Awesome / From A Knight To A Lady

• During her first, in person meeting with Khalid as Lucifela in Episode 22, while at first she is left speechless and freaking out at seeing him, she not only manages to recover, but she's able to catch him off guard and wipe his smug smirk off his face after she bluntly calls him out for being a traitor to his homeland.
  Lucifela: Isn't it possible for a former knight who deliberately destroyed his homeland... to have been well acquainted with Jansgar nobles even while he was in Ersha?
• Episode 59 finally has the present-day Estelle truly live up to her reputation as a knight, all without lifting a blade. A major theme throughout the story up until the moment Melrose tries to belittle Lucifela is Estelle's feelings of helplessness and inadequacy within Lucifela's body; she's lost all the strength she had, she's gone through terrible mental breakdowns as a result of meeting the man who killed her as Estelle, and has had to suffer through Duke Heint fighting all her battles for her given her inability to adapt to the lifestyle of a noble. However, seeing Lucifela's fear and hatred for Melrose lights a fire under Estelle, causing her, through grit and a desire to uplift the weak, to come out on top against a masterful socialite, utterly tearing apart Melrose's telegraphed, childish, and spiteful attempts to shame the girl she helped bully into nearly killing herself. After all her criticisms of Khalid's failure to live up to the ideal of a knight, Estelle gets to show the world how it's done.
• Episodes 62 and 63 are an amazing moment for the core heroes of the story; Estelle calms and saves a horse being controlled by a parasite, all while humiliating Melrose's attempts to mock Lucifela's suicide attempt, and Dahlia Rein and Florence Loer take the advantage Estelle gives them and uses it to utterly humiliate Melrose. As an added bonus, Zedekiah puts Melrose's husband in his place for being complicit in Melrose's scheme. Estelle has truly learned how to combine her skills as a knight with her burgeoning talents as an orator, and even managed to befriend Dahlia in the process.
• In Chapter 77, Florence takes Estelle's words to heart and decides that she doesn't care one whit about her family's honor if it means allowing Prince Temir to have his way with her. Mirroring Estelle's own tactic, Florence hits the brute with a Groin Attack before running off, knowing that Estelle would shelter her. Her thoughts on the matter are especially poignant, as they follow a moment where Florence was just about ready to let Temir take her;
  Florence: I AM NOT YOUR PUPPET!
• After being on the backfoot for the last several chapters and being continually disgusted by Khalid's behavior towards her, Estelle finally puts the topic of Khalid and his effect on her to bed in chapter 92 and decides to act against him and his actions again. Despite how much she risks socially by doing so, Estelle refuses to take Khalid's token from him, and when a noblewoman by the name of Zeria begins taking her to task for the action, Estelle lays out in explicit detail that Khalid was being inconsiderate towards her and not the other way around by attempting to force her to take a gift she did not want. Moreover, Khalid insulted her honor by trying to win the favor of a woman betrothed to another. It's her first major victory against Khalid on her own terms, and allows some of the old Estelle to return to the forefront again after feeling repressed by Khalid for so long. Even Florence, often Estelle's teacher and superior on the matters of etiquette, compliments Estelle for standing her ground, admitting that, though she would have taken a different, more subtle approach to distancing herself from the gift, Estelle's own decision allowed the latter to be true to herself.
  Florence: "Luci, what you just did..."
  Estelle: "I know, what I did was unwise. I broke one of the key rules of high society, which is to never make any enemies."
  Florence: "No, you did well."
  Estelle: "Really?"
  Florence: "If I had been in your shoes, I would've accepted the brooch and demonstrated my true feelings by not wearing it. I don't think it was bad, however, to reject the brooch outright as you did. Putting on a display in front of others about one's feelings and demanding that the other person respond to them... is, in a way, an act of coercion. And that really isn't being considerate, is it? The other noble ladies must've thought similarly. Luci, the way I do things isn't always right."
  Estelle: "Huh?"
  Florence: "You stayed true to yourself back there. I just wanted to tell you how much I admire you for it."
  • As a bonus, though it's ultimately Estelle's victory over Khalid, Prince Eozif comes in at just the right time with a plausible but obviously fake request for Khalid to talk to him at length about hunting tactics in Ersha. Khalid has no choice but to be pulled away from Estelle, which was clearly Eozif's aim from the start - he even takes a moment to give her a friendly, reassuring glance.
• Chapter 93 sees Estelle finally overcome Khalid and secure a direct victory over him... entirely through the power of love and compassion directed at Zedekiah. Without even trying, Estelle deprives Khalid of the one thing that allows him to maintain power over her - her attention. Khalid is left alone with two retainers for minutes unable to form a coherent thought or speak a word while Estelle heroically rushes off to help Zedekiah.
• Chapter 94 has Estelle/Lucifela declare to herself that she will stop listening to Khalid's "cursed, poisonous words" in order to properly move forward. The fact that she has come to understand the effect they've had on her and is determined to no longer let them hurt her is powerful.
• After realizing that Lucifela truly does care for her, Zedekiah declares to himself that he will crush Khalid for daring to go after her and toying with her emotions.
• While at first it appears that Prince Temir has managed to prove victorious by claiming others kills as his own, Prince Eozif quickly proves himself the better hunter after managing to capture a live orix, a beast considered among the most challenging animals to take down. And then, in order to shut down Temir's accusations of having claimed someone else's hunt as his own and rub his victory in his brother's face, he allows the orix to be unshackled and manages to defeat it in front of an audience to prove he was the one to capture it.
• Several moments occur during chapter 101, including:
  • After Prince Temir crashes a tea party his mother is holding, Florence skillfully suggests that the party reconvene in the Queen's private sitting room where the prince would not be allowed. Estelle is astounded at her friend's guile and the Queen is quick to agree to this plan.
  • While attempting to reassert control over Lucifela, Temir threatens to tell Zedekiah about how he has seen a "hidden side" of her, with heavy implications that he forcibly took her virginity. While initially shocked, Estelle/Lucifela quickly turns the tables on Temir by noting how revealing that would be worse for Temir than her.
  • Finally, as Temir's rage boils over and he prepares to attack Lucifela, Zedekiah appears and helps her up from the ground. Temir, now freaking out, asks how long Zedekiah has been there. Zedekiah responds with barely restrained fury:
  Zedekiah: Since you began insulting my fiancé, your highness.
• The aftermath of the Empress' tea party. As Lucifela notes, signing a vow of silence regarding Prince Temir's accusations would actually be a poor move politically, because women have such a low place in Jansgar's society that Prince Temir's assertion that he didn't technically rape Lucifela due to her not immediately resisting or protesting her treatment (ignoring of course Lucifela's near-immediate attempt to kill herself out of despair and the fact her position in society would make any attempt on Lucifela's part to speak up against a prince fail) would actually hold water. Despite this, the signatories - all women and Zedekiah, even Melrose - willingly, eagerly sign a binding contract with the church to keep the event mum, all out of concern for Lucifela's dignity and privacy. Even Estelle herself, who recognizes that she had a bad habit of assuming women were natural enemies with other women, is amazed by the sense of solidarity among everyone present. Estelle calling out Temir didn't just make him look like a fool - it may very well have been the first time in Jansgar society where feminist ideals won out and caused the noblewomen around Estelle to rally behind an ideal belief that their dignity meant more than petty political posturing.
• Episode 112 establishes just how unstoppable Estelle was in her prime. In the past, she managed to get into a fight with Zedekiah in enemy territory and utterly trounced him. As Zedekiah notes, she managed to block every attack he made while simulataneously overwhelming Zedekiah. Not only does she manage first blood, it quickly becomes clear she'd have won outright if not for the fact the rest of the soldiers in the mansion she'd infiltrated dogpiled her. The only thing Zedekiah can do to slow her down is trip her up by throwing his cloak at her, and she was nearly on her feet to keep fighting until the rest of the guard arrived. Zedekiah even admits outright that if not for being starved and exhausted, she'd have cleaned his clock.
  • It's revealed a few chapters later Estelle deliberately set up the entire situation to get her people in place to confirm and get rid of a rat working for the Jansgar Empire. She may have been fighting for the wrong side, but Zedekiah is left awestruck and impressed by just how crafty, powerful, and yet still honorable his Ersha equivalent is. If not for everyone else falling before Jansgar and Khalid ultimately betraying her, it's debatable whether anyone could have taken on Estelle by themselves.