Carol and Memphis
Crest of the Royal Family (Ōke no Monshō), is a shōjo manga by Chieko Hosokawa. It has run in the monthly magazine Princess since 1976, and it got the 1991 Shogakukan Manga Award for shōjo. It also had a vomic (voice-over comic with music, voice acting, and some limited animation) and a musical adaptation in 2016.The main character is Carol Lido, an American teenager from a wealthy family with an interest in Egyptology, studying in Cairo. When her mentor discovers the tomb of a young pharaoh, a curse is put on the excavation team and Carol. The curse sends her back in time to ancient Egypt, where she becomes embroiled in the affairs of Egypt and other ancient countries such as Assyria and Babylonia.
Once in Egypt, Carol meets Memphis, the handsome young pharaoh whose tomb she excavated in modern times. Despite his headstrong, initially violent nature, they fall deeply in love. This angers Memphis' half-sister, the priestess Isis, who has longed to marry him. Carol, due to her exotic looks and curious ability to tell the future, becomes a major player in ancient history as she attempts to survive, being a fawn surrounded by lions who has to develop a backbone to keep herself alive...
Compare with Red River (1995), where a Japanese girl named Yuri gets tossed into the Hittite Empire (located in what we know as Turkey now) instead and Sengoku Strays where a first year high school girl named Kasane Kusanagi is transported to the Sengoku era.
Ouke no Monshou has the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Queen Amazones and her sister Princess Hulia are the rulers of the literal Amazon Brigade.
- Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: Memphis uses almost these exact words after capturing Carol and dragging her back to his palace.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Well, this is Ancient Egypt. Isis is madly in love with Memphis and wants to marry him, hence why she hates Carol so much. On the other hand, Carol has to convince Memphis that her older brother, Ryan, is not her lover.
- Chick Magnet: Memphis and Ishmin, so much that almost every woman who meets them and isn't named Carol falls for them right off the bat. Unfortunately (especially in Ishmin's case), they only have eyes for Carol.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Isis and several women who pine after the princes and kings who set eyes on Carol.
- Crazy Jealous Guy:
- Memphis, though his marriage to Carol later mellows out the 'crazy' part.
- The King of Minos' illegitimate brother, Atlas, who falls for Carol and is rejected by her, is this in spade. So far he's the only one trying to kill both Memphis and Carol due to jealousy.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance:
- Carol has to explain to Memphis that she doesn't have to get married as a kid and that she doesn't want to marry her brother Ryan.
- Ishmin can't understand why Carol believes War Is Hell.
- Dude Magnet: Carol, who charms the pants off nearly every king and prince she crosses path with, becomes the object of Single-Target Sexuality for at least two of them and eventually marries one.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Carol's hair color certainly earns her a lot of attention.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Carol is a modern American girl sent back in time to Ancient Egypt, and much of the plot is about her getting used to the separate timeline.
- Get Back to the Future: What the main heroine keeps trying to do at first, after she was kidnapped to ancient Egypt. She's no longer in any hurry to do so since she has fallen in love with and married Memphis, and even wished to stay with him.
- Guile Hero: Carol has to rely on her knowledge of Egyptian history to survive when she finds herself there.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Carol suffers this on a regular basis.
- Location Theme Naming: Most of the characters in the ancient world are named after places from their country of origin.
- Long-Runners: Forty-four years and counting!
- Love Dodecahedron: Memphis and Carol love each other. Isis, Jamari and Princess Caphra of Libya love Memphis. Prince Ishmin of the Hitites, Prince Minos of Crete and Jimmy Brown love Carol. Minueh loves Isis. Kapta lusts after Carol, while Emperor Algol of Assyria wants Carol as his queen to dominate Egypt. Phew!
- Love Redeems: Memphis was a huge Jerkass, but Carol has managed to soften him up. In a subversion Carol didn't deliberately try to soften him up, as she believed that he was an irredeemable brute. She changed him inadvertently simply by exposing him to her ethos of compassion and mercy, while simultaneously trying to escape from him.
- Made a Slave: This is what happens to Carol once she arrives in ancient Egypt, after Isis dumps her near a slave village and she is rescued by a slave family. She isn't one for long.
- Mighty Whitey: The girl who carries on the story of Ancient Egypt and changes it for the better is a blue-eyed blonde lass mistaken as a goddess or goddess avatar due to her hair and eyes.
- The Musical: A musical adaptation performed in August 2016 and April 2017.
- Phenotype Stereotype: Carol is American, so she's obviously a blond, blue-eyed cutie.
- Portal to the Past: The Nile river is a two-way portal between ancient Egypt and modern Cairo to Carol's time travel.
- Plucky Girl: Carol is very optimistic for a girl caught between ancient Egypt and modern Cairo.
- Shōjo: It's a long-running series about a modern-day American teenage girl falling in love with an ancient Egyptian god.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Somewhat. Whenever Carol travels to the future, she loses her memories of ancient Egypt. But when she returns to Egypt from the future, this trope kicks in and she manages to retain her knowledge from the future.
- Time Travel: Time travel is what drives the plot as Carol is brought from present day to ancient Egypt.
- Trapped in the Past: Carol is trapped in ancient Egypt at first. Her 'trapped' status later on becomes very ambiguous, as she finds a means to travel back and forth between modern Cairo and ancient Egypt at will.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: Jimmy Brown had a crush on Carol, but didn't get to confess to her before she started time traveling between modern and ancient Egypt.
- Unrequited Love Lasts Forever:
- Ishmin will never, ever marry any woman other than Carol. Thirty years of serialization and he's still chasing after her.
- Despite marrying Ragash, Isis still pines after Memphis and repeatedly attempts to Murder the Hypotenuse.
- Weak, but Skilled: Carol has no fighting skills, but her sharp mind and kind heart give her the upper hand.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- What happened to that romantic interest General Minueh is stated to hold for Isis in earlier volumes? Even before she got ousted trying to usurp Carol's place, it was never mentioned in more than a few chapters and is completely forgotten soon after.
- In the first volume Isis woke up from her mummified state and kidnapped Carol back to ancient Egypt, but what happened to the Isis who was living at that time period in the first place? Not to mention that as the plot goes on Isis doesn't even seem to remember this incident in the first place, and acted like there was no memory transition or time travel going on at all.
- Memphis gives Carol a Cute Kitten as a wedding gift. She appears for all of two chapters before disappearing from the story completely.
- Woman Scorned: Isis is pissed off and jealous that Memphis is showing more interest in Carol than her.
- Yandere: Isis, oh so much. Should any girl come between her and Memphis, she will try to Murder the Hypotenuse with Carol being her most frequent target. Memphis and Ishmin also show shades of this in regards to Carol though the former improves somewhat after marrying her.
