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Character sheet for Even Though I'm a Former Noble and Single Mother. Beware unmarked spoilers.

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Protagonists

    Shirley Earlgrey 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shirley_earlgrey.png

The titular single mother, also known as the White Demon Sword.


  • Absurdly Youthful Mother: A downplayed case. She gave birth to her daughters around her 20th birthday.
  • The Ace: Though she started learning late, very late, the moment she was able to actually learn to read, write, handle a sword, and cast magic, she mastered all of these subjects to the point she could surpass anyone she came across, purely to make herself a good wife and Empress. Prince Albert went from loving her to loathing her as a direct result.
  • Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: When Kyle confesses his feelings for her, Shirley mistakes it as him telling her he loves her as a surrogate mother and accepts to care for him as her son.
  • Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Subverted. A month's long stay in the castle dungeons, receiving levels of torture that would break the hardest soldier, made her utterly murderous, desiring nothing but revenge. Then she learned she was pregnant. After giving birth to two sweet little girls, she gave up all such thoughts and settled down to become an adventurer and mother.
  • Bewildering Punishment: She was happily engaged to the crown prince for eight years, and the very day after her wedding, where she lost her virginity, said prince comes forward to angrily accuse her of all sorts of crimes she could not possibly have committed, to then attempt to torture a confession out of her, and have her executed.
  • Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Gender-inverted. Hearing from Sophia that Tio got a boyfriend causes Shirley to develop such a strong murderous aura that all of the inn's patrons pass out from sheer terror. Considering her own terrible experience with their father, it's not too surprising that she'd be incredibly reluctant to let them be involved with boys.
  • Breaking the Cycle of Bad Parenting: Shirley was raised by cruel, Abusive Parents who hated her because of the color of her hair and eyes, giving Shirley a major case of being The Un-Favourite. In contrast, Shirley is a very loving and protective mother who dotes on her twin daughters.
  • Broken Bird: Hated purely for the "crime" of existing, she was put through hell most of her life, except for an 8-year respite as the fiancée of the crown prince, but that too was taken away by her evil and insanely envious sister, Alice, who falsely accused her of being an adulterer and the prince sent her to be tortured for a month. The one joy in her life are her two beloved daughters, but she still finds it extremely difficult to empathize and open up to other people because of her past.
  • Brutal Honesty: Aside from her daughters, she does not mince words, period.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Shirley tells off her parents for all the shit they put her through and declares Martha and her husband as her true parents. She also chews them out for trying to have her daughters assassinated and literally hammers her poor excuse of a mother and father to the ground. Shirley points out she’s not a child desperate for their affection anymore, but a grown adult who’ll do whatever it takes to protect her kids, but she won’t solve their problems by killing her parents. Instead she hands them over to the authorities and have them arrested for their long list of crimes.
  • Crocodile Tears: One of many things she's accused of doing by the crown prince to win his sympathy and hand in marriage.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: Because she was born with white hair and mismatched eyes, she was treated cruelly by her mother, her father, her sister, the family servants, and even lower-ranked nobles and their servants would abuse her, with her family sitting back and laughing. Then the crown prince, who became her fiance, happily courted her for 8 years, and turned on her the moment she stopped being a Damsel in Distress that he could "rescue" to feed his Engineered Heroics problem.
  • Death Seeker: She had given up on life, at age 11, until the crown prince himself picked her up and made her his fiance for 8 years. When he turned on her, putting her in a dungeon to be tortured into signing a false confession, she snapped.
  • Declining Promotion: Shirley is adamant against rising any higher than B-rank, despite having more than sufficient merit to do so, because the moment she says "yes," she'll stop being seen as an adventurer, and start being seen a disposable weapon of mass-destruction, having to go wherever the adventurer's guild tells her to, and leaving her two underage daughters completely unattended and to their own devices. The guild leader utterly refuses to understand this, and keeps sending the secretary, Yumina, to pester her, and then yells at the poor secretary for getting rebuffed.
  • Determinator: Despite suffering levels of torture so severe that hardened knights would have been reduced to a weeping mess, for over a month, she never broke and signed a false confession.
  • Dork Knight: Whenever she's not on the job, she's an absolute dork of a mother who tries way too hard to look cool for her daughters and is a general klutz when it comes to anything outside of combat.
  • Doting Parent: She's absolutely devoted to her adorable daughters.
  • Experienced Protagonist: At the point she was introduced, she already had 10 years of adventuring and combat experience under her belt.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: During her brief tenure as the future empress, she treated the people kindly, without prejudice, be they noble or commoner. They reward her by turning on her and calling her a "foul woman" the moment Prince Albert falsely accuses her of crimes, with no evidence whatsoever. Those that catch up to her ten years later honestly expect blanket forgiveness, which enrages her even more than the original offense.
  • Flowers of Femininity: She's a graceful lady, as well as loving mother, wearing a flower to decorate her hair.
  • Good Parents: She loves her twin daughters more than anything in the world and raising them is the one thing she lives for.
  • The Guards Must Be Crazy: She benefits from this. Since the commoners in her home country had great difficulty understanding the concept of locking doors, the head torturer, who is one of them, ran out of her cell, leaving everything unlocked, which allowed her to escape.
  • Hammerspace: She keeps all her weapons and tools in a pocket dimension called "The Hero's Toolbox" and she summons copies from there with alchemy to use in battle. This has many advantages.
  • Healing Factor: Thanks to being semi-immortal, she can regenerate her body back to its prime no matter what kind of damage she sustains, so long as her soul remains intact.
  • Heroic Neutral: While a good and kind woman, despite her past, all she cares about is her daughters' well-being. Ally with that and she'll move heaven and earth, literally, to help you. Oppose it, and may god have mercy on your soul, because she won't.
  • Impoverished Patrician: She went from being the daughter of one of the highest ducal houses and fiance of the empire's crown prince, to a vagabond on the run, two small infants in hand, as a result of being arrested and tortured on false charges.
  • I Owe You My Life: Canary was the one who found a place to live for her and her daughters and gave Shirley a source of income by letting her work at her guild. Shirley owes Canary so much that she won't bring herself to turn down a direct request from her, no matter if it's something she hates.
  • It's Personal: Hates rain with undying passion. Since she was constantly being thrown out of the house and forced to sleep under an empty sky, regardless of the weather, she'd be exposed to all sorts of conditions, and she could counter all of them, except rain. She would inevitably be chilled to the bone and wind up sick. So having to endure the same carrying two infant daughters, she mastered a magical technique that literally split the heavens to keep the clouds at bay. Even in the present, a cloudburst makes her murderous, and she immediately banishes the clouds with her mightiest sword, leaving the king's court magicians perplexed.
  • I Was Just Passing Through: She rescues Kyle purely because she happened to be in the area, and letting a fellow adventurer die, if she could avoid it, would get her in trouble with the guild. She doesn't give him or the dragons and goblins he was up against a second thought, aside from the fact that said goblins and dragons were stupid enough to attack her, getting killed for their folly.
  • I Work Alone: She hates the mere idea of joining a party because her aloof personality and extraordinary power make it nearly impossible for her to work as part of a team.
  • Kangaroo Court: On the receiving end. The day she was imprisoned on false charges, the crown prince just yelled a bunch of accusations at her, never letting her get in a word edgewise.
  • Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: That fancy dress? That's her adventuring garb. Doesn't slow her down in the slightest.
  • Knight Templar Parent: She gets murderous whenever her daughters receive love confessions, once even breaking into their school to flood the place with Killing Intent.
  • Lady of War: Beautiful, elegant, and absolutely deadly.
  • Love Redeems: Giving birth to her twin daughters made her give up the path of revenge and decide to settle down to be a good mother.
  • Magical Eye: The special "skill" she got from becoming a semi-immortal. Her eyes allow her to see "everything", including magic spells mid-cast, allowing to cut off intangible things, like an ancient dragon's "infinite" mana, or curses aimed at her daughters.
  • Major Injury Underreaction: A fully-grown dragon crushes her arm when shattering the fortress it was hiding under. She doesn't even flinch in response. Once the dragon is killed, her arm is good as new.
  • Mama Bear: Threaten her daughters and she will stop at nothing to eliminate the threat, no matter how many people she has to kill.
  • Mark of the Supernatural: Her right eye is blue and the left one is red. This is one of the traits that set her apart from normal humans, since she's a semi-immortal.
  • Master Swordswoman: She earned the title of "The White Demon Sword" because she's a powerful sword-wielding adventurer who can go toe to toe with gods if she has to.
  • A Mistake Is Born: She was born with white hair and mismatched eyes, which in her family's eyes provided an excuse to horrifically abuse her. While growing up, she could do nothing right and was punished with beatings for the tiniest error, while her sister Alice could do no wrong and was lavished with praise for the "accomplishment" of existing.
  • Mistaken for Cheating: Her evil sister got into the crown prince's head that Shirley was sleeping around with other men. He angrily shouts that she slept around with numerous men during the eight years that they were engaged, despite the fact that the prince himself took her virginity the night before.
  • Mystical White Hair: Her hair is described as white as snow, a sign that she's not normal. To specify, she's one of the five semi-immortals in the entire world, making her one of the most powerful beings in existence.
  • Never Be Hurt Again: The major reason she is overprotective of her daughters is that she does not want them to go through the same kind of horrific adultery and Remarried to the Mistress experience she did. She considers that even worse than the torture she endured in the dungeon.
  • Never Hurt an Innocent: Double-subverted. When she learned she was pregnant by Albert, she stopped and pondered for a moment and then brought her sword to her belly, planning to rip the unwanted heirs of the man she hates out of her womb with it. Then she throws the sword down and lampshades in the narration that she's not quite at the point where she's going to harm an innocent, and the unborn child(ren) are innocent. Once her twin daughters are born, she falls in love with them and is rewarded with the two sweetest little girls a parent can ask for, who have absolutely none of their father's traits, at all.
  • No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: She struggled, studied, and trained until she bled so that she could master reading, writing, swordsmanship, and magic, so she could be a great wife and empress to Crown-Prince Albert, the man she loved. He grew to loathe her as a result and happily jumped on the false accusations Alice brought before him, so he could have her tortured into confessing and execute her.
  • No Social Skills: She only softens her words for her daughters, and even then she slips up sometimes. When it comes to everyone else, she is infamously blunt.
  • Not So Stoic: When first introduced, she is calm, collected, and completely unflappable, regardless of the situation. Then she's shown with her daughters, obsessed with being "the perfect mother," smiling, laughing, playing, being doting, silly, goofy, and way, way overprotective.
  • Oblivious to Love: Kyle, with a bit of prompting from Canary, gives her a public love confession, openly stating he wants to date her. She accepts, in the most non-romantic way possible, and when asked to provide an assessment of Kyle, gives a glowing recommendation, to then qualify that he'd be a welcome son. Everyone present, aside from Kyle who spits up blood in shock, facepalms. Though considering how her first, and only, romantic venture went, this is understandable.
  • Parental Hypocrisy: She yells at Sophia and Tio when they bash their thumbs with a hammer while hammering nails into a birdcage that they're helping to build for their pet bird familiars, and then goes and mashes her own hand with enough force to break the bones. Fortunately, as a semi-immortal, she can just shrug that off.
  • Prone to Sunburn: She does not tan, ever. She jumps from pale-milk colored skin to boiled lobster. Yet another reason she exposes as little skin as possible, given a choice.
  • Red Baron: "The White Demon Sword."
  • Reluctant Fanservice Girl: Canary loves to troll her by putting her in risque outfits as much as possible. When she tries to learn how to swim, the only swimsuits available are bikinis, which Shirley sees as little more than exposed underwear...
  • The Scapegoat: Her sister Alice somehow convinced the crown prince that she's an utterly monstrous individual with absolutely no evidence whatsoever, and all Shirley's allies in the court immediately turned on her, having her pleas fall on deaf ears.
  • Screaming Birth: Justified. She had to give birth to her daughters in an abandoned hut, alone, no doctor, no nurse, no midwife, no painkillers, and no pre-natal care, due to being a fugitive. There is no mention of how she dealt with the aftermath. Shirley herself calls it a minor miracle all three of them came out alright.
  • Selective Obliviousness: Even if someone taunts Kyle about the fact that he's sexually attracted to her within earshot, she conveniently does not hear it. Kyle is highly conflicted over it.
  • Seven Heavenly Virtues: Even after her horrific life, she's got a few.
    • Charity: Before she was arrested on false accusations, she would help the helpless as if it was second nature. Her stint in the dungeon, undergoing torture strong enough to break even the most hardened night, for a month, killed that aspect of her character to just about anyone but her daughters, and those who struggle very, very hard to earn her favor and trust.
    • Chastity: The one time she shared a bed with a man was with Prince Albert, on their wedding night, resulting in two wonderful daughters. The trauma Albert inflicted on her with his betrayal has made it very hard for her to recognize any other man as a romantic prospect.
    • Kindness: She is always gentle and kind, after a fashion. She may be extremely blunt, but her words are always crafted in a manner to see to it that you have the best chances of survival in the world.
  • Showy Invincible Hero: For some reason, it is immensely gratifying to watch her mow through enemies, monster or human, like they're nothing.
  • Skewed Priorities: When her twin daughters provided her birthday presents made of cheap silver and gold tinned foil, a goblin stole them, thinking they were actual silver and gold. As a result, she went from goblin's nest to goblin's nest, perfectly willing to exterminate the entire race in order to find them. She doesn't even give the child and mama dragon ruling the guilty pack, or their treasures, a second glance when she finally finds them.
  • So Beautiful, It's a Curse: She grew up to be drop-dead gorgeous, and this only served to make her suffering worse.
  • Sour Prude: Thanks to her noble upbringing, she is deeply embarrassed of her body and shows as little skin as humanly possible. What's worse, it's justified in that she and her daughters don't tan. Prolonged exposure to the direct rays of the summer sun makes them all blister and turn a nice shade of broiled lobster, without heavy application of Canary's magical sun-screen.
  • Struggling Single Mother: As spelled out by the title, Shirley is the single mother of two adorable little twin girls and has to take up the dangerous task of adventuring to make ends meet. The "Struggling" part of the trope, however, is largely self-imposed and thus downplayed, as Shirley is B-rank purely by choice despite the Guild's attempts to convince her to accept a promotion to A-rank (long story short, she values the freedom she has and the time she spends with her daughters too much), and while not living in obvious wealth, her daughters do not appear to want for anything (it probably helps that the trio were taken in by a very nice couple who insist on helping Shirley out); Shirley simply has absurdly huge standards regarding her parenting to an almost comical degree, to the point that she seeks out a dragon-slaying quest just so she can get the one ingredient that the local pharmacy is missing for a special medicine that will cure her daughters' illness... which Martha pointed out would most probably run its course in just a few days and even compares it to the common cold.
  • Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Cold and aloof on once side, sweet and loving on the other.
  • Summon to Hand: How she manifests her weapons. When she's done, they disappear.
  • Super Drowning Skills: She is utterly incapable of swimming. She sets foot in a body of water, and she sinks like a rock. If she has to take an underwater quest, she will split the body of water like Moses and run through the dry land before the water collapses in.
  • Surprise Pregnancy: She realized she was pregnant shortly after escaping the castle dungeons and started getting nausea in the mornings, then started counting back to her last period...
  • This Is Unforgivable!: Though she may have given up on pursuing revenge, she's not going to forgive the cruel and unjust treatment she received from her former family, servants, and the crown prince, who was her fiance.
  • Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Seeing the entire adventurer's guild come to her aid in defending her daughters, risking their lives in the process, more for its own sake than for the fact they were being paid, showed her that her fellow adventurers can be trusted, and she started being more willing to happily join parties and mingle with others, as opposed to being cold, aloof, and anti-social.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: When she was first thrown into the dungeon, she believed there had to be some kind of mistake and the crown prince would wake up and come to her rescue. After the level of torture got to the point that hardened soldiers would break into a weeping, drooling mess on the floor, with the head-torturer himself only going through the motions, since he saw no further point, she Stopped Caring and became utterly murderous, sad that she missed the opportunity to murder said torturer when he ran out of the room after seeing her Traumatic Superpower Awakening.
  • Took a Level in Kindness: When she came to the adventurer's guild in the kingdom, she was little more than a feral animal with a couple of cubs. The kindness shown to her by Martha, who refused to stop stretching out her hand to help, no matter how much it looked like Shirley would bite it off, allowed Shirley to mellow, and open her heart to others again, ever so slightly.
  • Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Became a "semi-immortal" as a result of torture in the castle dungeons.
  • The Un-Favourite: Up to eleven! Not only did her parents enforce a serious double-standard that she could do no right, beating her for the tiniest mistake, while Alice could do no wrong, praised for the "accomplishment" of existing, and allowed Shirley to be bullied by just about everyone, no way to resist, fight back, or escape, but the list below is hardly exhaustive:
    • She was fed only the most stale and miserable of leftovers, barely enough to maintain her frame.
    • She was not allowed to sleep in a bed, she'd be thrown out of the house, into the yard, regardless of the weather, and if she tried to take shelter under a roof too close to the family home, she'd be beaten.
    • Her brothers and sisters would be praised for "accidentally" spilling her meals over her.
    • She would be hunted down and dragged home, like an animal, if she tried to run away.

    Tio and Sophia 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sphila_and_tio.jpg

Shirley's twin daughters.


  • A-Cup Angst: Sophia, despite being only 10, is insecure that she has a flat chest, and is jealous that Tio, who doesn't give a damn about it, has her chest growing first.
  • Badass Adorable: They are adorable little girls, but when Gran came after them, they led him through the forest through a bunch of childish traps, trouncing him no less than three times before help arrived in the form of Canary, teleporting him right in front of Shirley, who had a few choice words for him.
  • Bedmate Reveal: Even though they're old enough to sleep in their own beds, Shirley has often woken up to find that they've snuck into her bed and cuddle her.
  • Child by Rape: Both are the product of the sexual abuse Shirley suffered.
  • Children Are Innocent: Though Shirley rightly hates their father, she loves these two adorable little girls because they're innocent, sweet little children who adore her.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: In a non-romantic way. They know Kyle is a good man, and appraise him very highly. In fact, he's come to their rescue at incredible risk and effort, and they honestly believe he will make their mother happy, but they're not quite ready to give up having a monopoly on her attention just yet.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Tio has red eyes and wears red clothing. Sophia has blue eyes and wears blue clothing.
  • The Cutie: They're the kind of kids any parent dreams of and are totally adorable.
  • Like Father, Unlike Son: It's a happy miracle that they didn't turn out like their self-centered and egotistical boor of father in any way.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: Loving and raising them is what lets Shirley stay sane and feel happy after the hell she went through.
  • Morality Chain: Their very existence is the only reason Shirley didn't go on a bloody rampage in her home country, murdering every last man, woman, and child who treated her horribly.
  • Polar Opposite Twins: Downplayed. Sophia is bright and energetic while Tio is very sleepy and subdued.
  • Prone to Sunburn: Which they unfortunately inherited from their mother.
  • Shipper on Deck: They fully support Kyle dating their mother, they just think it's too soon.
  • Sleepyhead: Tio is always sleepy, causing her to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere at the drop of a hat.
  • Sword and Sorcerer: Tio prefers to bash things with a sword while Sophia prefers magic.

Supporting Characters

    Martha and her husband 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/martha_and_husband.png

The innkeepers of Deficit Inn, where Shirley and her daughters live.


    Yumina 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/yumine_motomusu.png

The adventurer guild's secretary.


  • Sexy Secretary: Deconstructed. She's gorgeous, but that tends to give her grief from the rough and rowdy adventurers, with Shirley frequently having to come to her rescue.
  • Shoot the Messenger: On the receiving end. The guild master yells at her whenever Shirley refuses a rank up, and sends her out to try again.
  • They Just Dont Get It: Invoked. No matter how Shirley spells out that her daughters are far more important to her than the meaningless rank-up, to become the nation's disposable weapon, Yumina just does not stop trying to cajole her into ranking up because the guild master compels her to do so.

    Kyle 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kyle_motomusu.png

A rookie magical knight, freshly recruited to the adventurer's guild.


  • Allergic to Love: He is completely captivated by Shirley, but he's such a shy and innocent virgin boy that the mere act of touching her hand while she's wearing a bikini causes his nose to erupt like a volcano.
  • Amazon Chaser: Shirley's power and mastery of the sword are one of the things that make him enamored with her.
  • Ascended Fanboy: When Yumina informs him that Shirley is going to be in a high-rank party to train newbie adventurers like himself, he can't sign on fast enough.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • He chances upon Sophia and Tio being kidnapped by Leblanc, and beats up Leblanc's thugs to protect the little girls.
    • He manages to do it to Shirley, by coming upon her nearly drowning in a lake in the woods, and fishing her out.
  • Boring, but Practical: How he takes to adventuring. He finds that unlike his romanticized image, adventuring is a slow, grueling, disgusting job, so the more practical your equipment, weapons, and acts, the better.
  • Butt-Monkey: Or The Chew Toy, depending on who you ask. In his P.O.V. chapters, things tend to go wrong for him all the time, especially whenever he's on a goblin subjugation mission.
  • Character Catchphrase: "How did things turn out like this?!"
  • Conveniently an Orphan: Raised in an orphanage and turned to adventuring to repay them for treating him kindly.
  • Defeating the Undefeatable: He may have had a bit of help from Tio and Sophia, but he's the one who took down Crowley, when Canary, Asterious, and even Shirley herself failed to do so.
  • Dogged Nice Guy: He follows Shirley around like a puppy, trying to get her to notice his affection for her, every chance he gets. She's completely clueless.
  • Everyone Can See It: The only person who doesn't notice how much he wants a romantic relationship with Shirley is Shirley herself.
  • Heroes Prefer Swords: Played with. While he does indeed prefer to use a sword, he finds he has more talent with a club or mace while in his second goblin hunt. His sword breaks, the only available weapon being a scavenged goblin club. With this club, he goes on to solo a goblin queen and the rest of the nest with her. In-universe, that's pretty damn impressive for an E-rank novice.
  • Hopeless Suitor: He desperately wants to start a romantic relationship with Shirley, but not only is she uninterested, she's completely oblivious and simply refuses to notice.
  • Hormone-Addled Teenager: Puberty has hit this boy hard, and he harbors lustful thoughts towards Shirley, who saved his life.
  • Jack of All Trades: As a magic knight, he's got a bit of skill with just about everything, magic, healing magic, swords, magic barriers, and clubs or maces, making him valuable to just about any party.
  • Magic Knight: His profession.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: He is the mayfly. Thanks to being Semi-immortal, Shirley does not age and will have an 18-year-old body for as long as she lives. He has a normal human lifespan and is half her age, his 15 to her 30.
  • Naïve Newcomer: Fresh to the adventurer's guild, and doesn't know his way around.
  • Nosebleed: Played for laughs. Shirley's body has such a strong effect on him, the moment he sees her in a bikini and they rub up the wrong way, he gets a head-busting nose-bleed so strong, his skin turns blue and Shirley then has to go fight off the monsters lured by the scent of blood.
  • Refuge in Audacity: He gets away with punching Emperor Albert in the face because he silently cast enhancement magic on himself and the punch rendered the asshole unconscious before he even saw it coming. He's actually shocked at how well that went off.
  • Rescue Romance: He is smitten with Shirley, not just because of her beauty and skill, but because she rescued him from an earth dragon that screwed up his first ever goblin hunt and wiped out the rest of his party.
  • Sole Survivor: Joins a well-balanced party with a spear-wielder vanguard, priestess, and female archer, to take on a low level goblin subjugation quest. Is the only one still alive when Shirley shows up. Sounds familiar.
  • Suicidal Overconfidence: He and his party didn't take a goblin extermination request seriously, thinking goblins were only as strong and smart as children. Although the party did pretty good against the goblins, once a dragon showed up to help said goblins, their plans, formation, and mental state fell completely apart, resulting in a near Total Party Kill.
  • Sympathetic P.O.V.: Aside from Shirley, he's pretty much the only one who gets narration through his point of view.
  • Taught by Experience: After his first ever goblin hunting mission goes poorly, he takes all adventurer quests seriously, and checks all his equipment with care, proceeding slowly and carefully in all quests, even "simple" quests like a goblin extermination, because in adventuring anything can happen.
  • Trauma Button: He has lingering fears of goblins after his first foray against a goblin nest went horribly wrong.

    Asterious' party 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/motomusuparty.png
Opportunity? To die quickly, maybe!

The party Shirley is roped into baby-sitting while hunting a dragon in the gem mines.


  • Badass Preacher: Asterious is a warrior monk, and official A-rank adventurer.
  • Barrier Warrior: Asterios casts powerful magic barrier as his adventuring forte.
  • Fighter, Mage, Thief: Cudd is the scout, while Leia is the mage/archer and Kyle is the fighter/mage.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: Leia is half-human and half-elf.
  • Meaningful Name: Asterious is a minotaur, and his given name name is the same as that of the original Minotaur from Classical Mythology.
  • The Napoleon: Leia is well aware that she's short for her age and is very combative as a result.
  • Our Minotaurs Are Different: Asterious is a minotaur beastman, belonging to an entire species rather than being a unique monster; said species is presumably on overall friendly terms with more humanlike ones given how he's treated the same as anyone else of his rank and profession.
  • Pointed Ears: Leia is half-elf and has pointed ears as a result.
  • Sacred Bow and Arrows: Leia is a magic archer.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: Leia and Cudd, the scout, fight near constantly, but they are on the same party and cover for each other in battle all the time.

    Canary 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/motomusu07_canary.png

The true guild master of the adventurer's guild.


  • The Ageless: Like Shirley, she's a semi-immortal. Old age is not a threat to her life, at all.
  • Benevolent Monsters: She's a demon in reality, and she's among the powers protecting humanity, even if it is purely because it amuses her and she's seeking returns on her monetary investments.
  • Cute Little Fangs: She has adorable feline fangs, as fitting for her nature as a demon and treacherous personality.
  • Dark and Troubled Past: In her home country, as she was growing up, magical prowess was all that mattered. She had little to none, so was starved, beaten, neglected, and abused, and when she turned 10, dumped in a forest to die. She awoke as a semi-immortal as a result and now having near infinite power, went on a bloody rampage of revenge, took over and ruled with an iron fist. She eventually came into conflict with neighboring countries and so "heroes" were summoned to stop her. One of them managed to win her heart, marry her, but mere days after their twin daughters was born, he died of illness. In her grief, she went mad and into a fugue where she believed if she turned the world similar to the "Japan" he came from, he'd come back. Eighty years later, she woke from her fugue only to watch her more "human" daughter on her death-bed, of old age.
  • Deal with the Devil: How she normally operates.
  • The Gadfly: She loves to tease her friends, family, and the adventurers under her just to get a strong reaction.
  • Horned Humanoid: She has large horns om the side of her head.
  • Immortal Immaturity: She's thousands of years old, but acts like a child who gets a thrill out of pranking people. There's some speculation that The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body involved since she also looks like a child, and is stuck in a child-like body as a result of becoming semi-immortal.
  • Love Redeems: She was beaten by a summoned hero, not in combat, but by giving her the one thing she really needed, but never got, a loving home.
  • Pointy Ears: She has pointed ears due to being a demon.
  • Poke the Poodle: How does she want Shirley and her daughters to repay her for moving heaven and earth to protect them from a massive dragon invasion and getting Shirley to have her precious Parent Visitation day? Shove them into working a maid cafe!
  • Really 700 Years Old: She's thousands of years old.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Combined with Screw the Rules, I Have Money!. She's the real power in the kingdom, and has enough money to get her way in just about everything.
  • Shadow Archetype: Her backstory is very, very similar to Shirley, up to and including having parents who abused her for things beyond her control. Unfortunately, she had no Prince Charming to rescue her when she was 10, nor a law against being dumped in a forest, so that's what happened. So when she awoke as a semi-immortal, she went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and tore a bloody swath through her home country, only stopped when a summoned "hero" wooed and married her.
  • Shipper on Deck: She pushed Kyle into confessing to Shirley. Unfortunately, Shirley's previous trauma with romance left her completely clueless.
  • Trapped in Villainy: As a result of becoming semi-immortal, she can only do "evil" things. She stops at pranking people because that's the dying wish of her beloved husband.
  • Villain of Another Story: 1000 years ago, she was the Demon King that heroes had to be summoned to fight against.

    Dimros 
The town blacksmith.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: He's very grouchy, but this is just for show. He's really very empathic and cares about his customer's well-being.
  • Our Dwarves Are All the Same: He's a dwarf, a blacksmith, and grumpy but loving, check. The only thing not certain is if he likes alcohol, since nobody drinks on-screen in the story.
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: He's so good at smithing that he's the only one who can work on Shirley's swords, both of which are national treasures thousands of years old and carry multiple enchantments.

    King Edward Pendragon 
The king of the country where Shirley does her adventuring.
  • Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Is constantly overwhelmed by the paperwork Canary dumps upon him after major emergency adventurer's guild requests, and they are frequent.
  • A Father to His Men: He treasures his knights and citizens as if they were his own children, which is why he doesn't like war. But threaten them, by say, casting mind-control curses, or sending armed invaders to try and kidnap them, and war it is.
  • The Good King: Rules the kingdom with a firm but gentle hand.
  • Red Baron: "Black Lion King."

    Alicia Pendragon 
Wife of Edward Pendragon, Queen, and mother of Edward's sons.
  • Bathtub Bonding: Shares a bath with Shirley, Phillia, Lumilia, Sophia, Tio, and Grimhilda.
  • Casual Kink: When she's got Kyle in attendance and notices his reaction to Shirley's past, she whispers some rather racy S&M stuff to him, after commending his desire to have averted her suffering, had he been there.
  • Covert Pervert: She has quite the kinky imagination.
  • The High Queen: Queen of the kingdom and a beloved, benevolent ruler.

    Grania 
An S-class adventurer who takes up Shirley's request to investigate the magic curse targeting her daughters.
  • The Ace: The best witch in the kingdom.
  • Adventure Archaeologist: She's and adventurer and she loves to explore ruins for lost knowledge and hidden treasures, simply for its own sake.
  • Hot Witch: She's gorgeous, loves to flaunt it, and she's a witch.
  • One Degree of Separation: She has strong connections to many in the small village where Shirley and her daughters live. She's a blood relative to both Yumina and Canary, and was mentored in magic by Asterious.
  • Red Baron: "The Illusionary Butterfly."
  • Shameless Fanservice Girl: Her witch's outfit leaves precious little to the imagination.

    Phillia Ragdoll 
Albert's younger sister.
  • Brutal Honesty: She does not mince words on telling Albert how bad he's screwing the pooch in running the empire, and how big a hedonistic harlot Alice is. He remains unmoved, completely believing he's doing a good job and Phyllia is just a naive and ignorant brat.
  • Fangirl: Has admired Shirley since the two met when Shirley arrived at the castle and is utterly disgusted by how easily Albert believed lies that got the poor woman arrested and tortured on false charges.
  • Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Blonde, and a good, kind woman who idolized Shirley since childhood.
  • Late to the Tragedy: By the time she heard how her brother had wronged Shirley, it was after the poor woman had already been in the torture dungeon for a month, and try as fast as she could to come to Shirley's rescue, by the time she got back, Shirley had already escaped. She does not believe Shirley ever wants to see her again as a result.
  • Little Sister Heroine: Has admired Shirley since she was 6, and has the genuine interests of the empire at heart, as well as being Albert's younger sister.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: By proxy. After Albert betrayed Shirley, sided with people who murdered their parents, the former Emperor and Empress, to ascend the throne himself, and made the lives of the citizens hell, just to sate Alice's endless appetite for opulence, and continuously shuts her out and shouts her down, she's gone taken to all the dukes and nobles along the border, along with the aristocrats of her faction, and is slowly, but surely, ceding the Empire away from Albert, one fief at a time, until he has nothing left and is forced to give up his throne. She knows this is an act of high-treason if Albert ever wakes up from his Alice-induced obliviousness, but she can't see any other way, aside from a violent revolution and civil-war, which would be infinitely worse.
  • Only Sane Man: She is the only aristocrat in the country that genuinely sided with Shirley on the day she was falsely arrested, and keeps trying to get prince Albert to pull back from provoking the wrath of King Edward. Albert remains completely unmoved and the aristocrats may not support him either, but are just sitting on the sidelines to see what will happen.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: She's fond of calling out Alice for her duplicity and Albert's foolish insistence on believing her lies.
  • Self-Inflicted Hell: She doesn't even try to connect with Shirley because she believes that her family's crimes are unforgivable, and Shirley wants nothing to do with her, even though there was nothing she could have done at the time. Shirley herself telling her that is not the case causes her to completely break down and cry.

    Lumiliana 
Phillia's top retainer and bodyguard.
  • Master Swordsman: She won the Imperial tournament, beating out Gran, as the best swordsman for the empire, ending his winning streak and claiming the championship for herself.
  • My Master, Right or Wrong: An ancient curse on her bloodline forces her to devote her life to her master, regardless of her wishes or her master's character. Fortunately, Phillia is a good, kind woman more than worthy of her loyalty.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Phillia.

    Grimhilda 
Daughter of the demon king.
  • A-Cup Angst: She bonds with Sophia over having yet to experience growth in her chest. What's worse, she's aware her mother is ... lacking in that area so has even less hope of being busty when she grows up.
  • Born Unlucky: Any game that has a component of chance to it will go badly for her. In fact, while playing a fantasy RPG version of "Life" with Sophia, Tio, and a few others, the roulette keeps on giving her the worst possible rolls, driving her deeper and deeper into debt.
  • Children Are Innocent: Even though she's of the demon race, which has a bad reputation, she's a sweet girl who happily plays with Sophia, Tio, and others without prejudice.
  • Horned Humanoid: As expected of a demon, she's got horns.
  • In-Universe Nickname: Sophia and Tio affectionately dub her "Hilda" as they kept tripping over their tongues trying to say her full name.
  • Living MacGuffin: She's been targeted by Phantom Thief, to be kidnapped for a year, and then returned with her memories altered so she doesn't remember what he did to her.
  • Lord Error-Prone: She was taught on how to talk like a princess, but she doesn't grasp the meaning of the terms she says, like "Noblesse Oblige."
  • Sheltered Aristocrat: As the princess of the demon kingdom, with an overprotective dad, she has almost no contact with the outside world and has left her completely oblivious as to how real life works.

    Zector Eisen-Quartz 
The demon king.
  • Birds of a Feather: Bonds with Shirley because they're both equally overprotective of their respective daughters, even going so far as to compare their respective "diaries", and fight over which of their daughters is cuter than the other.
  • Serious Business: His daughter is the cutest girl in the world! No objections or contrary opinions allowed! When Shirley insisted her daughters are the cutest, it was open warfare between the two.
  • Technician Versus Performer: He's the performer to Shirley's technician.

Antagonists

    Alice Ragdoll 
Shirley's sister.
  • Asshole Victim: As a direct result of being kidnapped by Gran, she's lost her physical beauty beyond repair, from heavy and debilitating scars all over her body, making Emperor Albert seriously consider abandoning her as a direct result, and having witnessed through Gran's eyes irrefutable evidence of her adultery. Considering how downright nasty she's been in the story, she had this coming.
  • Attention Whore: As is the case with Albert, she must be at the center of attention, as much as humanly possible. When her many, many illicit trysts start paying more attention to Shirley than herself, she immediately goes full tilt murder-jealous, convinced Shirley is trying to steal them away.
  • Bad Boss: In volume 3 of the novel, it's revealed that the servants, either in the palace or ancestral home, are terrified of her. She changes her whims all the time, without warning, and if they're not met, she gets abrasive and violent, even splashing one of the servants with boiling hot tea that she herself demanded because she changed her mind about the flavor while it was brewing, without informing the servant, until she had the tea in hand, and then fired the servant on the spot for not bowing fast enough.
  • Big Brother Bully: Gender-inverted and exaggerated to horrific levels. She went out of her way to harass, attack, and spite Shirley her whole life, knowing that Shirley could not defend herself or fight back.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: With P.O.V. chapters from many characters, it's shown that she's great at presenting an image as being the epitome of innocence to those who aren't aware of her true personality and circumstances.
  • Cain and Abel: She's obviously the Cain to Shirley's Abel.
  • The Corrupter: Everyone who falls under her influence and listens to her honey-coated words becomes an absolutely heinous individual.
  • Crocodile Tears: Cried tears on demand when she "regretfully" came forward and accused Shirley of many terrible things, with no evidence whatsoever. Even telling the crown that Shirley's the one who bullied her as a child, not the other way around.
  • Driven by Envy: Despite being rather pretty herself, she's always been envious of Shirley's superior beauty, so went out of her way to utterly destroy Shirley, in every way she could.
  • Entitled Bastard: The best things in life are hers by birthright, no exceptions, and no talking back. It doesn't matter how bad the lives of the commoners are made by pushing the tax rates higher and higher to pay for it.
  • Entitled to Have You: To Prince Albert. When Prince Albert picked up Shirley, and declared her his fiancee, Alice immediately proclaimed that Shirley "stole Albert" from her, telling herself that Shirley deserved to be taken to a dungeon to be tortured.
  • Evil Makes You Ugly: Invoked. Her hedonistic and adulterous lifestyle aged her at an accelerated rate, making her spend money like it grew on trees, and rather fast-growing trees at that, to buy beauty products, but chewing out Gran in disgust resulted in permanent disfigurement through scarring that can no longer be concealed. The only reason Albert has any hesitation about abandoning her is that it would be poor publicity to disown a woman for being kidnapped and maimed.
  • Evil Uncle: Gender-inverted. She's the maternal aunt of Tio and Sophia, Shirley's daughters, yet she's solely responsible for making their mother's life a living hell. She also resents how she's rendered barren by a venereal disease while Shirley has two lovely daughters, and wishes to gain custody over Tio and Sophia just to betroth them to the most heinous, abhorrent, fat and ugly aristocrats she can find out of pure spite.
  • Hate Sink: For falsely accusing Shirley of a great many crimes that she herself is guilty of, so that Shirley winds up being tortured in a dungeon, to the point that her body is in literal tatters, purely to steal Prince Albert away for herself, using hypnosis magic to lure men into her bed to be her pawns after marrying Albert, serving as the Freudian Excuse of many villains, convincing Albert to drive the empire into crippling poverty with withering tax rates, just to slake her own insatiable personal desire for wealth and luxury, and lastly, scheming to steal away Shirley's daughters to shove them off onto the most physically and morally repulsive nobles she can find, to stick it to Shirley for the "crime" of being more beautiful than herself, and daring to give birth to Albert's children when she can't, have made her abjectly loathed, in universe and out.
  • The Hedonist: Upon becoming Empress, she convinces Emperor Albert to strangle the Empire's economy with withering tax rates so she can indulge in luxuries during the day and spectacular balls at night.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Her hedonistic ways not only age her unnaturally fast, giving her wrinkles that she needs to cover with heavy make-up, despite being under 30, but she learns that she has a venereal disease that renders her barren, when her being the Empress requires being able to give the Emperor an heir.
    • And it gets worse. When her lies got Shirley banished to a dungeon, she and her parents openly cheered that Shirley was horribly marred by the torture she endured, losing her beauty. Shirley's beauty came back after becoming a semi-immortal, while Alice lost her beauty, permanently, as a result of her own lies provoking Gran into trying to "protect" her by assimilating her and heavily scarring her when they were forcefully separated.
  • Never My Fault: As is the case with most of her pawns, she can not ever comprehend how her acts, or the consequences, can ever be her doing. The blame must lie elsewhere.
  • Pretty Freeloaders: As Empress, all she ever does to merit being married to Albert and getting lavished with luxury, is stand, sit, or lie down, and look pretty. She never bothers to so much as lift a finger to do any of the work to run the empire. It's deconstructed as her excessive luxuries gradually take their toll by physically aging her at an unnatural rate, leading to her making Albert strangle his own kingdom with high taxes just to keep her pampered life going.
  • Psychological Projection: Assigns all her worst traits to Shirley while thinking herself innocent of them.
  • Really Gets Around: Deconstructed. She might as well put a revolving door on her bedroom, considering how many men pass through it. This tendency has caused her not only to age prematurely but has rendered her barren, and she somehow thinks Shirley's at fault for it.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Gran comes to her with his "brilliant" plan to kidnap Shirley's daughters, to use as hostages against Shirley, she really tears into him about how easy he was to manipulate, how stupid he is, and that the only reason she ever let him into her bed chambers was his good looks. His self-proclaimed chivalry being nothing but a delusion.
  • Seven Deadly Sins: She's got the whole set.
    • Greed: All the opulence in the world is rightfully hers, and her appetite is insatiable.
    • Envy: She turns a blind eye to all the advantages against Shirley she has and fixates on everything she does not, like the fact that Shirley's physical beauty is superior, and she has two sweet daughters, completely ignoring the hell Shirley had to go through to get them.
    • Pride: She is so set in the belief that she's inherently superior to everyone that she will ignore her own self-preservation to avenge her bruised ego.
    • Gluttony: She lives life to excess, regardless of the cost.
    • Lust: It's amazing she's ever out of bed because she's got such a long line of men that she shares it with.
    • Wrath: She flies into a rage the moment her whims are not met or she's not the center of attention, worshiped as the smartest, most beautiful, and elegant woman in the world, and sees nothing wrong with torture. In fact, she resents the fact that Shirley has two lovely daughters and wishes to gain custody over them, just to betroth them to the most heinous, abhorrent, fat and ugly aristocrats she can find.
    • Sloth: She's a complete parasite and has everything done for her.
  • Spoiled Brat: Her Abusive Parents raised her to believe she could do no wrong and constantly praised by her family for the "accomplishment" of merely existing.
  • Stupid Evil: She shouts a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Gran when he's mutated into a Humanoid Abomination in front of her, rather than play along and pretend she agrees with him. This causes him to completely retreat into his delusions and physically absorb her, resulting in permanent disfigurement.
  • Traitor Shot: When Prince Albert hugged her, she spotted a Psychotic Smirk so only Shirley could see it. She also does the same to Phillia after Shirley has been unjustly arrested, and the crown family is in splinters.
  • The Vamp: She uses sex as a weapon to ensnare men and bend them to her will.
  • Vanity Is Feminine: Is obsessed with her physical beauty.

    Prince/Emperor Albert Ragdoll 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/motomusu10.png

The Crown-Prince and heir to the throne at the beginning of the series. He later becomes emperor after his parents, the previous Emperor and Empress, were assassinated.


  • Antagonistic Offspring: When his mother and father called him out on his unjust treatment of Shirley, he allied with people who assassinated them.
  • Attention Whore: He has to be in the spotlight, as much as humanly possible. The moment Shirley starts to outshine him, he begins to openly loathe her, and jumps on the first excuse he can to dispose of her.
  • Awakening the Sleeping Giant: After the birth of her daughters, Shirley was content to ignore him to watch the sweet little girls grow up. Desperate for an heir, he has the imperial mages use dark magic to try and kidnap them, repeatedly, in the middle of the day. This not only results in the mages getting cut in half when the curse rebounds as a direct result of Shirley's retaliation, but now she's out for his blood, and he remains blissfully unaware.
  • Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: He's the one who executes Gran, graphically.
  • Believing Their Own Lies: He has completely rewritten his memory of events over the last 10 years. He uses the long forgotten Hero Summoning Ritual to summon an entire class of teenagers from modern Earth to go after Canary "for kidnapping his beloved Shirley and his daughters while driving his empire to abysmal poverty through theft of national treasures" and brainwashes them to believe it so they agree with his delusions of what actually occurred. One of these children sees through the sham and flees first chance he gets.
  • Brainwashing for the Greater Good: In this case, the "greater good" is bringing Tio and Sophia to their "loving father where they belong" and agreeing to the delusion that he's a paragon of virtue. In order to have people sing his praises, as he believes he's entitled, he will brainwash anyone and everyone he can. He has had the court mages try to brainwash Tio and Sophia repeatedly, would brainwash Shirley herself if he could, and sees nothing wrong with brainwashing an entire school of teenage children he kidnapped from another world with a summoning ritual so they agree with him.
  • The Caligula: He's a horrible ruler, even without Alice's influence. When he ascends to the throne, he openly insults his neighboring countries in their own territory and is shocked when the relations sour.
  • Can't Take Criticism: Whenever he's called out on his poor decisions, he just gets more recalcitrant and convinced he's on the right course, yelling at his critic and driving them out of his audience chambers.
  • Determinator: In his quest to kidnap Shirley's daughters, he does not give up. When magic fails to work, he sends actual kidnappers.
  • The Emperor: Ascends the throne after his father, but he's Emperor Incompetent, and Emperor Evil. Letting himself be strung along by Alice has led him to making horrible governmental policies, like strangling the economy with withering tax rates, just so his "gentle, beloved" wife can drown in luxuries during the day, and grand balls at night.
  • Entitled to Have You: To Shirley and her daughters. He has completely deluded himself into believing he can have a happy family with all of them, picking up his relationship with Shirley like nothing's happened, and that he's done nothing wrong. It doesn't matter who calls him out on his previous actions, including torturing her in a dungeon for a month, to the point that she and her daughters would have died if she hadn't become a semi-immortal, and branding her a criminal exile, forcing her to flee the country and be a Struggling Single Mother for ten years. He will not be swayed, period.
  • Hate Sink: Cheating on Shirley with Alice, happily believing Alice's false accusations, without evidence of any kind, driving his empire into the ground just to appease Alice, willingly turning a blind eye to her villainy, and shouting down anyone who calls them out on it, and rather than taking a concubine, or even adopting an orphan or two when Alice proves barren, repeatedly trying to kidnap Shirley's daughters, damn their well-being, and fully expecting that Shirley will happily agree to be his mistress, after he himself sentenced her to be tortured until she confesses to the false accusations, and exiling her when she escaped, deluding himself into thinking he's done nothing wrong, has alienated the fanbase, all the neighboring countries, and the vast majority of his own population.
  • Heir Club for Men: The only reason he ascended the throne upon the death of his parents is that Imperial law only allows women to ascend if there are no male heirs. He's so deluded that he absolutely refuses to admit to this.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Deconstructed. He holds up Alice's Crocodile Tears as proof that Alice is the innocent victim of slander, but holds Shirley's genuine tears as Crocodile Tears, and proof of her treachery. He utterly refuses to let an annoying little thing like empirical evidence sway him. It leads to many people hating his guts, most of all Shirley herself as well as his little sister Phillia, who idolized Shirley.
  • I Control My Minions Through...: Their most base desires. He gets the imperial mages to target Shirley's daughters by telling them that if Shirley retaliates and comes into the empire to take the little girls back, they can then capture Shirley to use as their toy. Said mages, ecstatic at the prospect carry out the spell only to be sliced in half as a result of the rebound.
  • Ignored Epiphany: When he learned that Shirley's parents, his Royal Favorite, are the ones responsible for the murder of his parents, after Philia found hard evidence and arrested them, and he can no longer deny Alice's harlotry, he comes to realize that Shirley was the best thing to ever enter his life, but just before he has to admit to himself that he's the one who drove her out of his life, he comes up with a hair-brained delusion that Canary has somehow taken Shirley hostage and is holding her against her will.
  • I Reject Your Reality: He is utterly convinced that he's a good ruler who will be sung about as a Living Legend through the centuries, and Alice is a good, kind woman who soothes his soul. His younger sister Phillia pointing out how wrong this is with hard facts and figures only makes him more recalcitrant, and he can't understand why this alienates her and causes a schism between them. He even refuses to give up on kidnapping his biological daughters, despite having it spelled out for him that they can't possibly inherit because he himself exiled their mother. What's worse is that because the Empire simply has more landmass, he thinks he's the superior country, despite the fact that Phillia spells out that the size of the country is not what matters, but the strength of their armed forces, of which King Edward is vastly superior, and getting his empire a reputation as kidnappers, especially to a Father to His Men king like Edward, the resulting open warfare would not go well.
  • Kangaroo Court: Put Shirley through one. Not only did he shout a bunch of accusations at her, he yelled "Silence! I don't want to hear your poisonous words!" then turns to the palace guards and yells "Take her away" with Shirley's pleas falling on deaf ears.
  • Like Father, Unlike Son: His parents were both good, kind, and wise rulers who adored Shirley for her character. By stark contrast, he's a total boor who unjustly treated Shirley with contempt and scorn just to soothe his own ego, and is determined to drive his empire into the ground while thinking himself a good ruler.
  • Miles Gloriosus: He's utterly convinced that he's a strategic and tactical genius, not to mention a powerful martial powerhouse. He's wrong on all counts, even being taken down with ease by Kyle, a rookie adventurer with only the most minimal of martial training.
  • Narcissist: He suffers from an acute case of Hero Syndrome specifically, being addicted to the praise of rescuing damsels in distress. It wasn't enough for him that Shirley already adored him for pulling her out of her terrible living situation. The moment she began working to make herself more of an equal to him, he turned on her, for if she could become his equal, all of that praise he craved would no longer be going solely to him. Like most narcissists, he's also pathologically incapable of acknowledging his mistakes.
  • Never My Fault: He is pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for his actions, or those of Alice. He blames anyone and everyone that comes to mind, with no evidence whatsoever, if he can convince himself in his own mind that he's blameless.
  • No Guy Wants an Amazon: After Shirley trained, struggled, and worked to become a worthy wife to him, he grew insecure and began to openly loathe her to the point he happily accepted Alice's false accusations of infidelity, even though Shirley was completely innocent.
  • Psychological Projection: Since he's an adulterous bastard, he finds it very easy to believe Shirley screwed around on him, despite such a thing being utterly impossible.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: Whenever things don't go his way, he throws tantrums and pouts like a spoiled child, and he's rotten to the core.
  • Refuge in Audacity: He certainly tried. When his champion was beaten in a duel, he walked up to Sophia, Tio, and Shirley, stretched out his hand and asked the girls to call him "papa" despite knowing the girls were aware that he had repeatedly attempted to kidnap them, so when the girls reject him, he doubles down by promising to take Shirley as a mistress, despite being well aware of how he unjustly treated her. He gets punched in the face by Kyle in response.
  • Remarried to the Mistress: He marries Alice the moment Shirley is taken off to a dungeon to be tortured into a false confession.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Combined with Revenge Myopia. After everything he's done, and having his champion defeated in a duel he demanded himself, he starts preparing for total war to avenge his bruised ego, and Kyle's punch to his face. He utterly refuses to acknowledge how easy he got off for his villainy, or the fact that he's a villain at all.
  • Selective Obliviousness: Alice has so many men going into the marital bed that the bedroom door might as well be a revolving door. Yet Albert is not only blissfully unaware, but verbally attacks anyone who dares point out how much of a harlot Alice is.
  • Smug Snake: He truly believes he's superior to everyone, and laughs off reports that the town he seeks to kidnap his daughters from has someone who can take down a dragon king in single combat.
  • Straw Hypocrite: Is faithful to Alice despite cheating on Shirley. What's worse, he also turns a completely blind eye to Alice's flagrant adultery, but completely blew his stack on the accusation that Shirley cheated on him, despite the sheer impossibility of it.
  • Straw Misogynist: As long as women are pretty, and inferior to the point they're dependent on him, he's happy. When Shirley became a Master Swordsman, Badass Bookworm, and Lady of War, and becoming more popular with the commoners than himself, he jumped on the first excuse he could to have her taken to be tortured into signing a false confession, so he could legally have her executed.
  • They Just Dont Get It: He sees the mage casting the kidnap curse in front of him sliced in half by the rebound, and rather than investigate why, simply summons a stronger mage to try again. Had he investigated, he would have realized he's holding on to his life only because Shirley wasn't certain the target was her daughters. The moment the second attempt is carried out, Shirley is able to deduce his responsibility and starts making counter-measures.
  • Too Dumb to Live: In addition to ignoring his crumbling throne by feeding his heroism addiction with Alice's Crocodile Tears, he tells Alice that she doesn't have to worry about being barren, because he's going to lay claim to his daughters through Shirley, a fierce Mama Bear who he knows can defeat a dragon king in single combat and should have a murderous grudge against him, being sent to a dungeon and tortured for a confession to false charges. Not to mention thinking nothing of the fact he's igniting his wife's jealous fury by mentioning Shirley's name.
  • Tyrant Takes the Helm: Though the empire wasn't exactly a nice place to live before, due to the aristocrats being pompous windbags who had the forces of law and order in their pockets, butt-hurt that they couldn't trample the citizens as they pleased because an armed revolt yanked the crown away from their control, Albert's ascension to emperor made the empire a Wretched Hive. Crippling taxes have all but eliminated the local businesses, poverty is rampant, the nobility once again have the emperor as a Puppet King, and Albert's own boorish behavior has alienated all the neighboring countries which retaliate with crippling tariffs and embargoes, and he's completely deluded himself into thinking he's doing a good job, because his castle is opulent, and his wife throws fancy balls every night. When even that falls apart, he just takes to sitting in the ruins his throne used to be and shouting at everyone else in impotent rage.
  • The Unapologetic: Since he's completely deluded into thinking he's done nothing wrong, he believes he has no reason to apologize to Shirley for the hell he put her through, for the full month's worth of horrific torture and hunting her down like an animal, as a result of convicting her in his own mind and the court of public opinion, on false charges, and then when his agents are caught red-handed launching an armed invasion into the kingdom, instead of apologizing to King Edward, he sends a letter with an angry ultimatum, and is shocked that King Edwards responds with This Means War!.
  • Virtue Is Weakness: He sees King Edward's reluctance to go to war as a critical weakness. He's shocked into silence and turns pale when King Edward preempts him and threatens him with war instead, after he repeatedly sent magic curses and an armed invasion to try and kidnap Shirley's daughters, who are officially citizens of Edward's kingdom.

    Rudolph Leblanc 
The head of a black ops group tasked by Albert to kidnap Sophia and Tio, and then try to lure Shirley into Empire territory.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: While his idiocy and naivete played a part, Alice used some kind of magical perfume to brainwash him and warp his will.
  • The Farmer and the Viper: How does he repay Shirley for rescuing him from slavery? Happily believing the lies she was accused of, and when those were debunked, trying to kidnap her daughters.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Shirley doesn't kill him, oh no. She puts him through hell, literally, destroying his mind, over and over again.
  • Insane Troll Logic: We're talking 31 flavors of balls-to-the-wall batshit crazy here. Granted, his mind was addled by Alice using hypnosis magic on him, but his train of thought makes sense to him and him alone.
    • He is disgusted when Shirley's accused of a bunch of crimes by Albert, believing all the kindness she showed him was false, and Shirley's true character is that of a lying, scheming Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who is all smiles in public, monstrous behind closed doors, despite lack of evidence and not even seeing it himself.
    • Escaping from horrific torture in the castle dungeons, because the torturer himself left the door open, is further proof of her guilt, and angrily leads the forces hunting her down.
    • Albert and Alice telling him that Shirley committed crimes at Canary's behest, and under Canary's control, means Shirley was in fact the kind woman who rescued him from slavery and a ship wreck, and that means Shirley and Alice were both victims because Shirley bullying Alice must have been at Canary's command too, and Shirley was powerless against Canary.
    • Luring Sophia and Tio to an alley, grabbing them, insulting their home town, lifestyle, and given names, and trying to drag them across national borders against their will, would not only be completely forgiven by the girls, but would make them happy merely because he and a bunch of thugs, who are complete strangers, told them they're princesses, and when they tried to flee, the correct course of action is beating them down and using some unidentified spell to render them unconscious, at best.
    • When Shirley shows up and catches him red-handed manhandling Sophia and Tio, having beat up on Kyle, he expected her to be happy that he was "escorting" the girls back to the Empire, would forgive the horrific torture, and spending a full year on the run, two babes in hand, simply because he calls it a "tragic mistake," and treat him kindly, after he himself called her testimony that she's entirely innocent "a lie."
    • He expected that simply bowing, smiling, and saying that Shirley was being controlled by Canary would make Shirley fall madly in love with him, and was shocked and horrified that she was instead abjectly furious and the "kind, gentle" Shirley he was expecting was nowhere to be found.
  • Inspector Javert: Hunts down Shirley for the crimes of which she's accused, and then keeps on hunting her and her daughters down after being told she's innocent and it was all a "misunderstanding."
  • Last-Second Chance: Shirley offers to spare him if he openly admits he's a kidnapper and swears to never go after her or her daughters again. He flees in response, which convinces her that he's never going to give up coming after her daughters, and responds by literally putting him through hell.
  • Made a Slave: In his childhood, he was sold into slavery by his own parents.
  • Mad Love: Is utterly smitten with Shirley, and leaps through a bunch of hoops to justify kidnapping her daughters as the perfect tool to make her smitten with himself.
  • Off with His Head!: And that's just the start of the horror Shirley puts him through for going after her daughters and acting like the hell she was put through was just a harmless "mistake."
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: When Kyle calls him and his team out on trying to kidnap Sophia and Tio, he retorts by shouting that he's an imperial knight and trying to obstruct him will cause an international incident, as well as have horrific consequences. Being a rookie adventurer, Kyle is thrown off balance by this and loses the upper hand, but still manages to keep Sophia and Tio safe until Shirley shows up and shows Rudolph that being an imperial knight in no way protects him from the consequences of committing crimes in the kingdom, another country.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After seeing that the "gentle, kind" Shirley he was expecting was nowhere to be found, as she's literally tearing into him for attempting to kidnap her daughters, and expecting blanket forgiveness for putting her in a dungeon to be tortured and chasing her out of her home country, two babes in her arms, he tries to flee. This proves to be the worst possible choice, as Shirley loses what shreds of respect she still had and spends 30 days, his time, 5 minutes, her time torturing him to show him how it feels, before turning him and his merry band over to King Edward's knights for punishment.
  • Troubled Backstory Flashback: As Shirley is bearing down on him, he flashbacks to the time that he was sold into slavery by his own parents when their business went under.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Albert and Alice have him completely wrapped around their fingers with sweet words that he wanted to hear, and arranged him to turn on Shirley, to kidnap her daughters.
  • The Victim Must Be Confused: Genuinely believes that Tio and Sophia would be happy to be taken out of their home village by force and dragged off to the empire, once they're told about being the emperor's biological daughters. When they refuse and try to run away, he has them captured and then tries to cast some kind of spell on them, genuinely believing he's doing them a favor.

    Gran Wolff 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/motomusu_v3_7.png

Emperor Albert's captain of the guard.


  • All Crimes Are Equal: If you're a criminal in the Empire, Post Albert's ascension, and are brought before him, he will murder you to feed his sword. No exceptions.
  • Asshole Victim: Even in modern society, his murder spree alone would merit a death sentence in many places. Gran's execution by disemboweling was well-deserved.
  • Assumed Win: After laying hold of his family's ancestral sword and murdering petty criminals with it, he presumes that once he builds up enough physical strength through murder, he's already won the coming fight with Shirley.
  • Axe-Crazy: Though he hides it behind a mask most of the time, he's totally bonkers and literally blood-thirsty.
  • Break the Haughty: Having to run from Lumilia, a Master Swordsman, is one thing, but getting trounced by two children who have no martial training whatsoever, no less than three times? He becomes so enraged he can't think straight and winds up falling for Canary's spell trap.
  • The Brute: His so-called fighting style is nothing more than mindlessly thrashing about, trying to crush his enemies with raw strength.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: For the crimes of mass-murder, cuckold, kidnapping Empress Alice, attempted kidnapping and attempted murder of Shirley's daughters, violating an international treaty that the Empire would stop going after Shirley and her daughters, and "slandering" Alice in his attempts to shift the blame, Albert executes him, personally, by disemboweling.
  • Digging Yourself Deeper: As a direct result of his Never My Fault mindset of always shifting blame to others for his misdeeds and failures, when he's captured by Shirley and repatriated back into the Empire as a convicted in absentia mass-murderer, he tries to shift the blame for all his wrongdoing on Alice. Despite the fact that Alice does indeed merit some blame for his actions, this only serves to alienate all the nobility in Albert's faction and Albert himself, resulting in Albert giving him a Cruel and Unusual Death, personally.
  • Dumb Muscle: The only thing he's ever been good at is fighting. He's completely incapable of comprehending the long-term consequences of his actions.
  • Evil Former Friend: Was a Childhood Friend of Albert. Became easily seduced by Alice, who is Albert's fiance, then wife, and looks to sleep with her at every possible moment, even neglecting his sword practice to do so.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Loathes Shirley and Lumilia because they outshine him in the way of the sword.
  • Hard Work Hardly Works: Started training in the sword when he was old enough to walk and talk, and was diligent at it. Then along come Shirley and Lumilia, who outshine him in a far shorter time, filling him with envy and hatred.
  • Hungry Weapon: His family's ancestral sword drinks blood and boosts its wielder's physical strength in return.
  • Hypocrite: He calls Canary a coward for fighting him with magic, and Shirley a "coward" for escaping torture in a dungeon after being arrested on false charges, but he's content to murder helpless prisoners without trial, and he attacks two small children he presumed couldn't fight back.
  • I Reject Your Reality: He is so convinced Alive loves him and is a good, kind woman, despite the fact that he knows the nobility in the Empire is a nest of vipers and cut-throat culture, that he makes all sorts of wild conspiracy theories to justify why she's giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech and isn't the sweet, innocent woman he's willingly deluded himself into seeing her as.
  • I Was Beaten by a Girl: The reason he hates losing in sparring practice to Shirley and then a tournament to Lumilia is that they're both women. He convinces himself that they had to use some underhanded trick to win as a result. He does not think the same when he loses to other men.
  • Kick The Son Of A Bitch: In his attempt to fuse with Alice, to "protect" her from a non-existent conspiracy, he has taken away the one thing that she could use as a crutch to have Albert overlook her many, many sins, her physical beauty...
  • Miles Gloriosus: Loves to shout how he's the strongest and most skilled knight ever. Even with the power he got through Dainsleif, at best, he's just a brute who thrashes about with no skill or technique.
  • Monster Progenitor: His murder spree, dumping the corpses in a mass grave, spawned many Humanoid Abomination monsters that "wanted to go home" but couldn't figure out where "home" was, so would hound and harass towns, villages, and cities. The adventurer's guild had a heck of a hard time hunting them all down. Even Shirley had to struggle a bit with just one of them.
  • Never My Fault: After his tournament loss to Lumilia, he goes around to anyone who will listen making up excuses for his loss, and continues to make excuses when his skills and strength start to deteriorate as a result of neglecting his training.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: All his ill-advised criminal activity has given Philla's faction immense legitimacy, resulted in the elimination of the corruption plaguing law enforcement in the empire, by having the Imperial Knight Order he ran completely dissolved, and has cleaned out Albert's coffers in compensation for the crimes he caused, thus averting a major war, squashed any further attempts to raise the withering taxes any higher, and left Albert's faction with no other options than either watching their power and influence withering away to nothing, or facing a righteous full-fledged public revolt as a result of the abuses he's exposed. Even Albert himself can do nothing but scream in the ruins of his throne-room in impotent rage.
  • Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: When his men catch a petty criminal that he thinks won't be missed, he uses his position as captain of the guard to go and "question" them. Then whips out his sword and murders them for a power boost.
  • Transformation of the Possessed: As a result of Phlebotinum Overload. Using the family's ancestral sword Dainslef, to murder for strength mutates him into a Humanoid Abomination.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Unlike Rudolph, who genuinely believed he was returning children to their loving father, Gran really wanted to harm Shirley's daughters, just to stick it to Shirley herself over a one-sided delusional grudge. When he got called out on it, he tries to make up all sorts of excuses and tries to shift the blame to Shirley herself. This does not go well for him, at all.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: His "chivalrous" knight training actually works against him. He forced himself and his knights to focus so much on "honorable" one on one fights that the moment he finds himself in the forest, chasing down Tio and Sophia, they easily trounce him no less than three times. The fact that he lost his reason as a result of being possessed by Dainslief doesn't help.

    Arnese Crowley 
Another of the word's five known semi-immortals.
  • Affably Evil: Cordial and polite, but he's a serial kidnapper who grabs little girls, holds them captive for years and then returns them to their homes, mind-wiped, so they can't testify about what happened.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: When Shirley asks him if his plans include some kind of weird magical experiments or pawning off his victims to repulsive nobles, for obvious reasons, he's indignant and horrified.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Shirley doesn't kill him for going after her daughters, to sate his own lusts for years and then send them home, mindwiped, when they turn 13, and thus fall out of his strike zone. She seals him up in her private pocket dimension, where he can't use his space magic to escape, and she can take her sweet, sweet time venting her rage upon him. Showing him how it feels to be held against your will and treated like an object. But with Crowley, it doesn't look like Shirley is ever going to be in any kind of mood to release him, and should Shirley somehow die, nobody is ever going to be able to get him out.
  • For the Evulz: He gets as much enjoyment out of the act of kidnapping as he does in having the girls he captures. He not only gives the girls' parents and guardians engraved "invitation" letters, stating exactly when he's going to grab the girls, but makes the kidnap itself a grand theatrical performance.
  • High-Class Glass: Wears a monocle.
  • I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: Tries this as a defense when Shirley catches up to him, praising the beauty of Sophia, Tio, and Grimhilda. It does not help, much.
  • Impossible Thief: He's been in the kidnap business for centuries, and there have only been two times, by his account, where it went wrong. Canary managed to escape him, and Shirley saw through one of his disguises.
  • Impostor Forgot One Detail: Shirley manages to catch on when he impersonates one of her daughters and brags about brewing tea. Shirley's daughters aren't allowed to go near a stove for genuine fear of burns.
  • I Shall Taunt You: He always delivers an elaborately written "invitation" to the parents and guardians of his intended kidnap targets, purely to taunt them with the "fact" that there's nothing they can do to stop him, despite their best efforts. He even does this to Shirley, right in her face, happily admitting that he's a lolicon, and he's shocked that she comes just a hair away from taking his head off.
  • Loveable Rogue: What he thinks he is. The truth is another matter.
  • Master of Disguise: Can disguise himself as any member of his target's retinue, and he's so good at it, even Shirley's Magic Eye can't penetrate the disguise.
  • Master of Illusion: The secret of his disguise technique is that he skews the recipient's senses so that he appears to be someone other than himself. It takes special anti-mind-control magics to counter.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: He used to be Canary's familiar, but the way she treated him was much, much worse than the village of angry townsfolk she "rescued" him from.
  • Obliviously Evil: At best, he's completely unaware how traumatic it is for parents to have their daughters disappear for years on end, being rendered helpless to stop it, said children coming home with no memory of that time, and how traumatic it is for girls to have entire years of their lives that they can't remember.
  • Pædo Hunt: He's an unashamed lolicon.
  • The Peeping Tom: Likes to spy on his targets while they're in the bath. He disengaged when Shirley sensed it.
  • Really 700 Years Old: He may look like he's in his early twenties, but he's been around for at least 300 years.
  • Red Baron: "The Phantom Thief."
  • Token Non-Human: He's really not even humanoid! He's a Tanuki semi-immortal.

    Hermes 
Another of the five known semi-immortals.
  • Blood Knight: He is so addicted to fighting battles to the death, that he will happily conspire with Cromwell to kidnap Shirley's daughters, for the chance to battle Shirley herself.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: In combat, whenever he gets injured, he doesn't scream in pain. He screams with joy.
  • Glory Seeker: In addition to being addicted to the thrill of fighting battles to the death, he also fights for the glory of having the title of being the strongest warrior.
  • Jousting Lance: His attack weapon.
  • Red Baron: "The Heavenly War Saint."
  • Twinkle in the Sky: When Shirley manages to catch her breath, after being forced to fight him, non-stop for days, she sends this moron into outer space, without a rocket.
  • The Worf Effect: He is strong enough to corner Shirley. Let that sink in for a moment.
  • Would Hurt a Child: By proxy. It doesn't matter that Shirley's daughters are in danger, he wants to fight Shirley so badly, he stands in her way when she tries to rescue them, and if she won't fight him seriously, he'll "reluctantly" kill her, out of boredom.

     Duke Genan Earlgrey and Elena Earlgrey 
Shirley's parents.
  • Abusive Parents: Offenses listed in Shirley's The Unfavorite entry. To be brief, they made her life hell.
  • Aristocrats Are Evil: They are a ducal house and there's no villainy they would overlook to better themselves.
  • Blaming the Victim: When the Ragdoll family came to rescue Shirley, and called them out on the abuse the poor girl suffered, despite Shirley being openly presented to the world in rags and bruises from head to toe, they glared at her as if she sold them out.
  • Corrupt Politician: There is no crime they'd overlook to fatten their wallets. They are caught engaged in embezzlement, slavery, drug dealing, assassination, and open treason against Albert Ragdoll. There's even a backstory where they considered letting their sons rape Shirley, though thankfully that never came to pass.
  • The Dividual: They are almost always in total agreement and act as a matched set.
  • Entitled Bastard: After their huge rant over their hatred to Shirley as well as admitting they hired assassins to off their own grandkids just because they hated the possibility to pass on the family titles due to their relation to Shirley, they have the audacity to demand Shirley help them in escaping their impending imprisonment. All the while demanding Shirley must pay them back for raising her, while promising to never try to kill her and her daughters unless they sign a contract to never accept the rights to be the family successor.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When Albert's parents called them out for openly displaying Shirley in rags and bruises from head to toe, and showing serious signs of malnutrition, neither of them could understand where the emperor was coming from, as they never saw Shirley as their child, only as some "thing" that coincidentally carried their blood.
  • Evil Is Petty:
    • Why does Genan hate Shirley? Because she greatly resembles his sister, Regret, who was viewed as a perfect superwoman favored by their father and wanted to make as his successor. As the eldest son of the family, Genan was enraged at this so he hired assassins to off his sister. But having his own daughter resemble Regret after killing her off reminded him off his father’s favoritism and hatred for his sister.
    • As for Shirley’s mother’s reason for hating her? Elena just hates Shirley because she went through a lot of pain giving birth to her. Even though she willingly gave birth to 3 more kids, yet she singled out only Shirley for having a painful childbirth and went along with her husband’s hatred for Shirley’s resemblance to her aunt.
  • Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence:
    • The mere fact that Shirley is alive and well in another country means she's somehow "baring her fangs at them" and ruining their lives. Back in her childhood, Shirley would try to run away but would be hunted down and forced to live with them, even though they hate her yet force her to be their punching bag.
    • Their hatred towards Shirley even extends to her daughters, even though they never met their own grandkids. Shirley called them out on this by pointing out she and her daughters only wanted to live quietly without involving themselves with the empire. But her parents bluntly admitted that they hated the idea of passing off their inheritance to Shirley’s bloodline and hire assassins to kill off their own grandkids.
  • Hypocrite: Genan abuses his eldest daughter, Shirley, while favoring his youngest, Alice, but in his Villainous Breakdown, Genan reveals to Shirley that his father wanted his younger sister to be his successor because he favored her. He goes on a rant over how much his younger sister was better than him in everything while his father only showed disappointment in him while showering his sister with affection. And he has the gall to asks Shirley if she understands what that feels like. Genan fails to realize that he’s asking this to same daughter he horrifically abuses because he favors his youngest daughter over her yet still thinks this will gain him sympathy out of this. It comes to no surprise when Shirley refuses to give him a free pass on this.
  • Irrational Hatred: Because Shirley bears a passing resemblance to her aunt Regret, they made her life hell, and they would rather face extinction of their bloodline than face the tiniest risk that Sofia or Tio would inherit either the Ragdoll imperial throne or the Earlgrey dukedom.
  • Never My Fault: When things go bad for them, it can't be because of their crimes, no sir. It must be because Shirley's scheming against them, somehow.
  • Parental Favoritism: In their eyes, Shirley could do nothing right and deserved to be beaten for the tiniest mistake, while all their other "cute" children deserved praise for merely existing.
  • Pyrrhic Victory: Genan used assassins to murder his sister Regret to seize the dukedom, among all his other siblings, had no mistresses or concubines, all his other children are barren, including his skirt-chasing sons who have had many trysts, and even if they weren't barren, he disowned them to protect himself from their crimes (which he quietly endorsed), so he can't adopt their children, if they exist, his "cute" Alice is both barren and disfigured, and the aristocracy only cares about pedigree. To top it all off, with Elena's backing, sent 37 assassins after Shirley's daughters, so she's not eager to take the dukedom, even if she could. His actions, which Elena completely agrees with, have doomed his house, with no possibility of reprieve.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: They keep their territory looking prosperous, especially easy since Albert exempts them from the onerous taxes the rest of the empire has to deal with, just so Duke Genan can look out the window and enjoy staring down his nose at the commoners. They support orphanages, so Genan can brainwash countless children into his family's pet assassins. They "forgive clumsy servants" who ruin the ledgers so they can cook the books when they embezzle from the crown. And on down the line... When Philia decides to investigate them, this all gets exposed and their ducal dignity goes up in flames.
  • Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Despite making Shirley's childhood a living hell and sending 37 assassins against Shirley's daughters, these two have the gall to demand Undying Loyalty from Shirley for raising her for 10 years without taking the chance to abandon or kill her. And they see this as a “kindness”. Shirley's response is to remind them that she's no longer a helpless child desperate for affection and to literally hammer them into the ground, where Philia has to dig them out to arrest them.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: They care so little about their employees that when Philia brings before them assassins that they sent at Shirley's daughters and asks "do you recognize these people?" He says "no" and still passes a magical lie-detector test. Unfortunately for Genan, Philia had other hard evidence of the family's Dirty Business.

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