Foreshadowing / Ascendance of a Bookworm

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

Part 1

Volume 1

• When the original Myne's memories awaken in her, the phenomenon elicits a sensation Myne absolutely hates. She goes as far as describing the love she suddenly feels for her mother as "gross and alien". Later, in Part 2, she has a similar feeling when Ferdinand uses his mana to close a wound, to the point that her mana is actively trying to push Ferdinand's back out during the process. The fact she doesn't respond like this to Ferdinand's mana when expected to do so later on becomes a plot point.
• Myne has thoughts that later turn out to be surprisingly good guesses as to what she needed to do to get better:
  • She gets the idea that her fever would vanish if she had a book in hand. She's technically right, as environments in which she has easy access to books are also those in which she has easy access to magic tools. Books are also calming her down and her mana flow is influenced by her emotions.
  • She wishes she had at least reincarnated in a family wealthy enough to buy the possessions of an Impoverished Patrician and get a book that way. This is exactly how Gustav got his hands on many of the magic tools he purchased for Freida.
• When Myne first realizes that there isn't any written material in her home, she feels a fever coming, but also her heart throbbing, "screaming out" and her valves tightening. Later, when she gets a Devouring fever while being healthy enough to notice that there is something odd about it, she notices that it seems to be retreating towards the center of her body when it goes away. In Volume 2, when Lutz gives his first indication of having doubts about the Urano version of Myne being the Myne he knows, Myne describes her reaction as feeling as if something grabbed her heart and briefly stopped all the blood in her body. In Volume 3, when the High Bishop gets crushed by Myne's mana, the vital organ that Ferdinand is worried about is his heart. When Ferdinand gives Rozemyne a magical medical examination to find the reason behind her poor health in Part 3, the problem turns out to be located around her heart.
• When Myne leaves her house with her mother for the first time, she notices that in her family's apartment building, only the steps from the second floor downward are made out of pretty stone. As is hinted in Part 3 and revealed in Part 4, the pretty stone was made with magic by the archducal family. In Part 4 Volume 4, Sylvester plans to make the capital more presentable by adding a sewage system to the lower city and clean it up. He could have restructured the entire lower city, which would have destroyed all buildings in the lower city above the second floor (including Myne's family's home), but decides to only add sewer and water pipes at Rozemyne's suggestion.
• When Myne learns that nobles are the only ones who can afford books and libraries, she wishes she could become a noble so she could read books. She also learns there is religion in the world, which is why she definitely wants to avoid the temple. She ends up becoming a blue shrine maiden of the temple (who are normally of noble origin) and later on becomes a noble for real.
• How much Myne hates Gerda's way of "babysitting" and her later mental claim that she hates the idea of going back there because she can't stand seeing children being neglected establish the side of Myne's personality that later makes her unable to ignore the conditions in the temple's orphanage.
• Upon starting to make the dress for Tuuli's baptism, Effa worries about using the same one for Myne's own baptism, which is also in the summer, because of how much smaller she is than Tuuli. When the dress is finished, Myne internally comments that it would look better with more frills and decoration, but also wonders if making a dress meant to be worn in a temple too nice would cause problems. When the time comes, Tuuli's dress actually is too big to fit Myne, various frills and decorations are added in the process of altering it so it can fit Myne, and a major plot development comes from her wearing the dress in the temple.
• The outlandish way Tuuli describes parue trees, alongside strange incidents involving a couple of ingredients Myne uses for cooking later in the volume, establishes that the setting has Fantastic Flora, which in turn is the first hint that magic exists.
• Otto tells Myne she'd make a good merchant and offers her to introduce her to the Merchant's Guild. This foreshadows his past as a traveling merchant. Gunther also mentions that he's married, hinting at the fact that his remaining connections to the guild are via his wife.
• During one of their early forest outings, Lutz points out to Myne that she will be the only member of her family to be able to go to the forest after Tuuli's baptism. At the beginning of the chapter focusing on Tuuli's baptism, Myne wishes she had a knife like Tuuli's to be able to make a book substitute with wood. During the post-baptism gift giving, she gets a knife intended to be used for forest scavenging.
• In The Stinger of the anime episode ending with the clay tablets failing, Myne mentions that the next thing up is Tuuli's baptism, causing Ferdinand to show up and Myne to tell him it won't be time for him to debut quite yet. This, however, foreshadows Ferdinand's proper debut during Myne's baptism.
• On her quest for ink, Myne briefly considers getting her hands on a squid or an octopus, but realizes that she has no idea how close she is to the sea. It turns out that Ahrensbach, the duchy to the south has a connection to the sea.
• The first time Myne gets a Devouring fever in a context that allows her to realize both that it's not a normal fever and that it's probably the thing that killed the original Myne, she notices that it also makes her limbs numb while making her unable to move. When a kidnapper gives her a poison clearly intended to keep her from moving, the poison turns out to have affected her heart in the same way as her Devouring fevers.
• Gunther mentions that connections between apprentices and employers tend to remain even if the apprentice goes independant. Later, when doing Myne's commissions on top of preparing for the Italian restaurant becomes too much for Benno's go-to carpenter, the latter directs Myne to a former apprentice of his who opened his own workshop.
• When Myne talks about her new plans to sell paper while preparing Lutz for his meeting with Otto, she tells him she's sure that there is a merchant out there who will see the value of plant paper. Otto's surprise guest at the meeting turns out to be that hypothetical merchant.
• After finding out Myne is only six years old, Benno mentions that Otto made it sound like Myne is already helping him quite a lot despite still being in training and Otto asks him to drop the subject. In the epilogue, Otto reveals that Myne is already doing more than seventy percent of his paperwork.
• Benno apparently being used to Otto bragging about Corinna hints at him being Otto's brother-in-law.
• Corinna shows interest in the yet-to-be-named rinsham when she hears about it, which gives Myne something to trade with Otto when she wants nails in the following volume.
• A side chapter introduces shumils. They are small feybeasts with sometimes blue fur and golden eyes, which are relatively weak and not confrontational, but become extremely aggressive if their family is attacked, at which point their eyes turn into rainbow-colored ones. The boy who compares Myne to a shumil recalls the day he accidentally trampled on Myne's clay books, which made her so angry that he almost couldn't breathe anymore. This is exactly what happens at the end of Part 1: The High Bishop threatens to kill Myne's family, and she begins to Crush him with her leaking mana.
• The side chapter also reveals a detail about feybeasts, animals that have mana: When they die, they leave behind a feystone, a crystallized form of mana. As Myne learns at the start of Part 3, she has hardened mana inside her body. Before her past self awakened, she was on the verge of death multiple times due to the Devouring.

Volume 2

• After Myne and Lutz encounter a trombe and later realize how good the paper made from trombe wood is, Myne wishes she could cultivate trombe. As she learns in Part 2 Volume 1, trombe seeds can be cultivated from taue fruits that are charged with mana, which she starts utilizing in Part 3.
• Lutz notes that it's weird how a trombe has appeared in summer, when they usually show up in autumn. He also scolds Myne for thinking how cool it would be to cultivate trombe, as they are very dangerous plants and if they aren't dealt with immediately, they make the ground completely infertile and grow so big that the Knight's Order has to be called. Come Myne's first autumn as an apprentice blue shrine maiden in Part 2, she and Ferdinand are called for help by the Knight's Order to deal with a dangerous trombe and revitalize the land with mana. Lutz's explanation of why trombe are dangerous is also an early hint that mana is essential for life to sprout.
• It's Lutz's idea to sell hairpins like the one Myne made for Tuuli. Later, it's also Lutz's idea to sell Freida her second hairpin for half price when she and Myne go around in circles between buying it at the same price as the first one and making it for free on account of Freida providing them with materials. This is after Myne had to give Lutz the idea of selling the items she thinks up during his interview with Benno, but before he gets any real training in the merchant trade. Those are the first hints that he's a fast learner and has good instincts for the job.
• When telling Myne about the world outside the city in which they live, Benno mentions that the archdukes of their own duchy and the duchy to the West are on good terms. It's later established that the archducal couples of the two duchies are in a Double In-Law Marriage.
• Benno and Gustav have a meeting while Myne and Lutz deliver Freida's hair ornaments. After that meeting, Myne notices Benno is less guarded towards Gustav than he was before. Later, Benno practically shoves two small gold coins into Myne's hands to pay for a quite minor piece of information, which he discovered his need of by pure chance. Some time after that, it turns out that Benno arranged for Gustav to give one of the backup single-use magic tools he's keeping for Freida to Myne if she ever has a bad Devouring fever, then have her pay for it once she gets better. At the time, Benno was told that the magic tool was worth a little over a gold coin and figured out that Myne would have to Work Off the Debt if she didn't have the money to pay it back on hand, which would give Gustav and Freida an excuse to have her work at their store.
• In Effa's side story, she is seen gossiping with the other neighborhood wives. Effa praises Lutz for how much he is doing to help Myne and for how hard they are working, but Lutz's mother Karla doesn't listen and remains biased against merchants. She'd rather want her son to become a paper craftsman. In the next volume, Effa voices her support for Lutz's dream, while his own mother is still against it, but begrudgingly accepts that it is the path Lutz has chosen. This also foreshadows Lutz's conflict with his parents at the start of Part 2, as they have No Listening Skills and don't understand how incredibly talented Lutz is as a merchant.

Volume 3

• While being overwhelmed by Freida's family, Myne mentally calls Benno for help. When coming to pick Myne up later, Lutz mentions that Benno has been quite worried about something bad happening to her in Freida's home and Myne wonders if her mental call for help somehow actually reached Benno. She also shares enough of her thoughts with Lutz to have him ask why she didn't call him for help. Almost a year later, Myne mentally calls Lutz for help while wearing a ring that allows her to use mana. Doing this explicitly sends Lutz a very vivid mental image of the danger in which she is at the time.
• When Myne shows off her fine baptismal dress to Gunther, Gunther says that people will think she's someone really important. When she goes to her baptism and finds herself trying to join the temple, the High Bishop and the other priests think she's richer than she actually is.
• In the spring, Myne is introduced to taue fruits, which need to be left on the ground to accumulate water to get bigger and be used as natural water balloons during summer. This is after Myne found a trombe seed half-buried in the ground during summer and was told the following about trombe: they basically show up at random in late autumn (something that had started sinking in the ground on its own in summer would be completely buried by then) and their wood is very hard to burn (which would make sense for something with high water content). Both taue fruits and trombe seeds also happen to have a red color, completing the hints that taue and trombe are one and the same.
• Freida mentions that once she moves to the Noble's Quarter upon reaching adulthood, she will only see her family when they come on business. Myne thinks Freida should be allowed to bring at least one person from her previous life along. Rozemyne is later allowed to see her lower city family only on business, but outside of them, has a surprisingly high number of people from her life as Myne carry over to her life as Rozemyne.
• Upon giving the temple a good look for the first time, Myne notes it looks like it was built as part of the inner wall's defenses. Much later, it turns out that back when the city was small enough to fit into the wall surrounding the current Noble's Quarter, the temple was an inn built right outside the soutern gate in which people stayed while they were being cleared to enter the city proper.
• At the baptism, the priests take a bit of blood from the children and use it on a medal to registrate them, which Lutz thinks is a magic tool. As the reader later learns, blood is used in magic contracts because it has a higher concentration of mana, and commoners typically lack the mana to sign with mana directly. The story also introduces a contract that takes the form of a pendant. The medal is basically like a magic contract they sign, and if they break it, they will die, as demonstrated with the mayor of Hasse and his faction in Part 3 Volume 3, when Ferdinand uses archducal magic to destroy the medals and kills them.
• The High Bishop teaches the children how to pray to the gods, noting that this is how one gets their divine protection. Praying indeed gives a person a god's divine protection, as is demonstrated in Part 2 Volume 2 when Myne encounters a dangerous trombe and blesses the knights with Angriff's protection, while the knights bless their weapons with Darkness. Starting in Part 3, Rozemyne also sometimes spontaneously shoots out blessings when she praises the gods. However, Rozemyne is the exception. Divine protections usually don't suddenly happen when someone prays. When taking into account what is revealed in Part 5, this was the reason why nobles were later given the schtappe in the first place. Their prayers didn't reach the gods.
• Myne is unable to enter the temple's book room due to a magical barrier. It can only be passed by the priests and shrine maidens who have the High Bishop's or High Priest's permission. Taking into account what is revealed in Part 5, this makes a lot of sense, as the book room is where the path to the foundation is, which is underneath the temple. The High Bishop also used to be the aub, thus the barrier serves as another layer of protection against enemies.
• When Myne declares her intention to become a shrine maiden, she mentions that the bible is like a god to her. The High Bishop reacts with surprise and asks whether Myne is a biblical fundamentalist. Part 4 introduces the biblical fundamentalists, who take the bible very seriously and are at odds with the royal family.
• In the anime version of Gunther's refusal to see Myne become a shrine maiden, the still image that is onscreen, while he explains it's the only job left for orphans without any other guardians, shows gray robes. This foreshadows the fact that the life Gunther doesn't want for Myne is specifically that of gray robes, along with the difference in status between blue robes and gray robes.
• When describing Benno's familial feelings towards Myne, Mark's exact wording is "a brother's daughter". Rozemyne later literally becomes a brother's daughter to Ferdinand, who is very much Benno's temple counterpart.
• Upon realizing that Myne got past the point where she will be joining the temple no matter what, Benno has her sign a magic contract that makes Lutz essential to having her "inventions" sold, on the basis that she'll only last in the temple for so long before falling for a noble's plan and being moved into the Noble's Quarter.
• While Crushing the High Bishop, the High Priest warns Myne that if she keeps going, she will kill him. Myne is unperturbed by this, stating that many people would probably love to see the High Bishop dead and that there must be a lot of people who want to be High Bishop. High Bishop Bezewanst is executed at the start of Part 3 after Bezewanst attacked Myne, which was a ploy set up by the archduke and his half-brother. Rozemyne is later named as Bezewanst's successor. The High Bishops in the past also used to be aubs thousands of years ago, so it was a highly desired position.
• In the epilogue, Gunther remembers working at the western gate, rather than the southern one at which he's posted at the beginning of the story, at the time of which he helped Otto get a job. Later in the chapter, it turns out platoons are rotated between gates once every three years and that his and Otto's platoon is soon going to be transferred to the eastern gate.
• Benno suspects that someone on the nobility's side is gathering information about Myne. The man who is doing the information gathering gets introduced in Part 3 and an outright Adaptational Early Appearance in the anime.
• Lutz's internal narration mentions two rumors about the temple's orphans: one stating they are worked to the bone in noble mansions and one claiming they are stuck in the temple for the rest of their lives. Both those rumors turn out to have a kernel of truth between the orphans being sold as attendants and the situation of pre-baptism children.
• Gustav getting an ordonnanz that changes into a letter during his side story hints at the existence of magic letters that turn in to ordonnanz.

Part 2

Volume 1

• In the prologue, it's mentioned that Ferdinand was taken into his father's family partly because of an abundance of mana, but also became High Priest because the previous one had enough mana to be sent to the Sovereignty. As it turns out in Part 4, there is a rule against having archduke candidates move to the Sovereignty by means other than marriage to royalty.
• When Ferdinand inaugurates Myne as a blue shrine maiden, he gives her her robes, noting that blue is the color of Leidenschaft, and the blue robes encourage growth. It's an early hint that blue-robe-wearing temple members used to only consist of young adolescent nobles who tried to obtain more divine protections at a time when the temple's reputation wasn't bad and people were more devout.
• The incident during which Myne collapses because of a lack of mana flow in her body is caused by a milder version of a phenomenon that almost kills her when voluntarily induced a few years later and also a hint towards the concrete effect of a poisonous item Myne once accidentally picked up while scavenging.
• Ferdinand somehow discovers that an activity Myne organized for the temple orphans slightly moved the stone pavement and ruined some of the grass in the back yard she used, so he calls her out for it. This is a hint towards the fact that white buildings are created by archducal magic and are connected to the one who supplies them with mana (as Rozemyne learns in Part 3 when the monastery in Hasse is attacked), which in this case was Sylvester. Sylvester noticed the disturbance because of the pavement stone that was moved and informed Ferdinand that something happened, so Ferdinand investigated the area and saw the other damage that had been done on top of the stone being moved.
• A not-so-vague reference that Myne would eventually act as Johann's patron is brought up in the first chapter they meet. Two volumes later, he appears before Myne and Benno's feet to ask for their patronage.
• When Myne and Tuuli go see Corinna to get Myne's ceremonial robes prepared, Effa is mentioned to not be coming because she's "a little sick". It later turns out to have been Morning Sickness.
• Most people won't pick up on this on their first read, but there are several hints left behind that show Fran had a traumatic experience in the orphanage director's chambers and that Arno is subtly trying to harass Fran.
  • Myne early on notes that it's strange how her chambers are located in the boys' building of the orphanage, when the previous director was a woman. She has a subtle idea that something uncomfortable happened that makes Fran hesitate to talk about it.
  • When Myne makes sure Fran isn't overworking himself, he says he is fine, since she doesn't call him unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Sister Margaret used to do this and rape Fran.
• Benno doesn't want Myne to pay for the ingredients that the cooks he is training for the Italian restaurant will use, lest he has no ground left for Myne to eventually just take the chefs away for herself. In Part 3, Hugo and Ella end up becoming Rozemyne's personal chefs.
• When Myne visits the orphanage, she meets Wilma and Rosina. Rosina really wants to be able to use her talents, too, like Wilma. Fran informs Myne that blue shrine maidens should be trained in music, and Rosina offers Myne her services. She becomes Myne's musical tutor in the next volume.
• In the scene where Rosina is introduced, Myne tells the reader that Sister Christine's attendants were split between those who did menial labor and those who trained in the arts. This foreshadows Rosina's inability to do anything but play her instrument, which leads to conflict with Myne's other attendants after she is hired by Myne.
• The whole debacle involving Lutz's parents and Benno has the side effect of telling the reader that adopting children whose parents are still alive is a thing in the setting, and that there are perks to such situations if the adoptive parent is significantly better off than the child's biological parents. Because of that, the prospect of Myne entering nobility through adoption doesn't come entirely out of the left field and the surprise comes more from the adoptive family Ferdinand has up his sleeve for her.

Volume 2

• When explaining to Myne the need for her to get a noble's education to have a shot at becoming a wife, Ferdinand tells her she won't be able to escape from the family of every single blue priest in the temple. Ferdinand himself has a family, including High Bishop Bezewanst, who is his step-uncle and antagonistic towards Myne. At the end of Part 2, Ferdinand also becomes her uncle by adoption, which says plenty about the extent to which she manages to escape from the rest of his family.
• When Myne wants to publish Cinderella and shows Ferdinand its plot summary, he completely flips out, particularly objecting to the plotline of a commoner becoming a noble. In fact, not only does Myne become one in the end, it is quite likely that Ferdinand was already considering the possibility; obviously Myne couldn't publish a book that would, after she takes on a new identity, so blatantly hint at her own origins.
• Ferdinand plays the harspiel, which mesmerizes Myne. When asked by Myne what she thinks of his play, she notes that if he were to play a love song, all women would fall for him and start to act like Fangirls. This is exactly what happens in Part 3 Volume 1, first with Rozemyne's attendants, then later again with the noblewomen during the charity concert.
• After finding the temple book room vandalized, Myne promises that whoever is responsible will pay for it and that she will host a "bloody carnival" as revenge. Ferdinand immediately reprimands Myne for demanding the death of the culprit. In Part 4 Volume 9, Viscountess Dahldolf and Brother Egmont, the blue priest that vandalized the temple book room, steal the temple's bible and its key and leave behind a fake copy coated with poison to get rid of Rozemyne. Egmont's arm gets cut off, while Viscountess Dahldolf blows herself up to not have her mind probed by the mind-reading tool for criminals. Rozemyne got her "bloody carnival", but it was much gorier than she imagined.
• Ferdinand actually, if briefly, giving thought to where books about magic would fit in Myne's classification system is an early hint that not only does he have a personal library, but it's big enough to potentially benefit from said classification system.
• When ordering Myne's guards to make sure no harm comes to her, he specifically asks for "not a scratch." Later, it turns out that Myne's blood is mana-rich enough to cause another trombe to grow when it hits the ground.
• Ferdinand leading the Knight's Order instead of their commander, Karstedt, a very high-ranking archnoble, and "Lord Ferdinand" being the answer given by someone who is asked who the highest-status person present is, are not-so-subtle hints about Ferdinand's parentage.
• Myne notices that while every other knight wears an ocher-colored cape, Ferdinand's cape is for some reason blue. As the reader later learns, ocher is the color of Ehrenfest, while blue is the color of the greater duchy Dunkelfelger, hinting that Ferdinand had a connection with Dunkelfelger.
• Myne sees for herself that grown trombes are actually very dangerous feyplants. To counter their Energy Absorption trait, it's necessary to attack them with weapons that are blessed with the divine protection of the God of Darkness. This indirectly also confirms that feyplants and feybeasts have aptitudes, a fact that Angelica mentions to Rozemyne in Part 3 Volume 4 when she explains that bestowing her weapon with certain elements may make it harder or easier for her to defeat a feybeast.
• At the end of the volume, Ferdinand gives Myne a concoction to drink which helps him synchronize his mind with hers. He expects her to find it disgusting to drink, but when Myne drinks it, she finds it sweet, which surprises Ferdinand. He also has no problems synchronizing with her at all. To synchronize minds, the potion contains part of one's mana that dyes the recipient's mana in the color of the one entering the mind. However, being invaded by foreign mana and different colors leads to a defensive reaction, which is why people usually find it disgusting (as mentioned by Karstedt at the beginning of Part 3). This implies that Myne has similar mana levels and colors to Ferdinand, though the truth is far more complex and only revealed in Part 5. To be exact, Myne had the Devouring, which is why she was colorless. She was partially dyed with Ferdinand's mana and colors when he sealed the wound that Shikza inflicted on Myne (which did lead to a defensive reaction), and when he gave her the potion and they synchronized minds, it became permanent. As the author explains later, Myne would have found any synchronizing potion sweet.
• The apprentice chef Ella gets a side chapter in Volume 2, which heavily implies that she will eventually become romantically interested in fellow chef, Hugo.

Volume 3

• The map of the Ehrenfest duchy showing irregular borders between the provinces and duchies, while the country border is a perfect curved line hints at the country's circle shape.
• When he drops Myne off at the temple, Gunther tells her to inform Ferdiand of what is going on as soon as possible, because bad things can happen if one doesn't properly communicate with one's boss. The events of the end of the following volume happen in part because a communication issue causes Gunther's own superior to not relay an important piece of information.
• While Benno, Karstedt, and Ferdinand are discussing how Myne is in constant danger, Benno brings up Myne's poor health and mentions how an unaware kidnapper will likely kill her while trying to keep her still. This is exactly what happens at the end of Part 3. Myne is given a concoction that blocks her mana flow, but since she already has hardened her mana partially, the potion would have killed her if Ferdinand hadn't given her an antidote in time.
• Ferdinand brings up multiple scenarios of what would happen if the Ink Guild's guildmaster, Wolf, successfully kidnapped Myne. For instance, a noble could come to rescue Myne after ordering Wolf to kidnap her, to put her in a debt of gratitude. Another possibility would be to sell Myne to an archduke from another duchy, who would then claim that she was his daughter all along. What happens with Myne at the end of Part 2 is a combination of both scenarios. Ferdinand and Sylvester save Myne from an archnoble from another duchy who tried to kidnap her. Myne then immediately accepts being adopted by Sylvester, Ehrenfest's archduke, and feels gratitude towards him for saving her life and sparing her family. The fact that Ferdinand brought this up one volume earlier can also be taken as a hint that the kidnapping attempt was deliberately set up by Ferdinand and Sylvester, and Sylvester shortly after confirms in his side chapter that he lured his uncle, High Bishop Bezewanst, into a trap.
• Myne is the only person who assists Ferdinand in the Dedication Ritual during her first winter in the temple. Myne assumes there are no other blue priests present because her and Ferdinand's difference in mana would hurt their pride, but Ferdinand gives another reason: "When people gather with the same purpose and chant the same prayers, allowing their mana to flow together, this speeds up the flow of all mana in the vicinity. It becomes easier for the mana to leave the body. If the blue priests became caught up in the amount of mana you release, they would be swept away by the flow and potentially find themselves in life-threatening danger." In Part 4 Volume 4 the noblewomen of Haldenzel, led by Rozemyne, Elvira, and Giebe Haldenzel's wife (all of them archnobles or above), pray for spring to arrive. This activates a magic circle that drains the participants of their mana. The laynoblewomen, swept away by the flow, lose so much of their mana that some of them collapse.
• One of the first things Sylvester does while bothering Myne is to pull out her hair stick to get a good look at it. The only other character who has shown that much interest in Myne's hair stick upon meeting her for the first time was Benno, who was the first person willing to invest real money in Myne's ideas.
• In hindsight, it's obvious that Sylvester can't be a blue priest, while his real position comes with both a higher status and more responsibilities:
  • A more subtle one. Due to the shortage of mana Ferdinand sometimes acts as a knight instead of a priest, and is shown to have the same magic transport and combat magic items as the other knights while helping Knight's Order late in Myne's seventh fall. Suddenly, during the following spring, Myne meets a blue priest she has never seen before, who has a mana level comparable to Ferdinand's and a magic wand he can turn into a weapon. This begs the question of where Sylvester was when the Knight's Order needed extra hands and why Ferdinand and Myne were providing most of the mana for the winter dedication ritual.
  • The blue priest robe Sylvester wears is described as loose, badly fitting and looking somewhat messy on him. A similar description is used for clothes Lutz procures for him to go hunting in commoner's woods, with Myne commenting that he looks like a noble having fun pretending to be a commoner and fitting in, despite not really fitting in.
  • Sylvester is too skilled in the arts for a blue priest. Blue priests or blue shrine maidens have neither the motivation nor the funds to be as well-versed in sword dances as actual knights or play harspiel on par with Ferdinand or Christine. When it comes to music, the two latter are noted to be exceptions, as they grew up like nobles.
  • Myne gets to see Sylvester's room in the temple at some point, and finds it strangely lacking in personal items for a place occupied by someone with his personality.
  • Damuel and Benno look very scared when they see Sylvester, which is a hint that they recognize him as Ehrenfest's archduke. In a similar vein, when the Spring Prayer starts involving direct interaction with nobles, Sylvester stays behind in the carriages without protest, despite having shown to be quite an attention-seeker earlier on.
  • When the carriage carrying the attendants is ambushed near the duchy border, Myne responds by preparing to launch a powerful mana-based attack. Sylvester promptly gets worried about the attackers potentially being Ehrenfest citizens and the possibility that the attack will spill into the other duchy on the other side of the border, which would be considered an act of war. In his panic, he lets the fact that he's able to reinforce the magic protecting the border slip, and has an interaction with Karstedt that makes it clear that he's technically Karstedt's superior.
  • After collapsing during the carriage ambush, Myne wakes up to Ferdinand telling her that Sylvester and Karstedt returned to the city. When Myne assumes they went back to tell the archduke about the ambush so he can investigate, Ferdiand's answer is literally "More or less". The vagueness of Ferdinand's answer makes more sense with the later knowledge that Sylvester is the archduke. Ferdinand's answer also hints at the existence of a communication channel exclusive to archdukes, as it later turns out that Myne's guess was accidentally correct if one is flexible about which archduke needed to be informed of the incident. Informing the archduke from the other duchy involved would have still required Sylvester to return to the castle.
• During the carriage ambush, Sylvester unleashes two birds from his wand. The red bird creates a red wall, while the yellow one rains down shining powder. The first bird reinforces the border to not let their attack spill into Ahrensbach, but the other one is meant to protect the Ehrenfest citizens. That is hinted in the scene after the ambush when Myne's guardians told her someone from another duchy was involved in the ambush as more than half of the citizens that attacked weren't Ehrenfest citizens. Additionally, in the prologue of Volume 4, Viscount Seitzen notes that Viscount Garduhn (the giebe who owns the lands where the ambush took place) has not reported any of his citizens disappearing. It is later explained in Part 5 that both birds are unique spells that only the archduke can cast, and the latter spell only works on the citizens whose medals are in possession of their respective archduke. This explains why they knew that less than half of the attackers were from Ehrenfest, as they were protected by Sylvester, the rest were pulverized by Karstedt's attack.
• When Effa goes into labor, Karla and Deid both make comments about how Gunther tends to act when his wife gives birth and how fast the births tend to go. Those comments come across as them deducing a pattern from just Tuuli and Myne's births, until it turns out they are using two miscarried children and two children who didn't see their first birthdays as extra data points.
• The epilogue is told from Delia's point of view. Not only is Delia's opinion of receiving the High Bishop's "nighttime affection" one day eerily positive, the reader also learns why: One of the High Bishop's gray shrine maidens, Jenni, a former attendant of Christine, is manipulating her and encourages her to become the High Bishop's mistress eventually. When Delia is asked how Rosina and Wilma are doing, she goes into detail, and all Jenni does is smile brightly. The reader already knows that Christine's former attendants are masterful Stepford Smilers. The epilogue gives subtle hints that Jenni isn't happy with her situation, and hearing how her former fellow attendants have it so much better than her, who is raped daily, leads to Jenni willingly helping Bezewanst enslave Myne in Volume 4.
• In Damuel's side chapter, Damuel visits Ferdinand for lunch and gives him some wooden boards that contain words Myne doesn't understand. Myne has started reading old copies of the bible and wants to compare them to the modern ones. In Part 4 Volume 4, Rozemyne mentions that she has read and compared bibles from many ages, which is why she notices that the Spring Prayer ritual in Haldenzel is not performed the way it's described in the books she read.
• Damuel recalls how excited he was about his first trombe extermination mission, as this was the very first time he was allowed to use the prayer he practiced to bless his weapon with Darkness. In Part 4 Volume 6, Rozemyne learns to her horror that apprentice knights in the Academy don't learn how to get the divine protection of the God of Darkness to deal with feybeasts who have a Darkness attribute. She later gets in trouble for bestowing her knights' weapons with Darkness divine protections without the Sovereignty's permission in the next volume.
• While making Damuel notice that he's holding more prejudice against Myne's commoner status than he realizes, Ferdinand asks him if he would have managed Shikza's bullying of Myne differently if she had been an archduke's daughter. Rozemyne is one by adoption.
• The fact that Ferdinand gives Damuel a job that consists exactly of what Myne has been doing for him almost daily at that point hints at the fact that Myne is technically earning extra money when doing that particular task. That money is how she has been obliviously paying Ferdinand back for the potions he gives her.
• Johann's side chapter ends with a note that after Johann successfully passed his coming-of-age test, the Gutenberg Group, the disciples of Mestionora, was born in Ehrenfest. Rozemyne is later known as Mestionora's incarnation.

Volume 4

• When Myne discusses with Ferdinand what to do with Dirk, a Doorstop Baby who has the Devouring, Ferdinand thinks it's problematic that the baby is male. Since it's the mother's mana that influences the mana of the child the most, girls with high mana can be easily "adopted", though they will get passed off as biological children at the baptism and will be used as pawns for political marriages. Rozemyne is one such case, as she is passed off as Karstedt's and Elvira's natural daughter. She is later engaged to Wilfried to secure his position as Sylvester's heir. Another case is Gretia, Rozemyne's mednoble attendant, whose biological parents are blue robes, and whose adoptive parents arranged a political marriage for her.
• During the production of colored ink, the colors keep coming out different from what would be expected from the ingredients used alone, with different oils resulting in different colors when mixed with the same pigment. Specifically, one oil makes the ink come out much greener than expected, one makes it bluer, another makes it yellower and yet another makes it redder. In other words, the result looks likes extra pigment of one of the seasonal divine colors had been added. It later turns out that the mana attributes of ingredients can be a factor in the color of a mixture.
• A few extra hints about Sylvester were slipped into that volume:
  • The new measures that prevent nobles from other duchies from entering the city without the archduke's permission are mentioned to have been implemented earlier in the current spring, which means it could have happened right around Spring Prayer time.
  • In a case just far enough from the reveal to not be outright Five-Second Foreshadowing, Ferdinand telling Myne that her adoptive father is no longer going to be Karstedt, but Sylvester. This indicates that Sylvester has a status that allows him to legally adopt a child.
  • The confrontation between Ferdinand and Count Bindewald reveals that the magic wand item Ferdinand has been regularly using is only owned by graduates of the Royal Academy, which blue priests raised in the temple don't attend. Sylvester was shown using that very same item earlier in the story.
• When Myne's group is ambushed by Bezewanst's, Myne's first defense against getting kidnapped is that she's already promised to someone else. The response she gets is that any protection she's under won't mean much if there is no contract involved. The fact that she had unknowingly signed a contract with a high-ranking noble while on the way to the temple is what ends up saving her.
• Near the end of the volume, it's peculiar how quickly Sylvester and Karstedt make it back to the temple; they are coming straight from the Archduke Conference in the Sovereignty and arrive just when Ferdinand defeats Count Bindewald, at which point they can arrest him and Bezewanst. This is a subtle hint that Teleportation magic exists. It gets properly introduced in Part 3 Volume 2 and Volume 3.
• When Bezewanst tries to blame the fallout of the attempt to have Myne kidnapped by Count Bindewald on a plan on Ferdinand's part to set a trap for Bezewanst while Sylvester is absent, Myne's internal narration remarks it's obviously a lie because she considers the plan attributed to Ferdinand to be too simple for something thought up by him. When the reader gets to see Sylvester's perspective on the events, there turns out to have, indeed, been a plan behind them; Ferdinand is one of the minds behind that plan, which is, indeed, much more complicated, to the point of having flown over Myne's head.
• When Myne points out that a few people already know that a piece of information that is to be passed off as true is actually false, Sylvester tells her that it's suprisingly easy to mess with someone's memory. Much later on, a major antagonist turn out to dangerous in part because they are using a memory-altering drug on their subordinates.
• Sylvester comments that the High Bishop job can't be that hard if someone as lazy and incompetent as Bezewanst can do it. It's an early hint that it used to be a set of duties attached to another occupation rather than a full-time job.
• Myne calls upon all seven primary gods in a great blessing at the end of Part 2, which Karstedt and Sylvester find astounding, as this usually fails. Ferdinand seems less surprised though, and when he registrates Rozemyne's mana at her baptism, he mutters "as expected" when he sees seven colors on her medal. The colors indicate the person's aptitude to the primary gods. Myne successfully performing her blessing clued Ferdinand in that she must have an aptitude for every god, as Rozemyne later concludes in Part 3 Volume 4 when mana colors and aptitudes are discussed. That and the fact that Ferdinand could synchronize with her so easily, as his mana is also seven-colored.
• Sylvester's side chapter reveals part of the private exchange he had with Benno while visiting the orphanage workshop. One of the questions Sylvester turns out to have asked is what would happen to the printing industry if he were to kill Myne immediately. Benno's answer was that the printing industry is way past the point where killing Myne would be enough to keep it from expanding. The capacity for Myne's enterprises to keep going without her is put to test later in the story because of Rozemyne's two-year coma.
• In Leon's side chapter, Lutz and Leon accompany the orphans and Sylvester back when he was incognito as a blue priest, to the commoner's forest (which happened near the end of Volume 3). As soon as they leave the temple, Sylvester starts complaining about the stench of the city. Lutz asks who would clean the city, since it doesn't belong to anyone, which upsets Leon, who immediately retorts that the city obviously belongs to the archduke (who he knows is Sylvester himself). Lutz then suggests to "Brother" Sylvester to ask the archduke instead. In Part 3, while on the way to the Italian restaurant, Sylvester asks Rozemyne whether she has any idea how to remove the lower city's stench, and while she knows that a sewer system could help, she doesn't know how to implement it. She then says something similar to what Lutz said: If Sylvester hates the smell so much, he should dedicate some of his resources to getting rid of it. In Part 4 Volume 4, Sylvester uses foundational magic to add a sewage system to the lower city. The streets and houses are then cleaned by Ferdinand and Rozemyne with a water spell, and the commoner soldiers are tasked with punishing anyone who still keeps littering.

Part 3

Volume 1

• After her inauguration as High Bishop at the temple, Rozemyne recognizes Egmont, the blue priest who vandalized the temple book room, for which she wanted to make him pay by hosting a "bloody carnival". She forgives him, but lightly Crushes him and warns him that there will be no third chance for him. In Part 4 Volume 9, Egmont helps Viscountess Dahldolf steal the temple's bible, leave a fake copy behind that is coated in deadly poison, and kidnap several gray priests (with the promise to become High Bishop). When Rozemyne, Ferdinand, and their retainers come to arrest him based on Rozemyne's Gut Feeling, Ferdinand cuts off Egmont's arm after seeing a submission Ring of Power on his finger (to prevent Egmont's master from making Egmont self-detonate), which leaves behind a bloody mess. While it's not directly stated, Egmont is at some point later probably executed for his treasonous acts.
• For the Starbind Ceremony, Rozemyne needs to wear a sash in the colors of the God of Darkness and the Goddess of Light. It hints at the fact that proper garb for the ceremony used to include their divine instruments, which are a cape and a crown.
• There is no mention of Trudeliede, Karstedt's second wife, being at the tea party including women of Elvira and Florencia's faction, despite an earlier mention of her living in his estate's second wife quarters. Unlike others, she doesn't get a Remember the New Guy? moment later in Part 3. It's an early hint that Trudeliede is part of Veronica's former faction.
• Sylvester tells everyone, which includes himself, to stay far away from Ferdinand when he casts foundational magic to build the monastery in Hasse. It's an early hint that Ferdinand says something that is not meant to be heard.
• The coloring of feystones is explained when Rozemyne is about to learn how to summon her highbeast. Namely, it's easy to dye a colorless feystone with one's mana and trying to use a feystone dyed with a different color and with someone else's mana becomes incredibly difficult. It's also established at the start of Part 3 that Rozemyne has solid feystones in her body. Besides triggering the jureve material gathering plot in Part 3, this becomes an important point later on when it's revealed that Myne originally was colorless, and having feystones in her body played a role in permanently dyeing her with Ferdinand's mana.
• As shown in Cornelius' side story, Eckhart, Karstedt's oldest son, readily accepts Rozemyne into the family to the joy of Elvira, yet he gives a much more muted welcome to Rozemyne than his younger brothers do. It later turns out that Eckhart was one of two people asked by Ferdinand to investigate Myne while her spot as a blue shrine maiden was being set up. This means that he was a Secret Secret-Keeper the first time he properly spoke with Rozemyne and up to the point where he was formally added to her roster of helpers precisely because he was one.

Volume 2

• While revealing to Ferdinand that there were some shrine maidens who knew how to make her recipes all along, Rozemyne mentions that the orphans now have a set of skills that would make them quite expensive to buy if nobles got interested in them. The fact that she dramatically raised the monetary value of the orphans becomes relevant a few volumes later, when Viscount Illgner greatly underestimates the money needed to buy a gray priest because he calculated the costs from last time his family purchased one, which was prior to Myne's reforms; this results in him turning out to not be able to afford the priest.
• When Rozemyne first meets Justus, he gives her a sympathetic grin as soon as they are finished exchanging their first greetings, hinting to the fact that he already knows enough about her to know he likes her.
• While plotting against Hasse, Rozemyne make and internal comment about feeling part of her being turned the color of a noble. Much later, it turns out that under the right circumstances, nobles can partially dye each other with their mana, with "mana color" being one of the terms used to explain mana differences between individuals. Even later, it turns out that by that point of the story she had already accidentally been dyed in Ferdinand's color back when he cured one of her wounds thanks to the Devouring having made her a quasi-blank slate mana-wise.
• During a conversation, Ferdinand makes a comment about Rozemyne, Justus and Eckhart all being unbound by rationality. Rozemyne knows her thought process is odd to those around her and Justus wears his quirks on his sleeve almost from the moment she first meets him, but this comment comes at a time where Rozemyne knows so little about Eckhart that the mere fact that he's serving Ferdinand came as a surprise to her in the previous chapter. It takes some time for Rozemyne to witness the side of Eckhart that warrants Ferdinand lumping him in with her and Justus.
• Rozemyne remarks that the yard between Hasse's three main buildings looks big enough to hold a sporting event, which turns out to be one of its purposes once the religious ceremony is over.
• Rozemyne assumes a feybeast identifies her as a "clump of mana," which later turns out to be pretty much how the gods perceive humans.
• Wilfried's day as High Bishop in the temple ends with Ferdinand ranting at Lamprecht and Wilfried how lazy and incompetent they are. During his rant, he mentions that Veronica is no longer there, which confuses Wilfried. This is a hint that Wilfried is Locked Out of the Loop regarding Veronica's imprisonment, which he only learns after Rozemyne accidentally spills the truth in Volume 4. He was told that his grandmother was ill. That day happening in itself foreshadows Wilfried's contribution to picking up Rozemyne's work while she's in a coma.
• Justus' side chapter reveals several details that only become relevant late in Part 4:
  • While it's never directly stated, it can be inferred that Ferdinand meets Justus and Eckhart not in the temple but in his estate in the Noble's Quarter. And in that estate is Ferdinand's noble attendant, Lasfam, who Rozemyne doesn't meet in Part 3. This is an Early-Bird Cameo for him, as Rozemyne only encounters him after going to Ferdinand's estate.
  • Justus's cover story for being interested in the first book Myne ever saw is having an employer who is a huge book lover with sizable book collection. It later turns out that he wasn't enhancing the truth at all.
  • At the end of the chapter, Justus returns to Ferdinand's estate in the Noble's Quarter to give his report. He also shows Ferdinand the magic book he purchased, which Ferdinand asks him to deliver to his personal library in his estate. Yes, Ferdinand owns a library, a fact that Rozemyne only learns when she visits his estate in late Part 4.
• In Justus' side chapter, Eckhart can't deal with the smell in the lower city, and the used clothes he and Justus buy stink, which is why he uses a cleansing spell on his clothes. One volume later, Ferdinand uses the same cleansing spell on Gunther's cloak. He explains that it's an essential spell for knights.
• When Justus and Eckhart break into the Merchant's Guild, they bypass the gate restricting access to the upper level by registering their mana as one would do to be allowed access to a hidden room, which is one of the hints towards the fact that commoners have a really small quantity of mana rather than none at all.
• Eckhart is impressed that Justus is both a trained attendant and scholar. The fact that one can take multiple courses in the Royal Academy is brought up one volume later.

Volume 3

• In the prologue, Rozemyne and Fran discuss the need for Rozemyne to hire more chefs. This sets up the permanent spot in her personnel that she gives to Hugo in Volume 5.
• When springs come up as possible elements for the printing press, Rozemyne briefly goes on a tangent about beds with springs in them before stating that the printing press is the top priority. Her internal narrative however notes that if her Guntenbergs are going to try making spring beds, it will be without her. Cue Rozemyne's two-year coma at the end of Volume 5.
• In an early chapter, Rozemyne's narration mentions that Ferdinand vetoed her slipping illustrations of him into the charity concert's financial report. She later turns out to have done exactly that, just by much more stealthy means.
• Ehrenfest is approached by Frenbeltag to provide assistance. Ferdinand notes that while Ehrenfest keeps a friendly diplomatic relationship with Frenbeltag (especially because their respective rulers are in a Double In-Law Marriage), both Sylvester and Florencia are weak to requests and are easily dominated in discussions. Rozemyne understands that Sylvester is, but she is rather surprised that Florencia is, too. Both in Part 4 and Part 5, Sylvester is very weak to refuse requests from higher-ranked duchies and the Leisegang faction, but so is Florencia, especially concerning the Sovereignty.
• When Rozemyne leaves the playroom to return to the temple, Wilfried prepares to catch up with her level at karuta during her absence. He gets a headstart on her with plenty of things during her coma-induced absence.
• Rozemyne defeats the Lord of Winter by charging Leidenschaft's spear with mana and throwing it at the feybeast. In the epilogue, Ferdinand reveals to Karstedt and Eckhart that he found old records that stated how the divine instruments also had practical use, but they aren't as flexible as a schtappe and require too much mana to use.
  • In Part 4 Volume 6, Rozemyne learns to transform her schtappe into the divine instruments.
  • The note that the instruments require much mana to work is a hint that nobles with high mana levels used to occupy high positions in the temple. In fact, the aubs used to be the High Bishops, and pouring mana into the practice divine instruments in the temple and praying earnestly helps reproducing the divine instruments with one's schtappe and allows a noble to obtain more divine protections.
• When it's brought up that Angelica is about to fail her exams and get expelled from the Royal Academy, she has no idea what written lessons she is actually attending. Cornelius angrily points out that she should learn the names of the gods and their domain. Angelica eventually passes the exams, but in Part 5 Volume 1, Hirschur explains why Angelica failed to get Schutzaria's protection. She forgot the names of the gods already after barely passing.
• In Hasse, Ferdinand uses foundational magic to destroy the commoner medals of the mayor's rebellious faction, which kills them. Before he does so, he makes sure nobody is close enough to hear him. Justus explains that archducal magic is only taught to archduke candidates at the Royal Academy, so no one must hear the chant or see the complex magic circle that is used. As is explained in Part 5, an archduke candidate invokes the unique names of the King and Queen gods they were given when using foundational magic. If anyone else hears the names, the archduke candidate loses the gods' blessings and the one who heard the names will die.
• On the way to the Goddesses' Bath, the other knights discuss Damuel getting some extra training, which is what keeps him busy during the better part of the Time Skip that comes later.
• On the night of Flutrane, the women of the party are brought into the Goddesses' Bath, while the men are being actively excluded. Rozemyne also gets to harvest rairein nectar after singing to Flutrane. It later turns out that a Spring Prayer ritual, which is associated with Flutrane, absolutely needs to be performed by women to have its desired effect. The balls of light implied to be some sort of manifestation of Flutrane and her subordinates are also important, as it later turns out that the distortion in perception works both ways and the gods see humans as balls of mana also.
• After successfully obtaining the rairein nectar for her jureve, Rozemyne is invited to Ferdinand's hidden room, where he excitedly discusses the special properties of the feyplants that Rozemyne dyed with her mana. He asks her if she wishes to grow feyplants with him in ten years. Instead of money, Rozemyne wants a library in return if Ferdinand wants her mana. Ferdinand then furrows his brows and avoids giving her a clear answer. It hints at two things:
  • At the end of Part 4, Ferdinand leaves Ehrenfest. He recalls the promise they made, leaves his estate in her hands (including his personal library) and asks her to protect Ehrenfest in his stead.
  • Ferdinand does end up researching the feyplants Rozemyne dyed, though it only took six years.
• In Lamprecht's side chapter, Cornelius mentions that due to Rozemyne and Charlotte competing for retainers, Rozemyne may have trouble finding retainers unless there are nobles with a reason to absolutely adore her. Rozemyne's retainers later include a fellow book lover, someone who's probably taking the whole Saint of Ehrenfest business more seriously than the people who started it, Angelica's younger sister, and several children who agree with her stance on unity over factional quarrels.

Volume 4

• At the Knight's Order, Rozemyne's guards explain to her what mana aptitudes and colors are. When she is asked what colors she saw on the medal of her baptism, Rozemyne recalls seven colors and Ferdinand muttering "as expected". It dawns on her that having seven colors as (unofficially) the daughter of a mednoble would be highly suspicious, when her own brother, Cornelius, who has an archnoble mother, only has four colors, which is why Ferdinand must have kept quiet. Being born with seven colors is typical for archduke candidates of the highest ranks and royals like Eglantine. Ferdinand also has seven colors, and he is the product of royalty.
• Angelica reveals that, despite having an aptitude for Wind, she didn't get Schutzaria's divine protection (which Damuel and Brigitte find highly weird). She wants Rozemyne's mana because she could add the missing attributes to her manablade instead. Rozemyne however thinks giving Angelica intelligence would be better. In Part 5, Hirschur reveals that Angelica didn't get the divine protection because she didn't remember the names of the gods, and thus never prayed to them earnestly. In Part 5 Volume 4, after having copied the necessary magic circle, Rozemyne lets Angelica redo the divine protection ceremony, this time with Stenluke's help, and Angelica successfully gets the divine protection of Schutzaria and several subordinate gods.
• Ferdinand lectures Rozemyne after she poured mana into Angelica's manablade. With Rozemyne's mana reserves, ownership of the blade could have switched to her accidentally. This establishes that whoever pours in more mana can take over a magic tool. This is briefly glanced over in Part 4 Volume 2, when Ferdinand wonders how Rozemyne became the owner of two library magic tools and it is later directly explained in Part 5 how the ownership of these tools changes. The same concept is true for taking over a foundation, as is shown in the latter half of Part 5.
• After Sylvester teasingly suggests to Ferdinand to marry Rozemyne, Ferdinand encourages Rozemyne to find a partner at the Royal Academy, even if she would have to leave Ehrenfest when she marries. Rozemyne promises to find someone with a larger book collection than what she has found in Ehrenfest. It was meant to be a joke to counter Sylvester's teasing, but Rozemyne does find a fiancé who gifted her a huge book collection, and she eventually leaves Ehrenfest.
• When Rozemyne tells Ferdinand about the letters Bezewanst exchanged with his supposed lover (actually his niece Georgine), Ferdinand calls her a fool, because letters between lovers are even more important to report. Then in the epilogue it's implied that Georgine has discovered the location of Ehrenfest's foundation, specifically after having the letters she sent to Bezewanst returned to her which also hints as to where, exactly, said location is.
• In the epilogue, a number of nobles who sympathize with Georgine gather together to discuss their plans to make Georgine Ehrenfest's new aub. It ends with them plotting to dishonor Wilfried to hurt Sylvester and to see how Sylvester and his retainers react to a disastrous situation. In the next volume, Wilfried is tricked into committing treason.
• The epilogue also mentions that Ahrensbach has been struggling with mana ever since the civil war ended. This would only be picked up later, in the middle of Part 4.

Volume 5

• Fritz tells Benno that the day will come when he (or any other male other than Rozemyne's fiancé) cannot enter Rozemyne's hidden room anymore. When Benno asks when this day will come, Fritz estimates it will be around the time she enters the Royal Academy, at the latest when she has a fiancé. This is what happens in Part 4 Volume 3. Rozemyne gets engaged to Wilfried and has a final meeting with Mark, Lutz, and Benno in her hidden room in the orphanage director chambers. The room cannot be used again in the same way.
• One of the drawbacks Illgner's ruling family faces in the wake of the papermaking workshop there prospering is that they have to apply the status-based society rules more strictly than they used to be able to get away with due to being a backwater province within the Ehrenfest duchy that was seldom visited. The Ehrenfest duchy itself, which is considered a backwater among the country's duchies, faces a similar fate when its ranking rises.
• During his trial, Wilfried spells out that the incident allowed him to understand something that Oswald has told him previously: that not everyone who comes to him with a smile on their face has good intentions towards him. Rozemyne notices Oswald grimacing when the subject comes up and assumes it's because Oswald failed to properly teach Wilfried that lesson before the event that caused him to be in a trial in the first place. Later developments hint at another reason Oswald was grimacing at the time: Oswald is trying to get Wilfried on the ex-Veronica faction's side by having him distrust the rest of his family, but the incident instead caused Wilfried to trust his family more and Veronica's allies less.
• During a conversation, Rozemyne tells Ferdinand that events that are a few days old are ancient history to her. This comes quite close to describing how the time skip caused by her coma later looks from her perspective.
• As High Bishop, Rozemyne is responsible for performing Charlotte's baptism. This is the first time Rozemyne performs a noble's baptism. As she registrates Charlotte's mana, she says: "Five gods have granted you their divine protection: Light, Water, Fire, Wind, and Earth. If you dedicate yourself to becoming worthy of this protection, you will surely receive many more blessings." This is not just an empty phrase. Dedicating oneself to the gods and praying to them gives the noble more blessings from the gods and additional colors.
• The Gifting Ceremony and lunch being in the proper order that year (Rozemyne's accidental blessing during her debut caused them to be swapped the previous year) allows just enough time for Rozemyne and Ferdinand to change out of their temple robes so they can have lunch with the rest of the archducal family. This being allowed by the nature and order of the events is yet another hint that temple higher-up duties used to be fulfilled by younger members of the archducal family and their retainers.
• At the end of her side chapter, Charlotte internally comments that she doesn't consider Rozemyne a Saint, but an outright goddess.
• Durning his point of view chapter, Lutz reflects about Tuuli's marriage prospects and eventually come to the conclusion that nobody has a chance with her due to how busy she has become. In the process, he completely misses that there is a young man close to Tuuli's age who gets to spend much more time with her than her other suitors can ever dream of : himself.
• Damuel figures out that the look Elvira gives him during his proposal to Brigitte is a reminder of his He Knows Too Much situation because she gave him the same look while pointing out how much he knows about Rozemyne during a previous conversation. In Part 5, it turns out that Elvira has always known much more about Rozemyne than the latter realized, down to her commoner birth.

Part 4

Volume 1

• Ferdinand motivates Rozemyne to not wait a year to go to the Royal Academy by telling her it has the second-largest book collection in the entire country. He never actually says that the largest book collection in the country is in the first place Rozemyne or the reader would think of, which is wherever the royal family lives.
• Rozemyne is warned by Cornelius that she should stay away from their half-brother, Nikolaus (Karstedt's son with his second wife Trudeliede), and not treat him any better than the other children having their debut that year. While one reason is probably her being supposedly Rozemary's daughter, as she later learns, Trudeliede is part of the former Veronica faction. Trudeliede and Veronica tried to take over Karstedt's family with Nikolaus as his heir, so it's no wonder Cornelius is wary of his half-brother.
• Angelica practically being worshipped by Judithe foreshadows Rozemyne's dynamic with Hartmut.
• Upon meeting Anastasius, Rozemyne remembers a conversation with Ferdinand during which she was told that members of royalty tend to be quite attractive because of generations of only taking the most beautiful women as wives. Note this is coming out of the mouth of the man considered by far the most attractive in Ehrenfest.
• When Rozemyne brings up her upcoming music classes, Hartmut suggests blessing the people around her while playing her harspiel to make everyone recognize her as a saint, but Rozemyne declines as it could cause too much trouble. At the start of Part 5, Rozemyne can't keep her mana under control and accidentally casts a blessing during her harspiel performance, delighting the music professor and making everyone believe she is a saint. In the next year, when she can control her mana again, she is specifically asked by Professor Pauline to do a blessing again.
• Rozemyne's new guard knight, Traugott, doesn't interact much with Rozemyne. The few times he talks to her, he brings up his wish to become stronger, which is why he wants to learn her mana compression method.Unsurprisingly, he doesn't get to know Rozemyne well and constantly questions her. The only thing he wants from her is the mana compression method, which eventually leads to Rihyarda asking Rozemyne in Volume 2 to dismiss Traugott as he has no interest in serving her.
• While looking at the Royal Academy library's walls and pillars, Rozemyne is reminded of the temple. It's even moreso the case when she gets an aerial view of the entire complex.
• During the Dedication Whirl class, Rozemyne notices that the sixth-years who are already selected for the whirl at the coming of age ceremony wear dresses that resemble the temple's ceremonial robes. The whirl also begins with a typical prayer from the bible followed by the praying pose. This surprises Rozemyne, as nobles usually look down on anything related to the temple. She speculates that the religious leaders must have been equivalent to royalty at some point before the temple's reputation became bad. In fact, the first zent of Yurgenschmidt was the human who prayed the most, thus becoming Yurgenschmidt's first High Bishop. The High Bishops were once the aubs of the duchies.
• In the Farthest Hall, Rozemyne encounters a very tall spiral staircase that fits the definition of a towering stairway (as in the one mentioned in the standard Deadly Euphemism) much better than the altars that were previously shown. This hints at the room it leads to being much more important than she realizes when she first enters it.
• The map of Yurgenschmidt was revealed with this volume and it has a perfect circular shape. Add to that the fact that one needs to regularly fill the land and the foundations with mana and it becomes apparent that Yurgenschmidt itself is a magic circle. It was created by a former god to bind Ewigeliebe's power to the center.

Volume 2

• While discussing Ferdinand's legendary acts at the Royal Academy, including his victories in ditter, Rozemyne brings up the topic of dividing the knights into offensive and defensive roles. They would also need an observer who analyzes their opponents properly to defeat them as quickly as possible. Traugott protests that Rozemyne doesn't possibly know what she's talking about, since she is not an apprentice knight, so just attacking with everyone with everything they got is the quickest way to victory. This hints at Traugott not trusting Rozemyne's judgment, since, unlike Leonore for instance, he has no idea that Rozemyne, who has educated Angelica and accompanied the Knight's Order several times, already has plenty of experience in knight's work. Traugott also later attacks a feybeast with all his power in Volume 6 without thinking, which has disastrous consequences.
• Since Leonore doesn't particularly mind accompanying Rozemyne to the library, unlike some of her other guard knights, Rozemyne asks her to study military tactics and feybeasts for their upcoming ditter battles. Rauffen also points out in Leonore's side story that she would make a great tactician. Later in Part 4, Leonore is the only one who recognizes several feybeasts and becomes the observer and strategist amongst Ehrenfest's apprentice knights.
• After a troubling conversation with Solange, Rihyarda has a frank talk with Rozemyne regarding her behavior as a noble. Rihyarda mentions that she has served several nobles before: First was Lady Gretchen, then Gabriele, Veronica, Karstedt, Georgine, Sylvester... but Rozemyne is the most challenging of them all.
  • It's not commented on, but Rihyarda has served many nobles of different political factions, indirectly stating that she is not personally loyal to anyone. Rihyarda is loyal to House Ehrenfest and serves whoever she is asked by the archducal family to serve. Traugott would later misunderstand this, thinking he can change masters like his grandmother does all the time, which is one of the reasons why he doesn't take his work as Rozemyne's guard knight seriously.
  • When looking at the family tree that was released in Fanbook 2 along with Part 4 Volume 2, one notices that except for Karstedt, Rihyarda has only served archduke candidates. However, Karstedt wasn't an exception. At the time Rihyarda was asked by Bonifatius to serve Karstedt, Karstedt was the only male archduke candidate. He was later demoted to an archnoble after Sylvester was born.
• When Rozemyne wants to bless the apprentice knights who will escort her, Schwartz, and Weiss back to the library, it's clear that almost none of them have any idea of what she's about to do and are decribed as reacting to the blessing as it it's their first time seeing one. The sole exception is Angelica, who is in her last year. This hints to the future reveal that teaching apprentice knights about blessings has been placed quite late into the curriculum.
• When Rozemyne suggests that the royal family should send the archnobles that used to work in the library back to it, Anastasius says that it's impossible and Rozemyne assumes there must be a good reason she doesn't know of. As it turns out, the archnoble librarians weren't called away to make up for a purge-induced labor shortage elsewhere, they were called away to be executed themselves.
• When Hartmut reveals Traugott's ulterior plans to leave Rozemyne's side once he got what he wants, Traugott curses at Hartmut for revealing a private conversation. Hartmut shrugs it off and counters that when one wants to keep a noble's mouth shut, they should use a magic contract. As is revealed in a side story in Part 5 Volume 6, after Hartmut found out that Rozemyne is commoner-born, Ferdinand made him sign a contract that forbids him from revealing to Rozemyne that he knows, at least until she could trust him enough.
• Eglantine doesn't seem to be disturbed that Rozemyne is providing mana and acts as High Bishop. On the contrary, she notes that Ehrenfest seems to keep up old traditions, as a long time ago the children of an aub used to become the High Bishop of their duchy. This is a hint that aubs used to be High Bishops. They prayed to earn the divine protections of the gods and gain all colors, which is necessary to obtain Grutrissheit and become zent candidates.
• Eglantine wants peace, which is why she'd rather join the temple and not become the first wife of the king. She eventually leads the country and the temple in the Sovereignty as zent.
• When reporting to Anastasius what Rozemyne found out about Eglantine, he clears the room instead of using sound-blocking magic tools, as some scholars have learned how to read lips. Justus is shown doing that one volume later while disguised as Gudrun.
• In the epilogue, Benno notices Rozemyne's emotionally unstable condition. He asks Lutz to be there for Rozemyne when the time comes, because she is slowly losing her connection to the commoners in her life. This happens in the next volume when Rozemyne gets a nightmare about her commoner family, Lutz, Benno, and Mark leaving her. The Plantin Company are then called to the temple to help her cope with her fears.
• An easily missable remark from Anastasius in his side story mentions that Eglantine would have more mana and elements than his own father the king one day. Trauerqual not having all elements is later found to be a reason why he cannot be zent, as without a schtappe with all elements, the original Grutrissheit cannot be obtained. Eglantine eventually succeeds Trauerqual as zent.

Volume 3

• Rozemyne thinks it might be good experience for apprentice knights to watch the adult knights while they are hunting the Lord of Winter, but also acknowledges that having the apprentices physically present would be problematic. This results in her wishing they had something like a video camera, which later turns out exist in an Awesome, but Impractical form.
• Rozemyne and Charlotte discuss what Rozemyne would do if she were to become archduchess in her own right. Not only does one of the ideas later return as the legal deposit law, but Rozemyne takes over the foundation of another duchy in Part 5, making her its archduchess.
• While Rozemyne spends the day of the Interduchy Tournament in the dorm with Ferdinand, the two of them learn afterwards that Dunkelfelger's knight commander asked to meet Ferdinand's disciple (Rozemyne). Rozemyne understandably reacts with a frown, but so does Ferdinand. Rozemyne suspects Ferdinand had a ditter past with that Dunkelfelger knight and that he always won against that knight. Rozemyne's guess is close, but not quite right. The knight who shared a past with Ferdinand wasn't the knight commander but the knight commander's nephew, Heisshitze. In the next year in Part 4 Volume 7, Rozemyne and Ferdinand attend the Interduchy Tournament, where both are found and challenged to a ditter by Dunkelfelger.
• In the epilogue, a lot of emphasis is put on the fact that Ferdinand is living with a few secrets of his own, some of which not even Justus knows. Some of biggest ones later become relevant to the overall plot.
• In Lutz's side story, he goes to the Gilberta Company to fetch Tuuli, so that Benno can inform her of Rozemyne no longer being able to use the hidden room without scholars present and that the letters can no longer be delivered. A store employee then gets Tuuli, telling her that Benno is calling for her. Tuuli rushes out with a flushed face and bemoans that her co-worker lied to her, as only Lutz is waiting, who her co-worker assumes is Tuuli's secret boyfriend. In hindsight, this is the first hint that Tuuli has a crush on Benno. She is actually disappointed that it wasn't Benno waiting.
• In Eglantine's side story, she recalls how during her dedication whirl on the stage, she felt like her mana was accepted by the gods. She lost herself in the moment and time flew by. Having never felt this way before, Eglantine wishes she could whirl like that again one day. On the stage is a magic circle which needs to be activated to meet Yurgenschmidt's founder, a former god. Also, near the end of Part 5, Eglantine performs a dedication whirl with Rozemyne. This scene also hints at the fact that time tends to flow differently in places where the powers of the gods is strong.

Volume 4

• Sylvester's backup plan to a betrothal between Wilfried and Rozemyne being taking Rozemyne as a second wife indicates that he's not completely opposed to the idea of having a second wife who's significantly younger than him. His eventual second wife is an outright Adoptive Peer Parent to his existing children.
• While making mana-infused ink for the first time, Rozemyne spontaneously changes her schtappe into a brewing stick way too big for the pot she's using and has to revert it to produce one of more reasonable size. Later, upon using waschen for the first time, she produces at least enough water to engulf herself and two other nearby people, quite possibly filling up her entire workshop.
• After researching the invisible ink Rozemyne discovered accidentally, Ferdinand casually mentions that he used his own mana and experimented with it by removing elements of it. Mana separation becomes a topic again in Volume 8, after Heisshitze sends over the ingredients Ferdinand won in a ditter match in the previous volume. After teaching Rozemyne mana separation, she can use the ingredients to make another high-class jureve without the need to gather the materials herself like in Part 3.
• Rozemyne mentions Lieseleta preparing things for her even before she knows she needs them, which was Rihyarda's definition of a first-rate attendant back in Volume 2. Guess who becomes Rozemyne's head attendant later in the story.
• The fact that the greetings surrounding the Spring Prayer in Haldenzel include "Blessed be the melting of the snow" hints at the fact that one of the Spring Prayer's functions used to be magically inducing the melting of the local snow.
• In Haldenzel, Rozemyne recalls how different the transcriptions of the bible became over the years. Notably, newer versions are missing parts that can be found in older ones. As is shown in Part 4 Volume 7, some content of the bible cannot be read if the owner is lacking certain mana colors. Unlike the bible of the Sovereign temple, Rozemyne's bible is "complete", since she has all seven colors and donated mana to Mestionora's statue in Part 4 Volume 6. Over time, the High Bishop's importance diminished, so over the years the owners of the bible had fewer colors and thus it was not possible to fully transcribe the bible.
• When the upcoming pair of marriages is being discussed, someone bring up the possibility of Ahrensbach using them to make an unreasonable demand at the next Archduke Conference. Like asking for Ferdinand to be wed into the duchy.
• The epilogue is told from Gieselfried, Aub Ahrensbach's, point of view. At the Archduke Conference, it was decided that his granddaughter, Letizia, would become the next aub and that he requested a marriage partner for her. Back in Ahrensbach, Georgine notes that Detlinde tried to make Wilfried come to Ahrensbach as her future husband, as he is an archduke candidate who disgraced himself. Since Letizia has been chosen as the next aub, Detlinde's future husband must not be someone who could threaten Letizia's future rule. After discussing Ehrenfest's new trends that Rozemyne has set, and how Ahrensbach will send two brides to spy on Ehrenfest, Georgine brings up the possibility that Ferdinand, Rozemyne's guardian and mentor, is actually the one who is responsible for Ehrenfest's new trends. Gieselfried then recalls what a genius Ferdinand was and has thought up a plan. At the end of Part 4, Ferdinand is ordered by the royal family to go to Ahrensbach and marry Detlinde. He is also supposed to mentor Letizia and ensure that she will become the future Aub Ahrensbach.

Royal Academy Stories: First Year

• Roderick's attendant mentions that Veronica has an unknown means of having her followers earn her trust, which is an early hint to her mass name-swearing operation.
• Adolphine mentions the "balls of sugar" from Ahrensbach while tasting the pound cake, hinting at the duchy that is importing it from another country.

Volume 5

• The prologue that is mostly from Matthias' perspective hints at several things:
  • Matthias asks his father Grausam why Ahrensbach would be invested in Freuden and Bettina's marriage, two mednobles, to the point that they pressured Sylvester to accept it. His father noticably is not willing to give his son any information and dodges the question with a vague answer. As was revealed in the epilogue of the previous volume, it was Georgine who pushed for that marriage and Aub Ahrensbach also found it highly weird. Bettina is a spy who, unlike Aurelia, is actually loyal to Georgine. She plays an integral part in stealing the bible and its key in Volume 9. Grausam not willing to tell Matthias more also shows that he doesn't even trust his own son, presumably because he has no expectations of Matthias and because he has not given his name to Georgine as is also shown in Volume 9.
  • The fact that Wiltord and Gerlach plan to do more joint training together alarms Matthias. As it later turns out, the gray priests and shrine maidens that accompanied Rozemyne to the Ehrenfest/Ahrensbach duchy border were the target of an ambush. Rozemyne avoided the ambush entirely because she took her gray robes with her on her highbeast instead of moving them via carriages. Later volumes in Part 4 and 5 also make it clear that the attackers wanted the bible and the key.
  • Matthias in general does not agree with his father's dislike of Rozemyne and suspects that Grausam was involved in the Ivory Tower incident and the attack on the castle in Part 3 Volume 5. Matthias and Laurenz also contemplate warning Rozemyne about what their fathers are doing, though they know it's very hard to contact her. They eventually send the warning about a potential ambush via Roderick later in the same volume. Also, Matthias' positive opinion of Rozemyne coupled with his aversion of Georgine eventually leads to Matthias and Laurenz betraying their families and defecting to Rozemyne.
• Hartmut reacts a bit jealously when he sees the diptychs Rozemyne gave her temple attendants. When Rozemyne later asks Ferdinand how she should reward her noble retainers, he suggests giving them something with a crest engraved on it. In Part 5 Volume 6, Rozemyne hands out feystones to her retainers with her own crest on it, to show who they are loyal to.
• Hartmut shows a lot of interest in Rozemyne's backstory that Rozemyne has fabricated and told the gray robes to tell anyone who asks. He is also seen in the temple working closely with Ferdinand, and Ferdinand and Justus have apparently taught him a lot of things (though Rozemyne has no idea what). As revealed in the middle of Part 5, this is at the time when Hartmut finds the holes in Rozemyne's backstory. He later makes a magic contract with Ferdinand when he confesses that he figured out that Rozemyne is actually commoner-born.
• When Ferdinand is able to detect differences between consommé recipes that she doesn't, Rozemyne wonders how he can have such a delicate toungue, yet be able to chug his home-brewed foul-testing rejuvenation potions. This hints at Veronica's past attempts at poisoning him during his childhood. The fact they backfired into making him extremely poison-resistant becomes relevant later in the story.
• Rozemyne starts toying with the idea of making books return to their shelves on their own under certain conditions. In Part 5, it turns out that someone having the same idea a very long time ago is the reason the royal family's Grutrissheit magic tool went missing before the civil war even started.
• When the topic of name-swearing comes up, most of Rozemyne's retainers are against giving their names to anyone. The only one who isn't opposed to this is Hartmut, although he knows Rozemyne well enough to see that she wouldn't accept taking away someone's free will like this. In Part 5 Volume 6, Hartmut swears his name to Rozemyne. He and Clarissa are the only ones among Rozemyne's retainers who do not belong to the Veronica faction and thus give their names to her out of pure Undying Loyalty.
• Another thing that happens when name-swearing comes up is Wilfried and Charlotte both saying that they would accept names as an extra proof of loyalty. This hints at the fact that their grandmother Veronica and their aunt Georgine, who are both very demanding when it comes to proofs of loyalty, are outright demanding the names of their followers.
• Rozemyne learns from Leonore that name-swearing can also be a romantic gesture. Rozemyne is fine with it if it's mutual love, but forcing herself on someone is a big no-no. In Part 5 Volume 8, Rozemyne takes Ferdinand's name. She later wants to return it to him, since there should be no master-servant relationship between family, but Ferdinand instead wishes to have Rozemyne's name. As it's impractical to exchange names (if one dies, the other dies too and that would leave their offspring without parents), Rozemyne refuses.
• During the fellowship gathering, Adolphine eyes Charlotte and hopes that they will become very good friends. Rozemyne internally panics because Charlotte has just become a target. In the following volume, Adolphine does a pincer move and corners Rozemyne to "force" a tea party on her by inviting both Rozemyne and Charlotte.

Volume 6

• Hartmut knowing who Hilderbrand's mother is, and the information he has about her being specifically that she's from Dunkelfelger, hints at the fact that his network includes Dunkelfelger scholar who is sharing little-known information with him. Later, the retainers Hannelore brings with her at the tea party of bookworms all show great interest in the prospect of collecting stories for Rozemyne, which further hints at Hartmut's future engagement.
• Cornelius and Hartmut refuse to tell Rozemyne who their escort partners for the graduation ceremony are. Based on the previous volume, Rozemyne knows Cornelius' girlfriend must be from Ehrenfest, but when she looks at Leonore, Leonore hides her face behind her bangs, which makes it impossible for Rozemyne to get a read on her. At the start of Volume 7, it indeed turns out that Leonore is Cornelius' girlfriend.
• When Rozemyne visits the library, Schwartz and Weiss urge her to give some of her mana to the bible in the hands of Mestionora's statue. Rozemyne expects something unusual to happen when donating mana, but nothing happens. The statue isn't moving or anything. However, the shumil magic tools note that "Gramps" will be very happy. Several things are connected to what this scene: first, Rozemyne can see the magic circles in the Ehrenfest bible that give a hint about how to become zent. Second, behind Mestionora's statue is the path to Yurgenschmidt's foundation (and in each respective's duchy's temple the room to the foundation is behind Mestionora's statue). Third, the next time Rozemyne donates mana to the statue in Part 5 Volume 7, she is brought to the Garden of Beginning. Also, during the divine protection ritual in the Farthest Hall in Part 5 Volume 1, after she prays to the gods, the statues move and open the path to the Garden of Beginning.
• When Rozemyne produces the water gun, she laments that she can't change the appearance of it. She wishes she could make the weapon black. In the same volume, Rozemyne, Wilfried, and the apprentice knights face a ternisbefallen, which forces Rozemyne to use the Darkness prayer to turn everyone's weapons black.
• While learning how to make a proposal feystone, Rozemyne reflects on the kind of proposal she'd like to get and one of them is the person promising to build a library just for her. This same volume is also the one in which Ferdinand starts basically giving her a correspondence course on how to make the magic tools she needs to build her ideal library.
• This is the volume in which Rozemyne finds out that Eckhart's late wife was also a Ferdinand fanatic. Hartmut's planned marriage turns out to be a similar situation a volume later.
• Rozemyne is rather surprised that Hartmut has not seen the divine instruments that often despite commuting to the temple since last spring, as she usually only donates mana to the instruments at the start or end of the day. She tries to think of a way to show her retainers the divine instruments more often. In Rozemyne's third year at the Academy at the end of Part 4/start of Part 5, Hartmut has succeeded Ferdinand as High Priest. Unlike in the previous years, Rozemyne does not return to Ehrenfest for the Dedication Ritual, this task is now given to Hartmut, Cornelius, Damuel, and Angelica, Rozemyne's adult retainers. Cornelius and Hartmut eventually learn how to turn their schtappes into divine instruments, too.
• The tea party of bookworms:
  • Among the mysteries Rozemyne knows, there is one about the gazebo for lovers where the Goddess of Time is playing pranks on others. Solange explains that it is associated with the Goddess of Time because time apparently flies when you are alone with the one you love, but in the Spin-Off, Dregarnuhr the Goddess of Time hears Hannelore's prayer to her at the gazebo and is able to temporarily take over Hannelore's body to call Rozemyne over, after Hannelore unsuccessfully tries to confess to Wilfried.
  • Solange mentions a mischievous student who pulled pranks at the shrines to the gods. Then a beam of light fell upon him and there was no trace left of said student. Solange jokingly says that if the three children do not behave, they would be taken to the shrine to the supreme gods at the Farthest Hall to the distant heights. In Part 5 Volume 1, Rozemyne can make the statues at the shrine in the Farthest Hall move to open the path to the Garden of Beginning. In Volume 7, she is forcibly taken to the Garden via Mestionora's statue in the library.
  • Rozemyne brings up a forbidden archive that is supposedly only for royalty. Unfortunately, Solange cannot offer any further information, but Hildebrand promises to ask his parents about it, because if it's for royalty, surely he can enter. Hildebrand asking his parents is part of the reason Raublut manages to convince the royals that Ferdinand has traitorous thoughts and is supposedly looking to find Grutrissheit by using Rozemyne. Rozemyne does find the archive in Part 5 Volume 5, but as in the rumors it truly is only for royalty. Since she isn't royalty, she cannot enter despite fulfilling the other requirements.
  • Rozemyne gives Hannelore the manuscript for the Dunkelfelger book that she rewrote in modern vernacular. She asks for permission to make books using the manuscript and Hannelore promises to consult her father about it. Hannelore does just that in the next volume and Aub Dunkelfelger meets Rozemyne at the Interduchy Tournament to talk about it.
  • After Rozemyne collapsed at the tea party, Wilfried and Charlotte were called to calm the other tea party attendants and clean everything up. Wilfried's attempt to console Hildebrand that Rozemyne collapses all the time (like when he dragged her around at her baptism or when he threw snowballs at her) however is met with a loud reprimand from Hildebrand. This foreshadows that not everyone, especially Hildebrand, just shrugs off Wilfried's treatment of Rozemyne. On the contrary, some believe that Rozemyne is regularly being abused to the point that she collapses.
• One of Hirschur's theories for the culprit of the ternisbefallen attack is someone who is resentful towards Ehrenfest for having gained a higher ranking than their duchy. Such a person shows up in the following volume.

Volume 7

• In Elvira's version of Damuel and Brigitte's story, Damuel's counterpart can't marry his love interest because of a name-swearing rather than because he's working for the archducal family. A development later in the story results in one of the name-sworn characters cancelling their engagement.
• During the discussion about the requirements to become Zent, Rozemyne points out that she didn't see anything about needing royal blood. The comes on top of being able to see the magical text despite being commoner-born. This hints that the current royal family is simply the descendants of a Zent who wanted to keep the position in their family instead of having it move to the best person for the job regardless of bloodline.
• While discussing the archive accessible only to royals, Rozemyne makes the fact that she dreads the idea of an archive she can't enter very clear. A little later, it turns out that Sylvester sent her to the temple and seemingly abandonned his paperwork so he could consult an archive only accessible to him without having Rozemyne in tow.
• When Detlinde gets jealous of Adolphine's hairpin, Adolphine subtly tells her to find a partner in a duchy that can trade with Ehrenfest (which would be the Sovereignty or Klassenberg at the time) and ask him for one. Detlinde ends up with a fiancé that can provide her with an Ehrenfest hairpin via being betrothed to someone from Ehrenfest.
• Upon meeting Hartmut's father Leberecht and realizing that he's one of Florencia's scholars, Rozemyne fails to notice any obvious personality flaws, but reflects that someone with only Hartmut's qualities would be too good to be true. It later turns out that the apple didn't fall very far from the tree and that Leberecht only seemed relatively normal during that first meeting because Rozemyne is on good terms with Florencia.

Volume 8

• The fact that none of the honor students are attendants serving Rozemyne after this also being the case the previous year is a hint that Rozemyne's attendants get their grade lowered each time she collapses, which get revealed early in Part 5.
• During the discussion about her retainer options, Rozemyne's internal dialog brings up the fact that archducal families that get too small sometimes have a groom marry into their duchy, but it's almost never done because it's also an easy way to cause conflicts and outright wars. The marriage bit becomes relevant just a little later in the volume, while war bit becomes so in the second half of Part 5.
• Rozemyne, through unfortunate phrasing, states that she wants Ahrensbach. Despite how much of a long shot it seems when she makes the statement, she gets just that later in the story.

Volume 9

• Upon returning from the Italian restaurant, Rozemyne hears of Brother Egmont taking the work given to him suprisingly seriously. It later turns out that he was promised the position of High Bishop by one of the noble antagonists in exchange for helping with a scheme to poison Rozemyne, which makes for a good motivation to start working harder.
• Rozemyne and Ferdinand realize that someone stole the High Bishop's bible. After retrieving the bible from the thieves, she asks Fran for the key to the bible. She notices a magic resistance and has to dye the feystone in the key again. This is a hint that the key is actually not the key for Ehrenfest's bible, but for another bible, specifically Ahrensbach's, which she only notices after obtaining Grutrissheit. Rozemyne could still open her bible anyway, so the key was not necessary. The key was the true item Georgine wanted to steal, as it grants her access to the foundation room.
• Sylvester's short story has him remember telling a young Ferdinand to grow his hair out. It later turns out that Ferdinand followed that advice, but something caused him to return to his shorter hairstyle a short time after he reached adulthood.
• In one of the short stories, known and implied allies of Georgine are seen sending each other an item much smaller that the bible through what are essentially burner teleportation circles. The last recipient is a woman who recently married into Ehrenfest from Ahrensbach and is sending a few things to her birth family. The event is another hint that those allies were actually after the bible's key.

Part 5

Volume 1

• After completing the exam, Ahrensbach's dorm supervisor, Fraularm, unusually asks Rozemyne about her health. Rozemyne replies that she hasn't been doing so well lately (her mana is overloading again). Hearing this, Fraularm shows a faint smile. This is a hint that Fraularm knows about the stolen bible incident, where the bible was replaced by a fake that was coated in poison. When Rozemyne later opens her bible in a ritual without issue, she can hear Fraularm snort in frustration.
• In the former's side story, Muriella and Lueuradi discuss a story in which the female protagonist undergoes a God of Growth induced Plot-Relevant Age-Up.
• In Hortensia's side story, Solange mentions that the place that is the most likely candidate for the "archive only royalty can enter" used to also allow archduke candidates registered as mana suppliers in their own duchy to enter. This is an extra hint that the position of Zent used to be open to a much wider pool of candidates.

Volume 2

• Ferdinand's worry about Rozemyne getting Grutrissheit if she goes inside the "royals-only" archive indicates that he already has part of it, but is hiding the fact from the rest of the world.
• Clarissa's praise of Rozemyne after she accidentally performs an even better version of Dunkelfelger's pre-ditter ceremony describes her as becoming the face of Mestionora herself.
• Rozemyne notes that Fraularm is wearing gloves while accepting an item that she is directly handing over to her and generally treats the item as if she's expected to get poisoned, which is another hint that she knows that an item regularly used by Rozemyne has been coated with a poison absorbed through skin.
• Upon seeing Trauerqual up close for the first time, Rozemyne guesses that he's keeping himself going with potions due to the smell coming off him. Her internal narration notes the presence of sweetness in the smell, at a point of the story where a sweet scent has previously been mentioned as a characteristic of trug.
• When Rozemyne demonstrates Schutzaria's shield to the royal family, a non-hostile knight that managed to enter gets blown out as soon as he draws a weapon. This sets up what happens when a hostile party manages to get inside the same shield during the ditter game and someone already under the shield tries to attack them.
• Lestilaut makes a comment about Ehrenfest not being able to keep up with Rozemyne while trying to convince her to become his wife. In Volume 4, problems arise due to some Ehrenfest having exactly that sentiment.
• Rozemyne decides against Wilfried using Leidenschaft's spear during the ditter game with the reasoning that a spear piercing though a shield is a terrifying thing, in the context of not wanting to scare Hannelore too much. The game itself ends up including a confrontation between a very powerful spear and a very powerful shield in which the shield ends up destroyed by the spear.
• Sigiswald notes that the record of Ferdinand being taken away from Adalgisa doesn't mention his name, which hints that Ferdinand isn't going by the name he was given at birth.
• Raublut is noted to have requested the key to the Adalgisa palace to continue his investigation of Ferdinand, but that doing so was deemed unnecessary by the royal family. It later turns out that Raublut has motives that would have been served by him gaining access to the building.
• The contents of Charlotte's report hint at the fact that Rozemyne getting a second schtappe is a bigger deal than she realizes.

Volume 3

• Hartmut needs to have a discussion with Clarissa's parents to account for the fact that Clarissa might end up moving to Ehrenfest by her own means if something prevents her from formally doing so. In the following volume, the prospect of Clarissa moving to Ehrenfest on little more than a whim turns out to have been completely warranted.
• In her point of view chapter, an unfamiliar man gets the attention of Martina's fellow retainer due to having an artificial arm despite looking like a scholar rather than a knight. This happens a few volumes after one of Georgine's Ehrenfest allies was declared dead after an arm was the only thing that survived their means of suicide. The character's survival gets spelled out as very real possibility, considering the information available to Rozemyne's allies, in the next volume.

Volume 4

• In a book from Dunkelfelger, Rozemyne reads about a plant from the duchy that is strongly hinted to be a species she encountered in Ehrenfest under a different name. In the following volume, the possibility of either trug or one of its components being recorded under a different name becomes a plot point.
• On a few occasions, Hartmut is extremely accomodating towards Rozemyne's meetings with commoners. A one point, he admits to have tried waiting until after one of her meetings to tell her about Clarissa's early move because he knows how important they are to her. On another occasion, he suggests a way to allow Kamil to visit the temple despite not being baptized when Rozemyne knows it's an objectively bad idea. It later turns out that at that point in time, Hartmut had figured out both that Rozemyne was commoner-born and who her true blood family was.

Volume 5

• When Rozemyne tries to force herself throught the barrier keeping non-royals away from the Book of Mestionora, Schwartz and Weiss start muttering about her being dangerous and needing to be "eliminated." It later turns out that they are programmed to kill non-Royal Zent candidates that try to reach the book.

Volume 6

• Florencia is shown thinking that something must be done to curb the power of the Leisegang elders in the prologue. Later, there is an interaction between Florencia and the Leisegang elders that Rozemyne has several good reasons to assume to have been forced upon Florencia. Said interaction turns out to have actually been a trap for the Leisegang elders set by Florencia.
• After realizing that she misspoke while inventing a spell, Rozemyne finds out the hard way that the magic system tends to stick to whatever something was called upon creation. The following volume firmly establishes that the magic system has some form of I Know Your True Name in that neither Rozemyne nor Ferdinand's name changes from earlier in their lives truly stuck, to the point that Ferdinand has to use "Quinta" on his name stone.
• During the volume, Ferdinand is both shown to be in a hurry when it comes to getting three hundred sheets of maximal quality feypaper and quite certain that the country is going to get a proper Zent relatively soon. The two later to be connected as he was planning to make a book-shaped Grutrissheit-like magic tool and give it to the royals.

Volume 7

• Upon studying the party-popper-like toy from Lanzenave Letizia gives him, Ferdinand notices that the device can potentially be used to deliver someting much more dangerous than a bunch of flower petals. This is exactly how Letizia gets manipulated into trying to kill Ferdinand himself at the end of the volume.
• At Dirk's baptism, Rozemyne as usual wants to announce the color of his mana, but notices that the colors on the medal are faint, with only a tinge of yellow. Dirk is faintly omni-elemental because he has the Devouring. Similar to Myne, his color has a slight leaning towards yellow because Ehrenfest's patron deity is Schutzaria.
• During the library registration, Weiss says something that, several volumes later, comes across as an Accidental Truth: "Hortensia gone".
• During the discussion about mana dyeing, getting a wound closed by Ferdinand all the way back during her apprentice shrine maiden days and an attempt at channeling her mana into a magic tool already filled with Hannelore's are Rozemyne's only frames of reference for what mana resistance is supposed to feel like. She also comes to the conclusion that any dyeing from Ferdinand has faded away a long time ago. However, according to the explanation provided, it's odd that she doesn't have more exeperience of mana resistance.
• Rozemyne notices something different about Eglantine that she can't quite put her finger on, which she only manages to describe as her somehow seeming prettier. It later turns Eglantine had a child since last time Rozemyne saw her.
• Rozemyne isn't sure of the length of time for which she has rested when she wakes up in the Garden of Beginnings, hinting at the future reveal that she has remained inside much longer than she realizes.
• Detlinde and Alstede are often in the same room together to hide the fact that Alstede, not Detlinde is the one who dyed the Ahrensbach foundation. During Volume 8, Rozemyne and Ferdinand use a similar trick to hide that both of them have a partial Book of Mestionora, when Rozemyne is the only one of the two who has made hers public.

Volume 8

• During the prologue, Justus' internal narrative spells out that Eckhart survived the meal that poisoned his wife and unborn child because Ferdinand had his name. Not that much later, stealing Ferdinand's name turns out to be an avenue by which Rozemyne can keep Ferdinand alive long enough to get saved.
• Ferdinand double checks that Rozemyne really wants to come to the Gerlach battle because it may contain sights she migh not be able to stand. She comes out of it with trauma that make her unable to stand the sight of feystones.

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