Would That I Were Born No Princess
is a crossover fanfiction between The Saga of Tanya the Evil and Final Fantasy Tactics by Watchinkid.
Having made it through her second life as the Devil of the Rhine, Tanya von Degurechaff finds herself reincarnated again, this time into a more explicitly magical but medieval nation called Ivalice. Born as bastard royalty, Princess Tatyana Atkascha is only in the line of succession because of a lack of other viable heirs. After the birth of a new heir, Prince Orinus, she finds herself quietly shuffled off to a monastery, something she doesn't actually object to because she wasn't really interested in the throne, accompanied by a single knight to serve as bodyguard.
Two years later, Tanya is recalled to the capital to attend her brother's birthday celebration. While stepping outside for a walk, she stumbles on a plot to launch a rebellion, kicking it off early. Calling upon both the magical skills she learned in her previous life and the fighting skills she learned from her bodyguard, Tanya rallies the capital's defenders and crushes the insurrection. From that point onwards, her fate is sealed. Now a public figure, Tanya's hopes of quietly disappearing into academia and research are doomed, and she quickly finds herself entangled in the politics of a kingdom with a weak and sickly ruler, an infant heir, and two dukes plotting to claim the regency for themselves... assuming that they don't just seize the throne outright.
Would That I Were Born No Princess contains examples of:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Tanya is able to cut through a solid iron door by enhancing her sword with a Germanian mage blade spell she learned in her previous life. She later teaches the same spell to Ramza.
- Adaptation Name Change: Tanya is in the role of Princess Ovelia but has the given name of Tatyana. It was later revealed that her parents had been considering Ovelia as a possible name for their daughter but decided against it.
- Adapted Out: Given that Tanya is living a new life in a new world, none of the other characters from her series appear. The closest to appear is Visha the bird.
- A Lady on Each Arm: One scene depicts duke Goltanna with a pair of twins like this. Those are actually demonic assassins Celia and Lettie in disguise.
- Ascended Extra: A lot of people who were extras in Tactics become major characters in the story, most notably Orran.
- "Ass" in Ambassador: The Ordallian Ambassador's sole job is to bully Ivalice into forking over war reparation payments as soon as possible, even though the next payment isn't due for more than a year.
- Big Sister Instinct: Tanya surely develops one towards Orinus.
- Demoted to Extra: Delita. While he is still important as Ramza's Number Two, he is not the important player he ended up becoming in canon. Also applies to a number of other characters.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Princess Tatyana prefers to go by Tanya, the name she had in her previous life.
- Doorstopper: 400K words and still going as of the end of Arc Four.
- Enemy Mine: At the end of Arc Two, it's Tanya, Rudvich Bart and his men and Bremondt Freitberg against Queklain.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Queen Ruvelia cannot even conceive of the notion that Tanya, who was heir to the throne if only by default until Orinus was born, genuinely loves her adoptive little brother, has no interest in being Queen, and therefore has no reason to usurp Orinus and reclaim her former position as heir - after all, there's very little Ruvelia herself wouldn't do to secure her own position. Thus she plots to remove a nonexistent threat to her son's inheritance.
- Faking the Dead: After learning that the Queen had sponsored the attack on her life, Tanya decides that the only way to avoid future attempts without starting a civil war is to let her think that the first attempt succeeded. She spends the next arc under an alias.
- Fluffy the Terrible: Tanya rides a redfeather Chocobo - a normally difficult to tame breed of the species that tends to set things on fire more or less at will. She named it Visha.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Ruvelia is petty, vindictive, power-hungry, and not actually very good at ruling.
- Heroic Bastard: Tanya is the illegitimate daughter of the previous king and a mistress. The queen-mother is not amused. Until it's revealed to be a lie - Tanya is the current king's illegitimate daughter from before he married Ruvelia. When the queen-mother learns of it, she warms up to Tanya greatly.
- Mythology Gag: Tanya's cadets take it as a given that Visha's favor brings good luck at the card table, so nobody will play with whoever spent the most time with the redfeather that day. In YS, Visha the human was the best card player in the 203rd.
- Off the Rails: Tanya thoroughly derails the plot of FFT by the end of the first arc. One of the more obvious changes is that since the disbanding of the Corpse Brigade was fairly peaceful, Tietra didn't die, meaning that her brother Delita didn't suffer his Start of Darkness.
- Sharing a Body: Tanya ends up sharing a body with none other than Ultima. They have enough in common so it is not a problem.
- Shout-Out: The "Defensestration of Lionel", as depicted in Coda 2 is one to The Godfather.
- Spanner in the Works: Tanya sets off an Ebon Eye attack on the capital early by stepping outside for a walk and literally running into the attackers, then proceeds to thwart it.
- Succession Crisis: Ivalice is in pretty bad shape. The crown is weakened from a fifty-year war they lost while on the verge of victory thanks to the sudden death of the previous king, the new king is sickly, and his only heirs are a teenaged bastard and a toddler. Given that the two most powerful nobles after the king are heads of families that started out as cadet lines of the royal house, civil war over the regency, or possibly the throne itself, is looming. Then the king dies at the end of Act One.
- We Named the Monkey "Jack": Tanya named her personal Chocobo Visha, after her adjutant from her previous life.
