What can I do to get Gaspar to love me?!
The series does have its light-hearted moments, but it is not for the faint of heart, especially the first few chapters, prior to the Cosmic Retcon.
- The abuse and neglect Yvona faced in the former time-line is graphic. She walks around covered in bandages, with the blood still seeping through and is treated like a leper, as a direct result of pushing herself way, way too hard just so her husband, that she was sold to, would take all the credit and make himself emperor, and in the meantime loved to insult, humiliate, and smack her around if she didn't grovel before him.
- In the current time-line, it's a supposedly a crime (or at the very least social suicide) if a woman fights off a rapist (although it's perfectly okay if a man with her fights off the rapist apparently), so when Yvona comes to the rescue of Lady Celton, she has to use magic to manipulate the nearby foliage so nobody can prove it was her. What's worse, it is perfectly legal for a woman's parents to promise her hand in marriage to a man without even informing her before-hand, as is demonstrated at the end of chapter 11, when Gaspar ambushes Yvona at the royal ball with the fact that he and her father signed the nuptials and his "heart-felt" proposal was just a formality. He has the gall to be shocked that Yvona outs him to the king, and is offended when Tristan calls him out on it, thinking he did nothing wrong, despite seeing it beneath him to even research Yvona's background, where Yvona's mother fled in the middle of the night from her own abusive husband.
- Demi-humans are demonized and preached at as Always Chaotic Evil, so to live have to go completely unnoticed. The consequences if they're found are horrific. Duke Claude Azentine's head butler is one, and while the duke and Yvona are well aware he's a demi-human and still treat him with kindness, Yvona and the duke twice run across magic using groups that both sell demi-human body-parts and use them in rituals to summon demons to attack their enemies, and the depictions of both are explicit. Although this is supposedly highly illegal, Claude and Yvona have to take matters into their own hands to deal with it, and can only act in their duchy, because the kingdom can't be bothered to do a proper crack-down.
- As Yvona fights off a bunch of demons, Stefan tracks down the source, and finds the remains of his entire clan, used as catalysts for the summoning. Once the ritual site is destroyed, he has no other option than to burn them in a pyre as they're contaminated with demonic miasma. Then when Yvona and Claude infiltrate a slave auction site, they find even more of the same being sold as the "grand finale." Stefan has to do that again!
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil indeed as the auctioneer put curses on his merchandise that would kill the slaves if any attempt at rescue is made, with some of the slaves in question being young human children. Yvona and Claude manage to kill the auctioneer, guards, and everyone else at the place that could trigger the curses, thus freeing the children safely, but their efforts are All for Nothing as the organization backing the place tripped the curses remotely before Claude's experts could even examine them.
- The Demon King. Not only does it go through armies like water, but when summoned, it tears its way through the dimensional boundaries with claws and fangs, like a wolf tearing through a silk curtain, slaughtering every one of the summoners involved before going on a rampage.
- In Chapter 42, the nightmare fuel becomes literal. While investigating the ruins on the Azentine estate, Yvona and Claude are hit with illusions tailored around their own worst fears, and we get to see his family's dirty laundry. Claude's grandfather was apparently given a prophecy that his lineage would bear a man who can wield the royal holy sword and would use it to save the world. When the man found out his wife was barren, cast her out and remarried, but the second wife died in childbirth, giving him a daughter. Rather than marry a third wife, or even collect a concubine, both of which he could have bought, he focuses all his rage and disappointment on his second wife and puts the daughter through hell, repeatedly demeaning the poor girl and insisting that her one and only purpose in life is to sire him a grandson that can wield said holy sword, and when she's old enough to bear children, sells her off to the first guy who shows interest, an abusive playboy who also brutalizes her, causing her to snap, and when she bears Claude, repeatedly throws him into the jaws of death, and when he manages to come back, all bloody and bandaged, shoves the sword into his hands, only to berate him when the sword rejects him violently, aggravating his wounds, and calling him an embarrassment for being wounded. It isn't until she's dead and buried that the sword accepts him, but the abuse continues through the rumor mill.
