken for harassment by Benno. His tendency to be an obstacle to Benno's ventures are him keeping him from biting more than he can chew, which he risks doing by selling Myne's products and trying to monopolize him. His ploy to get Myne to join his store was out of genuine care for her her, as it would have made it easier for Myne to secure a contract with a noble that would give her a reliable supply of the magic items she needs to keep the Devouring from killing her.
• Pet Dress-Up: Noble girls often practice sewing by making clothing for their pets.
• Pet the Dog: Freida and her grandfather, the guildmaster, are portrayed as being untrustworthy at best. However, Freida genuinely considers Myne a good friend and gives her one of the magic tools she herself needs, putting her own life at possible risk. While this is also partially motivated by self-interest, even that self-interest carries a note of "It's for her own good anyway if she feels indebted to us emotionally or literally since she'll need treatment only we can help provide."
• Phlebotinum Overload:
  • In general, Feystones that are overloaded with mana turn into golden dust, which is a very important material for certain magic tools, potions, and spells.
  • In Part 2 Volume 4, High Bishop Bezewanst is given a black feystone that absorbs mana and protects him from Myne's Crushing. Myne overloads the stone with her mana and turns it into golden dust.
  • One of the sacred heirlooms of Dunkelfelger is a black shield that allows the bearer to pass barriers. Lestilaut uses this shield to bypass Schutzaria's shield and get to Rozemyne in the bride-stealing ditter in Part 5 Volume 2. However, Rozemyne transforms her second schtappe into Leidenschaft's spear, which clashes with the shield and overloads it with Rozemyne's mana, turning the shield into golden dust.
• Platonic Co-Parenting: Rozemyne considers her nobility guardianship situation to be this. Ferdinand is still mentoring her on quite a few things, while both her "biological" parents and her adoptive parents are taking part in her upbringing.
• Platonic Declaration of Love: Mid-way through Part 5, Rozemyne prepares to move and would really like to bring one of her noble attendants with her, except that said attendant is already engaged to someone who must stay in the place she's moving away from. The situation's "under the surface" reality is such that Rozemyne may potentially get the attendant to come with her by asking clearly and sincerely enough, while her family considers the prospect a significant positive. The moment where Rozemyne spells out her wish to her attendant while the latter is ostensibly visiting her family home for other reasons hence becomes a big deal, complete with her "biological" family watching with a lot of anticipation, Rozemyne promising her good living conditions and being pleasantly surprised when she gets a positive response. Rozemyne's own internal narration notices the similarities between the situation and a public love confession.
• Plausible Deniability: Due to the circumstanes surrounding it by that point in the story, the town of Hasse keeps the "festival" part of the second Harvest Festival Rozemyne attends there on the down low. However, she's aware that not giving the town's hotter heads an opportunity to blow off steam may only lead to another unfortunate incident over the upcoming winter. Knowing that rural towns have a tradition of holding a Fictional Sport tournament each year and that the tournament is one of the things the townspeople cancelled, she tells the new mayor that she needs to discuss a few official matters with him in his office for a few hours and might not notice anything going on outside during that time, no matter how loud it gets.
• Playing Sick: Subverted. It sounds like Myne always just plays sick to avoid work or people, but she really has a poor condition and frequently falls ill.
• Please Kill Me if It Satisfies You: When Lutz figures out in Part 1 that "Myne" is actually another person entirely, he angrily tells her to get out of Myne's body. She calmly responds with a "Sure, but wait until we get home first or you'll have to explain why you have a corpse on your hands." He hadn't realized that the original Myne had already died, that the new Myne didn't want to be here at all, and that she could die at any moment if her will to live decreased even a little.
• Please Spare Him, My Liege!:
  • Shikza's mother indirectly pleads for her son to be spared by asking High Bishop Bezewanst and Lady Veronica, who have connections to Archduke Ehrenfest. While Bezewanst does ask to lighten Shikza's punishment, the archduke ignores the pleas and makes Shikza's family pay for Myne's replacement robes if they don't want to be punished along with Shikza.
  • At the end of Part 2, Myne has to plead with Sylvester to spare Delia. She convinces Sylvester by making Delia stay in the orphanage for the rest of her life, which Sylvester accepts as a satisfactory alternative.
• Plot-Relevant Age-Up: In Part 5 Volume 7, Rozemyne meets Yurgenschmidt's founder, who mistakes her for Ferdinand. He sees that her vessel is small, so he asks the God of Nurturing to help her grow. Rozemyne, who until that point still looked like she was ten years old at most, then ages up over several weeks and turns into a beautiful adult woman.
• Politeness Judo:
  • Myne doesn't initially notice it, but Corinna can get a lot of information for free by acting polite and friendly. She at least notices this when Corinna attempts to steal Myne's hairpin technique by asking Tuuli (who admires Corinna) nicely instead of going to Myne or her mother.
  • Nobles always use euphemisms and polite speech when speaking officially, which Ferdinand attempts to teach Rozemyne as well, as she has a tendency to be too direct. This is how he presses the scholar-official Kantna for information regarding Hasse in Part 3 Volume 2.
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Part 1:
    • Mark's first experience with Myne's collapsing without notice was due to Myne overexerting herself. Prior to that visit, Lutz asked Myne if she was able to get to Benno's. Myne thought the question was about if she knew the way. Lutz asked because of Myne's health.
    • Lutz's mother, Karla, assumes that Lutz wanting to become a merchant is Myne's fault, and Lutz is just getting dragged along by Myne. Once she learns that Lutz is serious about his job choice and that Myne originally didn't have anything to do with his dream, she decides to support him.
    • The reason that Myne ends up involved in temple matters is that the people who know the cause of her Devouring never properly explained it to her until after she mentioned suffering from it to members of the temple. Benno should have realised that there was a good chance of her collapsing during the baptism ritual and that if that happened there was a good chance her Devouring would have come up. However, it was not actually the Devouring that caused her to collapse, and she did not mention the Devouring until later. It was a massive oversight on Benno's part to not see the potential danger of not warning her about mentioning the Devouring in the temple.
  • Part 2:
    • At the start of Part 2, Myne's head attendant doesn't do his job very well at first, because he sees his new assignment as some kind of punishment from the High Priest. It's actually the complete opposite. The High Priest trusts Fran more than any of his other attendants. Once Fran realizes this, he puts his all in serving and educating Myne.
    • At the end of Volume 1, Lutz ends up briefly running away from his family because he feels they aren't respecting his dream of becoming a merchant, are being too controlling and only thinking of themselves, especially his father. It's not until High Priest Ferdinand steps in that he realizes that not only was his father thinking of him the whole time, but was even right about some of his concerns. He's just a gruff man who doesn't talk much about how he feels or what he's thinking unless forced. After that, the two finally get down to talking and figuring out a way to make things work.
    • At the end of Volume 4, Delia takes her adoptive brother, Dirk, to High Bishop Bezewanst, who notices that Dirk suffers from the Devouring. He then gives Dirk to Bindewald, who makes Dirk his slave via a submissive magic contract. Myne knew Dirk had the Devouring, but didn't tell Delia, because she was advised by Ferdinand that if word got out, some noble would have immediately made Dirk his slave. Instead, she lies to Delia and tells her that Ferdinand looked for, but couldn't find a family to adopt Dirk.
  • Part 3:
    • Rozemyne's request for a workshop and orphanage in the style of the temple is approved by Sylvester, who orders Ferdinand to construct the chapel and monastery. Ferdinand, who usually acts as Sylvester and Rozemyne's Cloudcuckoolander's Minder, didn't interfere because he thought Rozemyne was plotting this from the start, and her goal was to satisfy him and Sylvester with a good meal to gain their approval. He didn't realize she still didn't know enough about noble society, and that she never wanted to put the town of Hasse in such a dangerous position where the unknowing citizens committed high treason by attacking a white building that was owned by nobles.
    • In Volume 3, Rozemyne's exclusive carpenter, Ingo, gets into trouble because Rozemyne didn't come to him when she had to mobilize every workshop to finish the monastery in Hasse before the Harvest Festival. What Ingo doesn't know is that this only happened because the archduke threw everyone off by building the monastery with magic and then set an almost impossible deadline that required Benno and Gustav to immediately contact the Carpenter's Guild and hire every workshop they could get. Ingo tries to contact Rozemyne, but since she is in a too high position for her to come to the lower city and Ingo isn't trained enough to talk to her, he can't voice his concerns, forcing Benno to mediate between them.
    • In Volume 4, Wilfried doesn't listen to his retainers when they explain a noble way to say farewell to him. As such, he doesn't understand that his parents really don't want to see Georgine again for the time being. His blunder gives Georgine an excuse to return to Ehrenfest.
    • In Volume 5, Brigitte and Damuel realize too late that they had different plans after marrying each other. Brigitte wanted to return to Illgner and support her province, while Damuel thought that Brigitte would move to the Noble's Quarter with him, as he would remain as Rozemyne's guard knight. Not only does this conflict with Brigitte's wish to return home, she would be reduced to a laynoble. Damuel marrying into Illgner's household isn't an option, either, as Damuel is one of Rozemyne's greatest Secret Keepers, so Damuel has to withdraw his marriage proposal and Elvira finds a mednoble scholar for Brigitte, who is interested in Illgner's papermaking industry.
  • Part 4:
    • Rozemyne is told by Cornelius in Part 3 that her grandfather, Bonifatius, actually really adores her, and as thanks for saving her life at the end of Part 3, she gifts him a letter in the shape of a heart. Since Bonifatius has trouble expressing his happiness, Rozemyne assumes he doesn't actually like the gift, when he is actually overjoyed.
    • A major reason why Anastasius can't manage to woo Eglantine in Volume 2 is that he is too indirect with her, making her believe he wants to marry her to become king when it's the other way around. Rozemyne straight up recommends to him to be more direct with Eglantine and tell her how he feels. He does as Rozemyne tells him and it works.
    • At the end of Volume 2, Rozemyne tells Mark, Benno, and Lutz that the city-wide magic contracts they signed with her once need to be replaced. She says this with a smile on her face. Lutz gets very upset about this, but Benno, who bemoans that they couldn't use Rozemyne's Secret Room, picked up on Rozemyne's subtle signs that she is not happy about this at all. Benno then later tells Lutz that he is making the same mistake that he made back in Part 1 Volume 2 by not seeing through Rozemyne's stepford smile. He asks Lutz to be there for Rozemyne when she needs emotional support because she likely will sooner or later become unstable.
    • At the end of Volume 5, Prince Hildebrand is implied and later confirmed to have gotten Rozemyne and her younger adoptive sister Charlotte mixed up with each other upon first meeting them. The fact that Hildebrand first meets both sisters during Rozemyne's second year at the Royal Academy and Charlotte's first shares responsibility in the situation with Rozemyne being significantly shorter than Charlotte. However, the latter is also Rozemyne's biggest distinguishing feature, which wasn't mentioned to Hildebrand by his retainers, despite the fact that they told him plenty of other things about Rozemyne because of the attention she attracted during her first year. This joke runs a bit longer in the next volume as well when Hildebrand asks if "Charlotte" already has a partner, leading to Rozemyne thinking Hildebrand has a crush on Charlotte and not on her.
    • In Volume 8, Heisshitze advocates for Ferdinand to marry into Ahrensbach's archducal family to get him away from Ehrenfest's temple. He thought Ferdinand was living a terrible life there. What he didn't know was that Ehrenfest is in a major conflict with Ahrensbach, that the intended fiancée for Ferdinand is Veronica's granddaughter (who resembles Veronica a lot), and that Ferdinand and Rozemyne reformed the temple in a way that it has become a place of comfort for them.
    • In the prologue of Volume 9, it becomes obvious why Rozemyne's training as a noblewoman is lacking. Florencia is still Locked Out of the Loop and Sylvester merely tells her that Rozemyne goes to the temple so often to meet her family. Florencia assumes he is talking about Elvira because she doesn't know about Rozemyne's commoner family. Thus, Florencia assumes Elvira is still training Rozemyne properly, when in truth Elvira tries to minimize contact and let Florencia train Rozemyne to not cause any misunderstandings. The problems become more pronounced in Part 5 when Rozemyne is asked to socialize more, when she already has her hands full with the temple and the printing business.
  • Part 5:
    • In Volume 3 and 4, Rozemyne starts clashing with Ehrenfest's archducal family. The archduke suddenly undermines Rozemyne's efforts to improve Ehrenfest's ranking and reputation, while Wilfried doesn't talk to her anymore, and Bonifatius wants to get her out of the temple (against her will). As it turns out, they are being played by the older generation of the Leisegang faction. They want to anger Rozemyne and cause a rift between the archducal family, to make Rozemyne the next Aub Ehrenfest and isolate Ehrenfest from outside influence, as they have no interest in losing their power to a stronger duchy again. Rozemyne's younger Leisegang retainers (who do not agree with the older Leisegangs' plans) inform her of this and Rozemyne and Charlotte, who the Leisegangs had no leverage on, resolve the conflict by talking to Sylvester. At the end, Brunhilde, a Leisegang descendant, also offers to become Sylvester's second wife to stabilize his rule.
    • In Volume 5, Ferdinand requests 300 sheets of magic paper from Rozemyne, but he doesn't tell her the reason why. As she learns in Volume 8, he wanted to get the rest of the Book of Mestionora the next time he comes to the Royal Academy and make a magic tool that can function as a Book of Mestionora for the royal family. Rozemyne accidentally ruins his plan because she enters the Garden of Beginning in Volume 7, where she meets Erwarmen who gives her the rest of Grutrissheit Ferdinand is missing, since Erwarmen views Rozemyne and Ferdinand as the same person.
    • Subverted in Volume 6. A side story reveals that Lieseleta is not happy with her engagement with Thorsten, one of Wilfried's retainers. He uses his engagement to Lieseleta to get his family closer to Bonifatius and Rozemyne and politically pressure Lieseleta. Lieseleta doesn't want to trouble outsiders with her family problems, but when Elvira asks whether Thorsten's family has bothered Lieseleta with unreasonable demands, she subtly tells Elvira that this indeed happened. Elvira promises to deal with Thorsten and pushes Rozemyne to be honest with her feelings and ask Lieseleta to come with her.
• Pose of Supplication:
  • Especially at the beginning when the Urano version of Myne isn't used to the manners of her new world yet, she does a dogeza whenever she's begging or apologizing. She genuflects the first time when she sees her first book and begs the owner to let her touch it. She stops doing it after Part 1, except when in Part 2 Karstedt orders Count Bindewald to kneel in front of Archduke Ehrenfest. Myne is so scared, she accidentally forgets how to kneel in her world.
  • The full prayer to the gods involves two poses. The first one looks similar to the Glico pose Myne remembers back in her days as Urano. Then the praying person bends over to genuflect.
• Power Crystal: Feystones are the Gem Heart from feybeasts or humans and can also be the product of feyplants that were dyed with mana. Their uses include storing mana.
• The Power of Legacy: This is actually built into the deal to keep Shikza's family from being a bother to Myne at a later time. Their alternative to getting punished as well was his father signing a contract promising to never interact with Myne in any way ever again and paying a large sum of money. A perk of that option was keeping Shikza's wrongdoings towards Myne out of official records and putting something more positive in their place.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: The more the story advances, the more Myne finds herself in situations in which she's actually the villain.
  • The embryonic stage of the trope happens when she reforms the orphanage. While her reform gives the orphans jobs and allows them to get more food overall, the system is changed into one where, at least on paper, the orphans have to work for their meals. Myne's issue with the previous system was that the only orphans that were fed decently were those made attendants, while all the others were given insufficient food. The narrative still presents the reform as a good thing.
  • When Rozemyne tries to export her new orphanage model elsewhere, she forces the town's mayor to hand over orphans he was about to sell. It takes her a conversation with Benno to realize that the town's mayor was counting on the money from the sale for the town's budget, and that from his point of view, she just plain stole municipal property and got him in hot water with his would-be buyer. Rozemyne responds to the situation by making sure the transaction gets properly cancelled and giving the mayor money for the orphans she took, but other than that she still needs to execute that very same mayor sooner or later as punishment for having townspeople attack her orphanage in his initial effort to get the orphans back.
  • In Part 4 Volume 3, Rozemyne is angered when she sees Philine's Wicked Stepmother Jonsara mistreating Philine and Philine's little brother, Konrad. This includes taking away Konrad's magic tool that he needs to release his mana. Since the tool has sentimental value for Philine, Rozemyne abuses her status to make Philine's father sell it, leaving the newborn baby of Philine's stepmother with some gold but no actual magic tool, and it's notoriously difficult for poor laynobles to get magic tools. Ferdinand also later scolds her for interfering in a private matter and making full use of her status.
• Proud Warrior Race: The greater duchy Dunkelfelger consists of nobles who are largely obsessed with strength, battle, and ditter. They actually have so many nobles who want to become knights that they test the children's potential beforehand to separate the wheat from the chaff so to say. Those who don't qualify, like Clarissa, have to take other courses at the Royal Academy.
• Protective Charm:
  • The blue priest Sylvester gives Myne one at the end of Part 2 Volume 3. She uses it in Volume 4, though it's not actually a protective charm in the traditional sense. It makes her Sylvester's adopted daughter, which makes her an archduke candidate, meaning that not even archnobles can use their status against her.
  • Starting in Part 4, Rozemyne is wearing multiple protective charms provided by Ferdinand. One of them is intended to protect against physical attacks, while the other one protects her from magical attacks, followed by a counter attack with twice the attack power. However, it's a Limited-Use Magical Device. It will have to be charged up after one use.
  • Schwartz and Weiss wear protective charms (like their clothes) that prevent anyone but their master to even touch them.
• Psychic Link: The archduke possesses a magic tool that allows a person to search the innermost memories of another if they share the same or similar color of mana. It is usually used on criminals to get a foolproof testimony, but Ferdinand is given the device at the end of Part 2 to ascertain who Myne truly is and what her intentions are. Due to the link they also share emotions, and Myne's emotions deeply affect Ferdinand to the point that he begins to cry when Urano is overwhelmed by her feelings to see her mother again.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: A tactic that Myne often employs to get her father to do something. It usually works. Funnily, Rozemyne is also weak to this when Charlotte asks her to perform her baptism.
• The Purge:
  • After a bloody succession war, that ended with the fifth prince's defeat of the fourth prince, the loser's immediate family and any nobles that supported them were executed. Of the 25 duchies the country had before the war, 21 remain with 4 duchies being under the management of other archducal families. The purge led to a shortage of nobles and mana in the whole country, to the benefit of Myne, who was able to negotiate favorable terms to join the temple for this reason.
  • At the end of Part 4, after Viscountess Dahldolf tried to kill Rozemyne and stole the temple's bible, Sylvester summons Viscount Dahldolf and his son Jeremias. After demanding their names to prove their loyalty, he learns that a majority of Ehrenfest's mednobles and their heirs already gave their names to Veronica and that Georgine employs the same method to ensure the loyalty of her followers. In Rozemyne's third year at the Academy at the start of Part 5, Sylvester conducts a purge in Ehrenfest to eliminate any nobles who have given their names to Georgine. He accelerates his plans after Matthias reveals that Georgine has found a way to Ehrenfest's foundation. Collaborators from Veronica's faction are also getting punished. Their children who don't attend the Academy are sent to the temple's orphanage, while the students who lost their parents need to give their names to Sylvester's children. This is why Matthias, Laurenz, and Muriella become Rozemyne's retainers, although Gretia voluntarily offers her name to flee from her abusive family.
• Quitting to Get Married: Female knights are expected to retire when they marry, though not because the society believes women can't keep working once married nor because they belittle the female knights' abilities, but because the mother's mana is vital to give birth to children with high mana levels, which they can't expend on other activities. Retired women also usually are too busy raising their children and managing the household.
• Rape as Backstory: In Part 1 Volume 3, Myne learns about the gods at her baptism. The High Bishop explains why the seasons happen. Ewigeliebe the God of Life, fell in love with Geduldh the Goddess of Earth and requested to marry her. However, he grew possessive of her and encased her and their increasing number of children in ice, which brings on winter every year. Myne is the only one of the children who can follow the story and realizes that the God of Life regularly rapes the Goddess of Earth.
• Rape Leads to Insanity:
  • What happens with Jenni, one of High Bishop Bezewanst's attendants. Being raped nearly every day coupled with the knowledge that her former fellow attendants, Wilma and Rosina, have it much better, drives her to madness, as she willingly takes part in trying to enslave Myne.
  • Averted with Fran and Wilma. The former recovers due to being treated with respect and love by his new masters, Ferdinand and Myne, while Wilma eventually works on overcoming her trauma after Rozemyne can no longer protect her and Benno and Fran tell her to get over what happened and take responsibility as the orphanage overseer.
• Readings Are Off the Scale: In Part 4 Volume 1, in Rozemyne's first mana compression class, her teacher uses a mana-density reading tool calibrated to be used with Ferdinand. Rozemyne manages to make the pointer bounce to both ends of the spectrum.
• Really Royalty Reveal:
  • The end of Part 2 Volume 4 reveals that Sylvester and Ferdinand are actually high nobles, specifically the archduke of Ehrenfest and his half-brother respectively. There are several hints in the previous volumes that make it obvious, such as Sylvester and Ferdinand's proficiency in magic, as blue priests are usually children of nobles who do not have enough mana to be recognized as nobles. Damuel and Benno are also really scared of Sylvester, as if they knew who he is. The Knight's Order, including an archnoble like Karstedt, also bowed down to Ferdinand and referred to him as a "lord", which means that Ferdinand was even higher in authority than the commander of the order.
  • Starting with Part 3, Rozemyne is made out to be this. The fake story is that Karstedt feared for her safety and let her be raised in the temple with Ferdinand acting as her guardian. That she is a commoner who was merely given blue robes was a misunderstanding spread by High Bishop Bezewanst, who incidentally was highly corrupt and was thus subsequently executed. Myne was just a nickname to keep her identity hidden, and they thought the time was right when she was old enough to be baptized. While Rozemyne bemoans that no one would believe such a ridiculous story, Ferdinand notes that this is very believable because there is precedent, as Sister Christine had a very similar backstory.
  • Part 4 Volume 7 and 8 reveal that Ferdinand is a "seed of Adalgisa". He is the son of a Lanzenave princess and probably a member of the royal family. This is irrelevant to him, as he was baptized as the previous Aub Ehrenfest's son and without a mother, but it alarms the royal family.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Ferdinand gives one to Myne after she came to him unprepared to ask him for help regarding the orphanage. To be fair, he is much harsher to her than he usually would be because one of the High Bishop's attendant was present, and since she really can't read between the lines he takes her to his secret room the next time so they can talk frankly.
  • In Part 2 Volume 1, Deid delivers one to Benno, who intends to adopt Lutz. Deid doesn't think that Benno is a bad person, but he can see that Benno wouldn't be a good father to Lutz, which is one of the reasons he is against the adoption.
  • Ferdinand delivers one to Shikza after he pulled a Bodyguard Betrayal on Myne in Part 2 Volume 2. However, he also blames Karstedt and Damuel for their failure, which is why they get punished, too, later on.
  • Ferdinand lectures Myne in Part 2 Volume 3 on losing control of her mana again after her attendants' carriages were attacked. If she hadn't been given a magic tool, and if she hadn't prayed to Schutzaria, her uncontrolled mana would have killed her and endangered the people around her.
  • Ferdinand gives another speech in Part 2 Volume 3, this time to Damuel who apparently thought the whole affair with Shikza and his subsequent punishment was just him having bad luck. While Ferdinand doesn't sound as harsh, he still points out that Damuel should have called for help if there was a situation he couldn't handle alone.
  • In a side story of the first Short Story Collection that plays around the time of Part 3 Volume 2, when Rihyarda and Rozemyne are firing all of Wilfried's incompetent retainers, Oswald offers to Lamprecht to leave Wilfried. Elvira praises Lamprecht for originally deciding to serve Wilfried to protect her from Veronica, but Eckhart calls him out for his flimsy loyalty to Wilfried. For Eckhart, switching sides to whoever seems to be in power is the typical behavior of lay- and mednobles. Lamprecht's behavior is unworthy of an archnoble who is closely related to the archducal family.
  • Damuel gets another speech from his brother Henrik and sister-in-law, Juliane, at the end of Part 3. It happens after Damuel proposed to Brigitte and then took the proposal back when Brigitte asked him to follow her to Illgner. Damuel just embarrassed the daughter of a giebe, and his assumption that she would move to the Noble's Quarter and become a laynoble is seen as ridiculous. Even if Damuel is Rozemyne's guard knight, everyone expects a laynoble to eventually quit, and it was foolish of Damuel to not do research about Illgner's political situation (like Henrik did). Damuel counters that there are circumstances that prevent him from quitting and that Brigitte should have known that, since she is also Rozemyne's guard. Henrik then softens his tone, as he can now understand Damuel better, but he still calls Damuel out for being arrogant for assuming that everyone would understand his view, when not even his own brother could. Damuel and Brigitte had an entire year to think about their future life together and neither understood the other person, so in Henrik's eyes, their marriage was doomed from the start.
  • The Year 1 Side Story Collection of Part 4 shows a side story from Rauffen's point of view. It happens after Dunkelfelger lost a treasure-stealing ditter match against Ehrenfest in Volume 2. Rauffen indirectly calls Lestilaut an unworthy future archduke and a fool for being a Sore Loser by blaming their loss on Ehrenfest's "vile" tactics and not learning from said loss. Rauffen points out that treasure-stealing ditter is a mock battle for interduchy warfare and, as an archduke candidate, Lestilaut should have led Dunkelfelger's knights like Rozemyne did. This time it was only ditter, but if it had been a real war, Lestilaut would have lost Dunkelfelger's foundation despite their clear advantage. Lestilaut sees the error of his ways and commands Rauffen to train Dunkelfelger's knights properly.
  • In Part 4 in the side story collection of Rozemyne's first year at the Royal Academy, Justus gives such a speech to his nephew, Traugott. Traugott dared to suggest he could rejoin Rozemyne as one of her guards, after he almost was dismissed for his failures. Rozemyne only let him resign because she didn't want Bonifatius' and Rihyarda's families' reputation to be affected by Traugott's actions. Traugott got his position because Rihyarda personally recommended him to Rozemyne despite knowing his main motivation was to learn her mana compression method. Rihyarda did this under the condition that Traugott would serve Rozemyne faithfully, but Traugott lied to her and threw everything away. Justus then pins Traugott down and outright tells him that he misjudged Rozemyne completely. She has cut Traugott off of her mind. The reason why she didn't want to send him to the temple was not because she was so forgiving, but because she's the High Bishop and she would have to see Traugott again, if he was banished to the temple. She likes him less than the gray robes in the temple. Traugott's dismissal did as much damage as the Ivory Tower incident did to Wilfried, and Traugott can forget about becoming knight commander. Traugott retorts that he could just switch masters like Rihyarda does all the time, which Justus explains happens because Rihyarda has sworn allegiance to Ehrenfest, so she will attend whoever Aub Ehrenfest orders her to attend. He then chokes Traugott unconscious, his final message being that if Traugott doesn't stop acting so stupid, he will kill him.
  • Near the end of Part 5, after Gervasio and Lanzenave were successfully stopped, Ferdinand and Rozemyne meet with the royal family and Dunkelfelger's and Ehrenfest's archducal couples. Ferdinand and Rozemyne verbally tear apart the royal family, as the missing Grutrissheit and the mana crisis could have been avoided if they hadn't executed so many nobles (including the librarians). They also indirectly broke their word with Ferdinand, were manipulated by their own knight commander and tried to make Rozemyne get Grutrissheit for them, despite knowing how to get it themselves, when the whole country is on the verge of collapse. Especially Sigiswald is called out for his cowardice, as he hid in a safe place, while Lanzenave invaded the Royal Academy. His own father disowns him and refuses to let him become zent.
• Related Differently in the Adaptation: This is done in-universe. While partially obfuscating the source of one of her stories, Elvira changes a Promotion to Parent situation from the true events into an actual parent and child.
• Religion is Magic: When casting a spell, the caster often calls on one of the gods in the world. Oddly, both commoners and nobles shun the temples, and the temple has become a place nobles go to if they want to swear off politics.
• Rescue Romance:
  • In Part 4 Volume 3, Damuel carries Philine to safety, away from her home where she and her brother are mistreated. She develops a crush on him afterwards.
  • In Part 5 Volume 8, Rozemyne gathers a strike force to invade Ahrensbach and save Ferdinand. Ferdinand probably already had romantic feelings for her at that point, but her risking her life to rescue him coupled with her aged-up body cements his resolve to be together with her.
• The Resenter: As revealed in Part 5 Volume 9, the reason Gunther's gate commander failed to inform his soldiers that no foreign noble may pass through the gate and enter the city at the end of Part 2 was because he didn't forget, he deliberately didn't want to do as Gunther said. He resented Gunther for interacting more with nobles.
• Reveal Shot: The light novel left it ambiguous, but when the author was asked who the blue priest that performed Myne's baptism in Part 1 was, she said that all would be revealed in the manga. The face of the priest who treated Myne gently is hidden until it's revealed that it was Ferdinand. The manga dedicates an entire page for these two when they meet for the first time. The anime uses a similar trick by having only the lower part of the blue priest's face visible when he calls for the next child in line, though his voice can work as Five-Second Foreshadowing for anyone who recognizes it from the first episode or The Stinger of previous ones.
• Rewatch Bonus: Many story elements are introduced via Cryptic Background Reference and sometimes mentioned repeatedly before being actually shown to Myne or observed by the occasional alternative point-of-view character. Re-reading early scenes with knowledge from later in the story on hand can reveal a few hints not seen during the first reading.
  • Ehrenfest's archduke gets several mentions before his proper introduction, always in the context of his high-responsibility position. The man's "out of the public eye" personality turns out to not exactly be the sort one would associate with a leadership figure, to the point that Myne has a "Really?" moment when she finds out.
  • A first-time reader won't think much of the fact that Ferdinand's highbeast is a lion, since he's far from being the only character to use something other than a horse. It later turns out that only the children of the archduke of Ehrenfest are allowed to give their highbeasts a lion form.
  • Watching the heavily implied Childhood Friends Ferdinand, Karstedt and Sylvester interact with each other is amusing in its own right, but it only gets better after finding out that all three of them are related to each other and Sylvester is the archduke of Ehrenfest, which means that both Myne and the reader have been watching family bickering between three very high-status men all this time.
  • One of the means by which Damuel's Impoverished Patrician situation is established is via mentioning he had to borrow money from his older brother's concubine's family to be able to pay a hefty fine. The future concubine turns out to be Myne's friend Freida, a young girl from a wealthy commoner family who is already known to be destined to become an unnamed noble's concubine once she reaches adulthood.
  • Arno's actions throughout Part 2 are best appreciated after reading his Perspective Flip chapter, which reveals several seemingly unfortunate mistakes to have been made very much on purpose.
  • One of Ferdinand's suggestions to Myne to make the Cinderella story more palatable to the setting's nobles is to make the Uptown Girl situation into a romance between and archnoble and a mednoble. Rozemyne's coverup noble biological parents are an archnoble and mednoble pair that Ferdinand knows, which explains where he got the idea in the first place.
  • In Part 2 Volume 3, Myne is exhausted after using a lot of mana. Ferdinand doesn't have one of his mana-restoring potions with him, so he instead gives her something to drink that he calls a "last resort". Unlike the usual mana potions, it smells sweet and makes her sleepy, which reminds Myne of the potion she drank before she and Ferdinand synchronized minds. It's heavily implied that Ferdinand made Myne drink his jureve potion, which is first introduced in Part 3. Nobles always carry such a potion with them as a last resort, and the potion contains a part of one's own mana, which is why Myne finds it sweet. As was already established in the epilogue of Part 2 Volume 2, Myne doesn't reject Ferdinand's mana. Being immersed in a tib full of jureve also causes a healing Deep Sleep, so drinking a smaller quantity naturally causes one to fall asleep.
  • In Part 2 Volume 3, Sylvester gets Myne to organize an outing in the commoner forest for him by threatening to tell the High Bishop that she's sending the temple's orphans there if she doesn't. Later, it turns out that the High Bishop knows Sylvester under his real identity and that Sylvester's King Incognito stint was part of a bigger operation that was reliant on Sylvester never crossing paths with the High Bishop while undercover. That threat to tattle about the orphans being sent to the forest to the High Bishop hence becomes a very daring bluff in hindsight.
  • In Part 3 Volume 1, Ferdinand gives priority to an unknown sudden visitor over Rozemyne and goes as far as telling Fran to give her access to books from a locked bookcase to keep her occupied. In the following volume, both Rozemyne and the reader are introduced to Ferdinand's personal spy, who, looking back, is a good candidate for having been the "sudden visitor".
  • After their engagement gets cancelled, it's easy to see the reasons for which an Arranged Marriage between Angelica and Traugott wouldn't have worked out and that the half of the pair that quickly needed a new betrothed ended up with a more compatible match. However, the pair whose engagement was cancelled has a few scenes together prior to the event that caused the cancellation, which all consist of them being on the same page about something. From those scenes, it's easy to see why anyone in-universe could have gotten the idea that they were compatible as future spouses.
  • The first time Rozemyne gets to read Ehrenfest's High Bishop bible in Part 2 contains several. At the time, Ferdinand tells her she can read the bible as long as she doesn't touch it. In Part 4, it turns out that High Bishop bibles are technically magic tools, long after the series has explained that magic tools are under the ownership of the person whose mana is inside them and said person must make sure to keep the majority share if several people are contributing mana for whatever reason. One can accidentally get some of their mana inside a magic tool merely by touching it, especially is they have a large quantity and the magic tool has a lot of "empty space." When it comes things specific to High Bishop bibles, seeing their contents while not being their owner requires the owner's, explicit, voiced out loud, permission. The exact moment Ferdinand gives Myne his permission can be spotted while rereading the scene from Part 2.
• Rich Sibling, Poor Sibling:
  • Thanks to her various "inventions", in terms of personal income, Myne is much better off than Tuuli, her older sister. It only becomes more extreme with her noble identity Rozemyne, even though the latter officially has no familial ties to Tuuli. Rozemyne's noble adoptive family is also technically better off than her noble "biological" family, making Rozemyne richer than her "biological" brothers.
  • As an apprentice merchant, Lutz is better off than his carpenter brothers.
  • Having this happen is built into how noble society works. Children who are born with low mana compared to what is expected in their family are made servants in their own household, adopted into a lower-status family or sent to the temple. All three of those options mean a lower status and less income compared to any siblings who are raised by their parents.
• Right Behind Me: One of the scenes depicting Rozemyne returning to the temple from elsewhere has her head to her chambers with Nicola while Fran is unloading a piece of luggage that needs to be taken to those same chambers. While reporting to Rozemyne, Nicola mentions a recent Hypocrite moment on Fran's part. Both Rozemyne and Nicola find out the hard way that Fran caught up with them in the midst of the incident being discussed.
• Right Hand Versus Left Hand: In Part 5, both Rozemyne and Ferdinand want to get the Grutrissheit for the royal family. Rozemyne wants to do it by getting adopted into the royal family to get access to the magic tool version that requires being part of said family on top of the standard qualifications, which none of the current royals fulfill. Ferdinand wants to do it via making an entirely new version of that same magic tool, using a Book of Mestionora, which doesn't require being part of the royal family, as a base. They proceed to not tell each other about those specific plans despite having a covert means of exchanging information at their disposal. As a result, Rozemyne ends up stumbling into the last step necessary to get a Book of Mestionora and being in the process of getting hers during the exact time slot Ferdinand was planning to use to do the same and the system in place only allows for one person to do this at a time. This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't for the fact that previous events have caused Rozemyne and Ferdinand to be identical twins by the metric the gods use to tell human individuals apart, Ferdinand has a partial Book of Mestionora he got several years prior and Rozemyne gets mistaken for Ferdinand returning to get the rest of his Book of Mestionora. As a result the two of them end up with a partial Book of Mestionora each.
• Ring of Power: One of the magic tools nobles wear are rings with a feystone in the color of their birth season, with which they can channel their mana and perform blessings to greet other people or registrate their mana (for their Secret Room). The ring is given to a child when it's baptized, a sign that the child has been recognized by noble society.
  • Myne is given such a ring in Part 2 Volume 2 for the trombe extermination, but she goes much farther and accidentally performs Status Buff blessings by praying to the gods. She permanently wears a ring after she is baptized as Karstedt's daughter Rozemyne at the start of Part 3.
  • Devouring soldiers are given rings with which they can use their mana, though the feystone embedded in the ring is usually of poorer quality.
• Rite of Passage:
  • There are two significant rites for commoners that happen when someone turns 7 and 15 respectively. Commoners are acknowledged as citizens and registrated by temple members at their baptism by stamping their blood on medals. Their coming of age ceremony also happens at the temple.
  • Noble children are similarly baptized and recognized by noble society when they turn 7. The parents then invite a blue priest to their estate and give their child a feystone ring. The priest will registrate the child's mana and bless it, and the child will bless the priest in return. There is also a special ceremony for children who turn 10 during winter socializing, as this is the age when noble children enroll in the Royal Academy until they come of age and graduate, at which point they will be fully accepted into noble society as nobles.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: In Part 5 Volume 7, Rozemyne witnesses through a vision that Ferdinand was poisoned and is about to die in Ahrensbach. Despite the protests of everyone (as Georgine will soon attack Ehrenfest), she is firm in rescuing Ferdinand and eventually convinces Sylvester to contact Aub Dunkelfelger and ask for help. She tries winning Aub Dunkelfelger over by bringing up the fact that Ahrensbach is cooperating with Lanzenave and offers to let them participate in a "real ditter". When this fails, she reveals the real reason why she wants to go to Ahrensbach and appeals to Dunkelfelger's conscience, as they were partially responsible for sending Ferdinand to Ahrensbach in an Unwanted Rescue. She also promises to get permission from the royal family, to compensate everyone for the supplies they will have to use for the mission, and to give the main credit to Dunkelfelger. She also mentions that she is in fact in possession of the Book of Mestionora. This ultimately convinces Aub Dunkelfelger to send a group of 100 volunteers to her, and she even steals Ahrensbach's foundation to get to Ferdinand.
• Royal Inbreeding: Justified. Especially archnobles mingle with relatives, as a couple needs similar levels of mana to have children. If an interduchy marriage is not possible for whatever reason and nobody is found among the duchy's strongest mednobles, it is not uncommon to marry a relative. Even half-siblings can marry, as long as they aren't from the same maternal line.
• Royalty Superpower:
  • The archducal family members are the absolute rulers of their duchy. Among other things, they can interact with border gates, redraw border lines, create structures, and destroy medals with which they control the lives of their citizens.
  • The ruler of the country (the zent) is given similar powers, but they extend to the entire country. In particular, the zent is in possession of Grutrissheit. Without it, a lot of magic tools can't be operated.
• Rubber Face: Benno, Cornelius, or Ferdinand tend to pinch Rozemyne's cheeks when they start getting irritated at her.
• Rule of Three: Over the course of Part 4 and Part 5, Rozemyne is betrothed (or was planned to be betrothed) three times. It's the third one that sticks.
• Ruling Family Massacre: As a result of a political purge that happened after the civil war in the country ended, the prince who won had the immediate family of the losing prince killed. He also killed numerous princesses and their children, specifically one who Really Got Around, to ensure no Hidden Backup Prince suddenly shows up. Four archducal families were also eliminated and their duchies are now under the management of other families.
• Running Gag: On average at least once every two volumes, Myne will drop to the floor and/or lose consciousness out of nowhere, giving an unknowing person the shock of their life. As revealed at the start of Part 3, the reason for that is that she has solidified mana clumps in her body that block the flow of her mana. If she gets too emotional, her body shuts down as a protective measure. This stops happening after she takes her second jureve bath to remove all remaining clumps in Part 4 Volume 8.
• Sacred Scripture:
  • In Part 1 Volume 3, Myne sees the High Bishop reading from the bible. She comes into possession of it after she is appointed as High Bishop by Sylvester.
  • In Part 4 Volume 1, Rozemyne learns of Grutrissheit, the original bible that was owned by Mestionora the Goddess of Wisdom. The first king of the country was allowed to copy it. Grutrissheit (actually the Book of Mestionora) is a magic tool that contains the knowledge of over 10000 years of the zents and aubs that passed away. It is required to operate many magic tools to manage the country, and a king who is not in possession of it is said to be no true king.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • After Myne collapses at the end of Part 1 Volume 2, she is saved by a magic tool Gustav and Freida give her. However, Freida makes it clear that Myne only has one year at best to live, which leaves Myne only with two options: Either die from the Devouring or leave her family and sign a contract with a noble who can provide her with the tools she needs. After thinking it over, Myne decides to stay with her family, even if that means that she is going to die soon. She ends up Taking a Third Option by joining the temple, which allows her to stay with her family and get the tools to release her mana safely without submitting to a noble.
  • The apprentice chef Ella seemingly faces one, but it's subverted. Once she comes of age, she would have to work as a waitress at her uncle's bar (and waitresses also work as cheap prostitutes). During a visit at the Eatery Guild she sees Benno looking for chefs who would eventually work in his restaurant, but they have to train at the temple, which is notorious for treating its commoner workers like slaves (including for sex). She quickly learns that neither Benno nor the blue shrine maiden she would serve have any need for sexual services, and since Ella always wanted to become a noble's chef, she takes Benno up on his offer and becomes Hugo's assistant.
  • A minor case with Myne's attendant Rosina: Myne tells her to either study under Fran and start doing more than playing instruments or be sent back to the orphanage. After a talk with Wilma, Rosina decides to stay and learns how to do paperwork.
  • High Priest Ferdinand gives Myne a similar choice in Part 2 regarding her future: Get adopted by a noble or face execution. He even forbids her from expanding the printing business until she has the backing of a noble, yet Myne refuses to leave her family. It takes an attempted kidnapping and an attack by a hostile archnoble to make Myne accept the adoption immediately.
  • In Part 3 Volume 2, Rozemyne is ordered by Ferdinand to execute the mayor of Hasse and his faction. This is him being soft for Rozemyne's sake, as Hasse's citizens attacked a building owned by the archduke which would usually lead to the entire annihilation of the town and its people. If Rozemyne doesn't act, all of them will die. She makes the people of Hasse aware of this, and the citizens consequently isolate their mayor.
  • In Part 4 Volume 8, Aub Ahrensbach asks Ferdinand to marry his daughter Detlinde. Ferdinand naturally refuses, but during the Archduke Conference the zent summons Ferdinand and orders him to either accept Aub Ahrensbach's marriage offer (to temporarily act as aub once Aub Ahrensbach passes away and educate the future aub, Letizia) or overthrow Sylvester and become Aub Ehrenfest. Becoming an aub locks Ferdinand out of becoming zent, as the royal family has figured out Ferdinand's origin and suspect that he's a Bastard Bastard. Doing as the zent says is a proof of his loyalty.
  • Matthias and Laurenz face a difficult choice at the end of Part 4: They have to choose between their families, loyal to Georgine (who plans to usurp Sylvester and take over Ehrenfest), or the current archducal family. In Matthias' side story in Part 4 Volume 9, they see how Wilfried is on high alert when he enters the Ehrenfest dormitory, while Rozemyne looks at Matthias with worried eyes (because Sylvester already plans to purge every noble loyal to Georgine). He then approaches Rozemyne and tells her about Georgine's plan to steal Ehrenfest's foundation.
  • At the start of Part 5, Sylvester executes a purge to kill any nobles who have given their names to Georgine. Their children who haven't given their names to Georgine may be spared though, if they give their names to an archduke candidate, to ensure their loyalty. Bonifatius (and Ferdinand in Drama CD 5) points out the flaw of this choice: Giving someone their name voluntarily is not the same as being strongarmed into doing so. It's a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card, and it doesn't guarantee the loyalty of the subject. This is demonstrated with Barthold, who gave his name to Wilfried, only to sabotage Wilfried later on as best as he could.
  • Near the end of Part 5, Ferdinand gives the royal family the choice to accept the Grutrissheit Rozemyne will bestow on them, remove the hereditary position of zent (thus dissolving the royal family), while the other royals will become aubs of the abandoned duchies, reinstate the old way to become zent and make a contract with the gods to keep this promise, and for the ruling zent to give their name to Rozemyne... or else the royal family's failures will be made public and they will all be sent to an ivory tower. Trauerqual adamantly refuses to rule, while Sigiswald is deemed a terrible choice. Eglantine accepts becoming zent, as she does not wish for her daughter to be locked up for the rest of her life.
• Save This Person, Save the World: In the Spin-Off that plays after the end of Part 5, Hannelore is used by Dregarnuhr the Goddess of Time to call Rozemyne over. Rozemyne travels back in time to save Ferdinand, as if he dies, Yurgenschmidt will likely fall.
• School Festival: The Interduchy Tournament at the end of each semester at the Royal Academy is similar to this.
• Scienceville:
  • The greater duchy Drewanchel is known for its researchers. For instance, it has developed the sewage system that Ehrenfest implements in the lower city in Part 4 Volume 4. In Part 4 Volume 3, Rozemyne arranges a tea party, where she gifts several of her guests a bottle of rinsham. Adolphine asks her little brother Ortwin to reverse-engineer it and by the time she and Rozemyne meet again, Rozemyne figures out that Drewanchel has learned how to make rinsham.
  • At the end of Part 5, Ferdinand and Rozemyne build a research institute in Alexandria, which is divided into three faculties focusing on plants, fish, and beasts respectively. Taking Alexandria's library city as inspiration, Adolphine also intends to build a research city in Drewanchel.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: A staple during Veronica's reign. People that were related or Professional Butt-Kissers to her used their relationship to get away with crimes or ask for "favors" from others. Bezewanst and the mayor of Hasse are prime examples of this.
• Secret Room: High-ranking nobles have hidden rooms where they can set up their private workshop for research, release their pent-up feelings or just hold private conversations. The room is usually only for personal use, except for minors who may invite their parents or guardians in, or married people and their children. Being alone with a member of the opposite gender inside it (even one's own fiancé) elicits nasty rumors.
  • High Priest Ferdinand's hidden room in the temple is behind his bedchambers. He has set up his workshop there and holds blunt conversations with Myne in his room, since she lacks the social skills to speak in noble euphemisms. In Part 2 Volume 3 the room is also used whenever Myne needs some hugging from Ferdinand to soothe the loneliness in her heart. This isn't frowned upon because Myne is too young.
  • Rozemyne is given two hidden rooms. One is in the chambers of the orphanage director, where she meets with commoners (like the people of the Gilberta Company) without having to keep up appearances. She can act like Myne in there, which is why she frequently uses the room to get her much-needed hugs from Lutz. After Rozemyne is engaged to Wilfried, she is forbidden from meeting Lutz alone in her hidden room, though. Her other hidden room is in the chambers of the High Bishop, where her workshop is. This is also the place where her jureve bath was set up in Part 3.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • It's implied that Sylvester accompanying Myne during the Spring Prayer in Part 2 Volume 3 was all a test. A test which she passed, as he leaves her with a necklace that would save her if she was in danger. Sylvester is in truth not a blue priest but the archduke of Ehrenfest. His teasing is him testing Myne's patience, he sees her capabilities and how well she could pass off as a noble, he gets to talk with Benno to discuss Myne's printing business plans, and he questions the gray priests and orphans about Myne's influence. After concluding that Myne is worthy, he gifts her the contract feystone that would bind her to him if used.
  • In Part 3 Volume 5, Karstedt, Eckhart, and Ferdinand learn that Rozemyne has taught Damuel her own unique mana compression method, which is highly effective. Ferdinand convinces her to teach it to other people too, but Rozemyne has several conditions. One of them is that the contractor is forbidden from teaching the method to anyone else, including their family. She does so because she doesn't want parents to force their children into compressing their mana at an early age, when this technique could easily kill someone. Ferdinand asks Rozemyne whether she would reconsider this condition, knowing that it could bring out more nobles and fewer blue robes. Rozemyne is firm on this, since she doesn't want these children to die, even if some of them could become nobles. Ferdinand then relaxes and honors her wishes.
  • At the end of Part 3, Viscount Illgner suspects that Elvira subjected Brigitte and Damuel to one. Elvira asks Brigitte during a tea party what she wants to do about Damuel's marriage proposal and Brigitte lets slip that she intends to accept and then move back to Illgner with Damuel. As Brigitte and Damuel are guard knights of the archducal family, Brigitte's brother thinks Elvira wanted to see how dedicated Brigitte is to Rozemyne. Since she apparently didn't see the Conflicting Loyalty issue and chose her home province over her charge, Elvira deemed Brigitte a failure as Rozemyne's guard. Damuel on the other hand firmly stays by Rozemyne's side and has to take back his proposal. Elvira then finds a husband for Brigitte to relieve her of her duties and let her go back, just as she wanted to.
  • As it turns out after a ditter match in Part 4 Volume 2, Professor Rauffen asked for a ditter match because he wanted to test Ehrenfest's nobles, who until now were either neutral or subservient to higher-ranked duchies. But while Rozemyne was willing to leave Schwartz and Weiss to a worthier owner, she was determined to protect them if that wasn't the case. To Rauffen's joy, they were ruthless in the ditter match and deployed clever tactics to win against an opponent that clearly outclassed them. Rauffen himself has learned a lot in that match, which is why he is not upset about the loss at all.
  • In Part 4 Volume 7, Rozemyne discovers magic circles in her bible. She shows them to Ferdinand who can see them, too. Ferdinand brings her to his hidden room and then asks her whether she wants to be king with a very intimidating aura. She denies it. If she had said yes, Ferdinand would have arranged Rozemyne's death by the end of winter. Ferdinand's priority at that time was keeping Ehrenfest safe and Rozemyne would have dragged Ehrenfest into a war they couldn't possibly win if she had had real ambitions to be king.
• Sent Into Hiding:
  • Sister Christine was a blue shrine maiden who hid in the temple, as she was the daughter of a concubine. However, her mana capacity was unusually high, which is why her father wanted her to be formally made a part of the family. After the purge, she left the temple and attended the Royal Academy, leaving all of her attendants in the temple behind.
  • At the end of Part 2, Karstedt, Ferdinand and Sylvester claim that Rozemyne was similarly hidden in the temple like Christine. However, they claim that her identity was hidden so well that the High Bishop mistakenly believed she was merely a commoner who was given blue robes. Since Bezewanst is a convicted criminal, his accusations are made to look like Malicious Slander, silencing all other blue priests who protest against Rozemyne's appointment as the new High Bishop.
• Serious Business: Do not get between Myne and her precious reading time, as her attendants find out.
• Sex Slave: Gray priests and shrine maidens are forced to obey all nobles and blue priests/shrine maidens, who are descended from nobles. Their services include "flower offerings". Usually, pregnant gray shrine maidens are sent back to the orphanage, where they give birth and then raise the children and other orphans, but during High Bishop Bezewanst's reign, unattractive maidens were sold to nobles, while pregnant maidens are "disposed of" instead because they just add more useless mouths to feed for which Bezewanst doesn't want to spend any additional money.
• Sexual Euphemism:
  • Within the temple, women (and girls, and boys as well on at least one occasion, including very young ones) serving as concubines are said to be "offering flowers".
  • The term "Goddess of Water" is commonly used to refer to someone's lover.
  • "Dyeing someone with your (mana) color" is a noble's way to talk about having sex. Because before trying to have babies, your partner drinks a potion with your color to increase the chances of getting pregnant. That's also the reason why drinking such a potion to use the mind-reading magic tool is considered disgusting, aside from the body's natural defensive reaction.
  • Celebrating "winter before autumn". Winter refers to Ewigeliebe the God of Life embracing Geduldh the Goddess of Earth (sex), while autumn represents the season when one reaches maturity. Or in other words: (Premarital) Sex with a minor.
• Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: The younger character who undergoes an Overnight Age-Up avoids an awkward clothing situation moslty via happening to be wearing an article of clothing that was made with the "grow with the wearer" sewing technique introduced by Rozemyne. Everything else is a mix of the setting's fashion having relatively loose-fitting underwear, knowing just where to cut other items of clothing to make them looser but still functional and replacing the shoes with transformed feystones.
• She Is All Grown Up:
  • This is Hugo's reaction when he sees that Ella has come of age. It takes him a while to realize his love for her.
  • In Part 5, many nobles react like this when they see Rozemyne who went through a Plot-Relevant Age-Up.
• Short Title: Long, Elaborate Subtitle: The full title of this series is "本好きの下剋上 ～司書になるためには手段を選んでいられません～" (Honzuki no Gekokujō: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan o Erandeiraremasen) or "Ascendance of a Bookworm: I'll Stop at Nothing to Become a Librarian". Most of the time people only use the shorter title and ignore the elaborate subtitle.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Myne first meets Mark, she mentions he looks so much like a butler that she wants to call him Sebastian.
  • The ridiculous-looking prayer pose used by the priests is a reference to (of all things) a specific billboard advertisement◊ for Glico, a Japanese food company, which has been on display in Osaka since 1935.
  • When throwing out trombe seeds, Myne usually calls out "I choose you!". In the novels, she describes a newly-purchased outfit as "comfy and easy to wear" (a meme-reference to Pokémon Gold and Silver, and probably a joke from the translator).
  • In the anime, Shikza collapses after trying the rejuvenation spell in the same pose as Yamchua after he got blown up by a Saibaman. In the middle of a crater, no less.
  • The Pandabus is based on the Catbus in My Neighbor Totoro.
  • Rozemyne needs to compose several songs for Ferdinand and Rosina to arrange for the charity concert. She picks the opening song for Anpanman, which Ferdinand rewrites into a love song about Ewigeliebe and Geduldh.
  • In Part 3 Volume 5, Ferdinand pulls out various things seemingly out of thin air with the help of a teleportation circle. Rozemyne compares him to "the English nanny from those popular children's books".
  • In Part 4 Volume 4, the reconstruction of Ehrenfest's lower city is discussed. Rozemyne internally calls the planned "Entwickeln" (since she doesn't know the name of the spell yet) "劇的ビフォーアフター" (Drastic Before-After), which is a remodeling show in Japan. In the English translation, she instead calls it "Extreme Makeover".
• Sibling Triangle:
  • Ralph has liked Tuuli since he was very young and deeply desires to get together with her, but as they grow older and their paths in life fall further and further apart she stars to grow much closer to his younger brother Lutz, which makes most people think that the two are a couple... As the years go by they do actually end up getting engaged to each other, and that embitters Ralph who hasn't let go of his feelings for her.
  • The first prince and his younger brother the second prince are courting the same highranking noblewoman. As marrying Eglantine, the only surviving child of the former generation's third prince, will automatically make her husband the next king, first prince Sigiswald seeks her hand just because of that whilst second prince Anastasius wants to marry her because he is actually in love with her, and he would do anything, even give up his right to the throne, to be able to achieve it.
  • Lady Hannalore, the archduke candidate from Dunkelfelger Duchy, has several suitors and possible candidates for her husband to be, some of those suitors are her cousins Kenntrips and his younger half-brother Rasantark.
• Silly Prayer: At least to Myne the praying pose looks a bit ridiculous, because it reminds her of a Glico advertisement from Japan, and as a follow-up the priests perform a Pose of Supplication. Commoners and nobles alike don't seem to pray much, either, and doing it in public will earn you weird looks. However, as Myne spends more and more time in the temple, she starts doing the Glico pose regularly on reflex to praise the gods.
• Single Sex Offspring:
  • The family started by Rozemyne's "biological" noble paternal grandfather seems extremely prone to producing sons:
    • Rozemyne is frequently referred to as the aforementioned grandfather's "only granddaughter".
    • Per her official lineage, she has three full older brothers and a younger paternal half-brother.
    • The cousin who becomes part of the story around the same time as the Royal Academy is male and the son of her father's paternal half-brother.
    • Rozemyne eventually becomes an aunt through one of her brothers and yes, it's a nephew.
  • Gilessenmeyer, a duchy whose plot relevance is limited to being the birthplace of the current king's first wife and having the country gate associated with the Goddess of Light, is mentioned to have the "prone to producing daughters" variant of the phenomenon in its archducal family. It's to the point that they regularly have to adopt sons from extended family just to keep the lineage going.
• Slow Life Fantasy: Myne wants nothing more than to continue the lifestyle she had before her reincarnation in another world, spending every waking hour reading books. However, she landed in a poor family in a world that averts Medieval Universal Literacy alongside still having quite expensive paper and ink. She also turns out to have a condition that requires some combination of a lot of money and ties to nobility to treat, so she's soon on a double quest of making her own books and getting herself out of poverty to keep herself alive. Past a certain point in the story, her position entails participating in situations more typical of a more adventuring-oriented story as a Support Party Member at least once every few months.
• Smack on the Back: At some point, Rozemyne witnesses Laurenz giving a friendly pat on Matthias' back. Matthias topples over to an extent that gets noticed by Rozemyne in response, implying that Laurenz put quite a lot of strength in that pat.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: Once Myne and the High Priest get to know each other long enough, a lot of their private conversations devolve to this.
  High Priest: I would rather not see your face more than once a day, you know.
  Myne's internal retort: ..it's not like I'm coming here to see you either.
• Soap Punishment: Or rather something close enough to be the setting's equivalent, where the person's head is targeted with a localized waschen spell in response to disliked spoken words. In Part 5 Volume 1, Roderick reports why several children of the former Veronica faction would not want to give their names to Rozemyne. When he tries to bring up the possibility that attendants could suffer a worse grade because Rozemyne frequently falls ill, Lieseleta immediately shuts Roderick up with a waschen to the face with the excuse that he seemingly has dirt on his mouth. Brunhilde then takes Roderick to another room and lectures him. Rozemyne doesn't understand what just happened, but Leonore assures her that everything is fine.
• The Social Darwinist: How nobility run their succession process, even more extreme in this world due to children being born with different mana capacity. Blue priests are actually children disqualified from inheritance for having too little mana.
• Something Only They Would Say: Archduke candidates learn in their special course at the Royal Academy their unique names for the God of Darkness and the Goddess of Light. Whenever they use archducal magic (e.g. when Ferdinand built Hasse's monastery or when he destroyed the commoners' medals in Part 3), the archduke candidates call upon the names of the king and queen gods, which is also the reason why no one else must hear the names, as the names are unique to each archduke candidate. It basically serves as a password with which the gods can distinguish the humans. Funnily, since Rozemyne and Ferdinand's mana attributes are so similar, she received the same names Ferdinand got, which is why Erwaermen can't differentiate between the two and initially mistakes Rozemyne for Ferdinand.
• So Proud of You:
  • Whenever Tuuli or Myne do something well, their parents readily tell them how proud they are of their children. Tuuli is also unbelievably proud of how smart her little sister is and often brags to her friends about it, as most of them have the wrong impression of Myne.
  • Myne expresses how proud she is of Lutz when he faces Benno directly and tells him what he wants to do when he becomes a merchant. Later on, Myne, Benno, and Mark are also proud of Lutz's quick growth as an apprentice merchant.
  • Gustav's pride is his granddaughter, Freida. She is Wise Beyond Her Years and he loves to see her grow up and become a successful merchant like him.
  • Myne often tells Gil how proud she is of his work, as affection and approval is exactly what he needs.
  • In general, Myne is very proud of all of her attendants for how skilled and competent they are.
  • Lutz's parents see at the end of Part 2 Volume 1 that their son is actually already far ahead in his training as a merchant. They never knew that Lutz is literate and how he behaves vastly differently when they go to the Merchant's Guild with him, which makes them see why Benno already wanted Lutz to become his leherl. Since Deid is a man of few words and doesn't like admitting that he's wrong, he doesn't openly say it, but Karla proudly tells everyone how much her son has grown.
  • Wilfried doesn't get much attention from his parents, but he really would like them to praise him. Once Rozemyne works on his education plan, he often proudly presents to them his progress and they readily praise him.
  • During the ruelle gathering in Part 3 Volume 5, Rozemyne expresses internally how proud she is of her guard knight, Damuel. As his mana growth has given him new confidence, he performs much better against the swarm of feybeasts compared to the previous Night of Schutzaria a year before.
  • Rozemyne's adoptive siblings, Wilfried and Charlotte, often express how proud they are of their sister. Especially the latter matters to Rozemyne, as she always wanted to be a Cool Big Sis.
  • Bonifatius, Rozemyne's grandfather, can't stop gushing over his granddaughter. He is more open about his feelings after she starts attending the Royal Academy and always returns home with the best marks possible, on top of her other heroic feats.
  • In Part 4 Volume 2, Ferdinand nods approvingly when he hears how Rozemyne outplayed Dunkelfelger with her ditter strategy.
• Spectator Casualty: Defied. Magic items and various forms of Abnormal Ammo are banned from speed ditter because that form of ditter is typically played in an arena and anything with an Area of Effect or Splash Damage may be dangerous for the audience.
• Spell Blade: Blessings can be given to weapons, which gives the weapon additional elemental properties. For instance, in Part 2 Volume 2 the members of the Knight's Order need to give their weapons the divine protection of the God of Darkness, allowing them to Mana Burn the trombe.
• Spoiler Cover:
  • The cover of Part 4 Volume 1 shows Rozemyne alongside two Funny Animal rabbit-like creatures. When, in the book itself, Rozemyne enters a room and spots "two stuffed rabbits" on one of the shelves, it's easy to guess that it's only a matter of time before those "stuffed rabbits" become important.
  • The cover of Part 5 Volume 7, in which Rozemyne gets physically aged up to her chronological age via magic, might as well be a Before And After Picture of the volume's biggest event.
• Spotting the Thread:
  • Lutz starts suspecting that Myne may be possessed by someone else after hearing her talk about business with Benno. He is entirely convinced once Myne accidentally says that she's made plant paper before. Before that, the Urano version of Myne only did things that he had no reason to find suspicious, such as digging for clay or cutting wood.
  • At first, Ferdinand only thought that Myne was a smart young girl. After he saw her distill the holy scriptures into a kids' version, he realized that even a brilliant seven-year-old couldn't possibly do something like that, and it was more likely that she was an educated woman from a foreign country - and yet, it was clearly established that Myne was a seven-year-old from Ehrenfest. That was part of why Ferdinand had to probe her mind, because the facts in evidence simply did not make sense.
• Staging the Eavesdrop: In Part 5, Volume 5, Rozemyne and her retainers end up overhearing a conversation between Hortensia and Detlinde after Hortensia helps them hide from a suddenly visiting Detlinde. One of the end of volume short stories reveals that Rozemyne's tendency to have seldom-found knowledge is the royal family's backup plan for finding a piece of information that Detlinde might have. Hortensia actually deliberately arranged to have Detlinde come to the Royal Academy's library while Rozemyne would be present, but best not seen by people who don't already know of her presence. Rozemyne overhearing Hortensia and Detlinde's conversation, which was centered around the desired piece of information, from her hiding place was feature, not a bug.
• Stealing the Credit:
  • A common practice for greater duchies, who want to promote the heir apparent archduke candidate. Veronica employed the same practice for her heir, Sylvester. Oswald tries to make Charlotte and Rozemyne credit Wilfried for everything they are doing and is frustrated that they aren't doing enough to support his charge.
  • Notably not the case in Ehrenfest in general in the present. However, since it's common everywhere else, people assume that all of Rozemyne's achievements are the work of her guardians.
• Stepping-Stone Sword: Cornelius is seen climbing a relatively small tree by planting a knife in the trunk and using it as a stepping stone alongside boosting his jump with enhancement magic.
• The Straight and Arrow Path: A notable aversion. In Part 4 Volume 7, as soon as Ferdinand sees Rozemyne's water gun, he tries to analyze how it works and eventually replicates it. He stops using his bow from that point on, as the gun is much handier to use.
• Stumbling in the New Form: One of the younger characters undergoes a significant Overnight Age-Up. The first few hours after the fact include a lot of clumsy walking and bumping into random things.
• Succession Crisis:
  • Defied. As there can only be one heir to a duchy, the heir is chosen amongst the children of an archduke's first wife. If they all come with similar mana levels, the more competent one is chosen as heir. This all needs to happen long before the current ruler dies, to prevent a crisis. Sylvester was the winner of the current generation, and thus became Ehrenfest's archduke. His older sister married an archduke from another duchy to avoid future conflicts. Sylvester doesn't like this tradition, though, and he's decided from the start that Wilfried is his designated heir. Unfortunately, this makes Wilfried lazy and complacent, as he does not have to put an effort into earning his privileges. He drastically changes after Ferdinand threatens to make Sylvester disinherit him and instead train one of Wilfried's younger siblings, if he turns out to be completely incompetent.
  • Part 4 reveals that a few years ago a succession war between the first and third princes of the country started, which split the country in two and ended with both dying. The fourth and fifth princes picked up the pieces and resumed the conflict until the fifth came off victorious and became king. To be exact, the crisis happened because the first prince murdered the second prince who was already chosen as heir and inherited the tool that is necessary to run the country, Grutrissheit. Thinking that the third prince must have it, the first prince started attacking the third prince. However, the royal family's Grutrissheit returned to the underground library after the second prince's death, but even in the present no one knows where Grutrissheit is.
  • In Part 4 Volume 5, Rozemyne learns that the greater duchy Ahrensbach is stuck in a crisis. Aub Ahrensbach's first wife gave birth to three daughters, who were all married off. His second wife gave birth to two sons, but since her brother was on the losing side of the civil war, she was executed. While their sons were spared, they lost their status as archduke candidates. Georgine had two daughters and one son, though her son passed away and one of her daughters was married off. Aub Ahrensbach's first wife later passed away, too, but not before adopting her granddaughter, Letizia. Since Ahrensbach archduke candidates that didn't succeed are demoted to normal archnobles, Detlinde and Letizia are Ahrensbach's only remaining archduke candidates and the former is aggressively trying to find a suitable partner.
• Suddenly Significant Rule:
  • In late Part 3, one of Rozemyne's conditions for teaching others her mana compression method is that they sign a contract promising, among other things, that they will never be hostile towards her. The same part also earlier establishes that attacking a magic-made building is on par with attacking a member of the local archducal family. In late Part 5, Ferdinand, who signed said contract and is just about the last noble one would expect to knowingly genuinely harm Rozemyne, considers destroying everything in the Ahrensbach duchy in response to various wrongs. Rozemyne needs to inform him that he can't do that without breaching the contract because she took magical ownership of the very thing he wants to destroy as part of her current plan.
  • A magical version of this eventually turns out to be the reason the royal family's Grutrissheit went missing. Thanks to it spending several generations being willingly transmitted by retiring Zents to their chosen heirs and a very early It Seemed Trivial moment (from the son of the Zent who first made the tool, in fact), everyone forgot that killing the current owner in hope of stealing it was a bad idea. As a result, the rule that, if its current owner died, the Grutrissheit was to return to a location accessible only to members of the royal family who also fulfill the mana and prayer requirements to become Zent kicked in as soon as a prince tried doing just that.
• Superhuman Transfusion: Not blood, but mana in this case. It accidentally happens in Part 2 Volume 2, is only spelled out to have happened in Part 5 Volume 7 and has a lot of hints towards it dropped in between, mostly via just about every phenomenon that is supposed to happen when the mana of two different people interacts being unsually mild to non-existent when the people are Myne and Ferdinand. To make a very long plotline short, Myne being a Devouring child rather than a noble made her mana almost colorless, but she was permanently dyed in Ferdinand's fully seven-colored mana when he made her drink a potion to synchronize his mind with hers while exploring her memories, when the dying is usually temporary between proper nobles. Later, this leads to Rozemyne receiving the same names for the Supreme Couple as Ferdinand did, which then leads to the gods not being able to distinguish between Rozemyne and Ferdinand. In turn, since the gods can't distinguish them, Rozemyne only receives the parts of Grutrissheit that Ferdinand didn't get yet, resulting in the same copy being split between the two of them.
• Supernatural Elite: Only nobles have easy access to the means to handle the Pent-Up Power Peril that manifests as the Devouring to which children born with magic are prone, and a child's mana level depends mostly on their mother's. Commoners who do get mana usually die of the Devouring before age seven. This results in magic use remaining something only found in nobles. There is a way to survive for non-nobles, but it boils down to pledging to become a noble's slave in exchange for an excess mana-absorbing item. Before the arrangement gets actually made and if the noble changes their mind, the alternative is to pay a lot of money for a defective or broken mana-absorbing item that only works once, overall making the option available only for people who already have a lot of money and connections to nobles.
• Supernatural Sensitivity: At a certain age, individuals with mana can sense other beings with mana. However, they usually can only sense beings with similar levels of mana. For instance in Part 2 Volume 3, since Damuel's mana levels are so low, he is good at spotting the weak Devouring soldiers, which archnobles like Karstedt or Ferdinand can't. Sensing someone's mana is also an indication for a suitable marriage partner, which is why engagements are usually only made when noble children reach the age when they start sensing mana.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Having powerful mages as parents greatly enhances the chances that a child will be a powerful mage themself, but is far from guaranteeing it. This is shown by the fact that blue robes from mednoble and even archnoble families exist, when laynobles are considered those who are most likely to produce blue robe level mages. Meanwhile, the fact that Devouring children are technically cases of Mage Born of Muggles shows that being born to a commoner family doesn't completely bar one from having great magical power. This is further reinforced by the fact that while the mother has the most influence on the child's mana level, two people with significantly different mana levels can't have children with each other at all, meaning neither side of the family can truly be given credit for a Mage Born of Muggles or Muggle Born of Mages situation.
• Super Wheelchair: Rozemyne uses her highbeast, a magic item that is usually used as a Mechanical Horse, as a mobility aid on account of her poor health. Said magic item has flight as a built-in function and she has figured out that "the shaping spell only allows for animals" means "you can make an Animal-Vehicle Hybrid". Being much more likely to be riding her highbeast at a given time has given her more options to respond to several sudden events compared to other people.
• Sure, Let's Go with That:
  • During a tea party, Elvira credits the edutainment materials Rozemyne "invented" for Cornelius showing much more interest in his studies than before. Rozemyne knows the real reason Cornelius is seemingly showing a newfound interest in studying: a lot of the ground work in bettering Angelica's Academy grades has fallen on him and he just happens to have older brothers who graduated from the classes Angelica is struggling with. Since she's both trying to sell the edutainment materials, which have been proven to work on plenty of other children, to her guests and is also trying to keep the number of people who know of Angelica's struggles low, Rozemyne decides to not correct Elvira.
  • One of the notes Rozemyne leaves behind before she is forced to sleep for two years mentions that she wants to gather information about the Royal Academy, the lectures and the other duchies. What she actually wanted most was to gather more stories for future books, but Damuel and Charlotte misunderstand Rozemyne's intentions and tell the Royal Academy students to gather any information they can find, which Damuel then passes on to Ferdinand. In Part 4, Rozemyne is visibly disappointed that she didn't clarify what she meant, but she decides to not tell Ferdinand this and lets him think that she got exactly what she wanted.
  • Rozemyne manages to organize a light-entourage meal at the Italian restaurant for Ehrenfest's own archduke under the pretense of a business meeting with Lower City merchants. A few years later, Guildmaster Gustav still remembers the meal as proof that its guest of honor is a Reasonable Authority Figure who is more willing to listen to commoners than most nobles and respects him greatly as a result. Rozemyne decides it's best to not mention the reality of the guest of honor simply being yet another convert to her cooking who was just that curious to see the Italian restaurant with his own eyes.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Someone might have been a bookworm who read countless books ranging from all different kind of subjects, but just reading about how something is done doesn't make you a master of making it. You will still need to practice before you develop the necessary skills, or use trial and error to work around the obstacles. Myne was a nerd with loads of trivia knowledge, but said knowledge was spread pretty thin and she finds it very difficult to reverse engineer products she in theory knows how to create.
  • If you reincarnate somewhere completely by chance in a medieval setting, you'll probably be poor. If you're poor in a medieval setting, you're almost guaranteed to be illiterate. Hygiene was also... difficult in those times, leaving Myne horrified at how "disgusting" her family is.
  • People will start to wonder how a young girl who is usually bedridden by fever suddenly knows how to make so many things and use odd phrases. More so when she knows how to do something despite admitting she's never done it herself.
  • Many of the products we have now are only cheap commodities because of the complex infrastructure we have. To people living in medieval times, where everything has to be made by hand, things like shampoo and hair clips are extremely high-end luxuries. It takes Maine about half a dozen attempts to even make something she could reasonably write on: Clay tablets are destroyed or decay quickly, spare pieces of wood are more valuable as firewood to commoners, papyrus is incredibly annoying to make in reasonable quantities, parchment is way too expensive and paper very difficult to craft without modern technology or at least very specialized knowledge.
  • In the modern day, even so-called handcrafts are done with modern materials that don't always have an obvious or easily available substitute in a world with medieval-level technology, which can make even personal experience hard to transfer.
  • The clothing of commoners in medieval times generally is for utility, not for show. Myne ends up making her family stand out a lot with the decorations she made, which would have normally been seen as a frivolous thing for them. This becomes a minor plot point where the High Bishop assumes she's from a wealthy family.
  • This universe's locals aren't immune, either. Lutz's romanticized idea of the traveling merchant life is shattered when Otto explains that it's a difficult and dangerous career, one which no one in their right mind would take up unless they were very poor and lacked citizenship (Lutz was born in the capital, so even though his family is poor, he automatically becomes a citizen after his baptism). And even if you wanted to do it anyway, the routes traders take are a closely-guarded secret.
  • The bandits who killed Benno's father and about whom Deid is worried about concerning Lutz leaving town for work turn out to be local farmers being bandits on the side rather than people living off the activity full-time, thus avoiding a More Criminals Than Targets situation. This also means blue priests don't get attacked, as their mana is used to allow crops to grow.
  • When Myne gets a younger sibling, a few lines of dialog from adults make it clear that high miscarriage and infancy mortality rates are the reason her family only had two children at the time at which she was reincarnated.
  • The way noble society works greatly encourages Wicked Stepmother behavior on the part of wives in regards to the children of the other wives or concubines of their husband. However, the Wicked Stepmother the reader finds out the most about, who is introduced as the proper wife of a bastard's noble father, turns out to have been much nicer to her biological son so he would become a Puppet King to her after his father's death. She also turns out to have been such a Clingy Jealous Girl that her husband never engaged in the Exotic Extended Marriage expected of him and quite hostile toward her daughter-in-law. In that character's case, the Wicked Stepmother behavior was the sign of an all-around abusive personality all along.
  • This happens with the fake Family Relationship Switcheroo between two wives of the same nobleman. It essentially involves passing off a dead wife's daughter as that of a still-alive one. Only so much time goes by before the dead wife's brother starts trying to approach the daughter and calling her his niece. The switcheroo was intially done because of the political strife that would have come with the daughter's cover-up real parentage, with said strife partly stemming from the dead wife's family being Obnoxious In-Laws.
  • There are several characters who are having a try at Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting. However, because of a lack of actual examples of good parenting in their everyday lives and failure to learn the right things from chance meetings with people they view as good parents, those characters only manage to be marginally better than their own parents.
  • Rozemyne's attempt at making Effa her exclusive dyer through a competition officially intended to give all interested craftspeople a chance has several instances. First of all, to balance out the fact that Tuuli is known to be working for Rozemyne and hence to be able to give her insider information, Effa offers to have all the cloth entered into the contest identified by numbers rather than names. Rozemyne tries to bypass this with The Power of Love, but fails and settles for picking a small handful of personal favorites and letting her most fashion-conscious noble attendant make the final choice. The whole thing doesn't change the fact that Effa knows both Rozemyne's tastes and what looks good on her, so it was among the favorites and the attendant picked the right one.
  • Delia is instructed by the High Bishop to spy on Myne under the assumption that she'll know she should pretend to be Myne's friend, earn her trust and then sniff out all her secrets. However, Delia is an uneducated eight year old girl and immediately blabs about her real allegiance because she hasn't the faintest idea as to what a spy is actually supposed to do. At best, what Delia assumed was wanted from her was just annoying Myne.
• Swapped Roles: In Part 3 Volume 2, Rozemyne swaps with her adoptive brother Wilfried for a day as a means to get him to understand his duties and pay attention to his education. A side chapter from Wilfried's view in the same volume is shown to contrast how much work Rozemyne puts in every day.

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