Tear Jerker / The Steep Path Ahead

• Chapter 15: We learn that the Annual "Harrass the Valliere" Festival takes place on the day Luise was kidnapped and Karin refuses to come out because she's grieving. Luise herself even believes the people holding the festival are better than her old family, who are literally suffering on that very day of the year.
  • Not to mention the people are so afraid of these festivals that they literally pile into a city and become beggars to be behind safe walls that remain outside and at their mercy, despite it supposedly being harmless. Compared to what we learned early, it seems like Moral Myopia is in play on the Germanian side, who the victims feel like are taking revenge for having their army stomped by her.
    • And for the trifecta, we learn that the same day that she was kidnapped, Cattleya was assassinated. She literally lost two of her daughters on the same day and moved mountains to find at least one until she gave up hope entirely.
• Chapter 35: Saito is seemingly killed by Wardes. Louise can't bring herself to even fight back from the grief.
• Chapter 42: Seista's entire family in Tarbes had been killed by bandits for refusing to give up their grandfather's plane. When they eventually tell her, she breaks down into tears before she manages to pull herself together.
• Chapter 49: Louise and her mother's first meeting has the two of them trying to kill one another in a Wizard Duel because the latter attacked her partner. And given how strong Karin is, she nearly went through with Offing the Offspring.
• Chapter 73: The Reveal of Charlotte's plan not only made it clear that she had been using them the entire time, but she turned Saito into a killer when he never had killed a living person prior. He has a These Hands Have Killed moment and Louise decides flat out to remove her from the throne.
  • The next chapter we have Saito curled up in a bed with Louise having to comfort him because he was used and didn't even notice until he was told. The thought he wasn't in control of himself horrified him.
• Chapter 75: We see that Elenore clearly cares about Wardes, but he doesn't care about her at all and fakes everything, including his claim about helping Charlotte because he loved her. He only cares about the baby and the chance that it would gain the power of the Void.
• Chapter 78: Louise's rant reveals not only a staggering amount of Heroic Self-Deprecation towards herself, but that she's fallen in love with him after taking him from his home and hates that because she's a Void-user she'll be expected to lead a crusade to reclaim the Holyland from the elves, risking his life and forcing him to kill.
• Chapter 81: Tiffania's identity as an half-elf ends up revealing that Louise has some Fantastic Racism towards their kind, which is sad given that moments before she had been wondering how closely they were related. Saito tries to reason with her on it, but her first inclination is to see if he was under mind-control again. And then we learn she witnessed her mother's death on top of that.
  • And then there's the fact that neither Saito nor Louise hold any level of trust in Charlotte. As she's put it, she's burned those bridges and she knows it.
• Chapter 93: Julio reveals to Tiffania that Chef Marteau, her orphans, and her sister were killed by an elf. Lie or not, Tiffania breaks down crying at the sight of the blood-stained clothes.
  • In Chapter 100 he reveals that he was the one responsible for killing Cattleya, due to the fact that she was sickly and they couldn't let her inherit the power of the void. He used the very animals surrounding her to tear her apart.

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