The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior (悲劇の元凶となる最強外道ラスボス女王は民の為に尽くします。, Higeki no Genkyō to naru Saikyō Gedō Last Boss Joō wa Min no tame ni Tsukushimasu), is a Web Serial Novel written by Tenichi. It was first released on the Shosetsuka ni Narou website on April 19, 2018, later being published by Ichijinsha as a series of Light Novels illustrated by Suzunosuke starting on June 4, 2019 with 6 volumes published as of November 2, 2022. The first manga adaptation by Bunko Matsuura was released by Ichijinsha's shoujo magazine Zero-Sum Online from October 24, 2020 until its cancellation (due to the poor health of the artist) on January 31, 2022. However, a second manga adaptation, illustrated by Akiko Kawano, started on June 28, 2023 in Ichijinsha's Monthly Comic Zero Sum magazine, which continues from where the previous manga left off. An anthology manga is also being serialized as well. An anime adaptation by OLM started airing in July 7, 2023, and can be watched internationally on Sentai Filmworks through its HIDIVE platform.
Pride Royal Ivy is the villainess from the Otome Game To A Beam of Light With You, a truly evil being who abused all of her power to ruin the lives of her servants, the capture targets, their relatives, and the heroine of the game. This concludes with the complete annihilation of the kingdom and her eventual death at the hands of the heroine with one of the chosen capture targets in most of the endings of the game. In the real world, a high school student who played this game dies in an accident, but then she finds herself in the 8-year old body of the most evil villainess! Pride refuses to let the story end like that, so she decides to use her cheat ability of precognition (actually, her knowledge of how the game events will play out), to save the capture targets and the kingdom to change her fate.
Seven Seas Entertainment has licensed both the Light Novel and the first Manga for distribution in March 3, 2022 and April 5, 2022, respectively.
This Light Novel provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: Stella, Gilbert and Marianne's newborn daughter, doesn't appear in the anime adaptation. Because of this, Pride, Stayle, Arthur, and Tiara's conversation on the way home before they met an injured Val again is changed from them talking about the name they gave their daughter, to a conversation regarding the Queensguard instead.
- Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: An In-Universe example. The moment the current Pride awakens to her memories from her past life as well as with the knowledge of the evil the original Pride would commit in the game she played, she inadvertently changes the characters and their relationships with her as she sets out to ensure that none of the tragedies from the original timeline would come to pass:
- Current Pride's sudden turn from Royal Brat to kindhearted and selfless princess on the morning she regains her past life's memories ends up saving her father's life from the carriage accident he was originally supposed to die from in the game's backstory, making him a more active figure in the current timeline. The act of doing so also spares her mother from her own death as well. A few days later, her personal servants Lotte, Marie, and Jacque go from being fearful of Pride due to her bratty and selfish tantrums to being more genuinely faithful and loyal to her due to her newfound benevolence towards them.
- In the game, To a Beam of Light With You, Stale hated Pride and was a cold individual in general because Pride forced him to murder his own mother under her orders as her Slave. Because current Pride didn't do that, and instead, showered him with kindness as well as allowed him contact with his birth mother despite centuries of tradition forbidding it, he becomes her most devoted follower who swears to always protect her.
- The original Pride hated her sister Tiara and kept her locked up in a tower for most of her life after their parents' deaths. While not much is said about how the game's Tiara felt towards her older sister, it's implied that she still loved her to an extent but feared her for her evil at the same time. The current Pride adores Tiara instead, becoming a loving and protective older sister towards her, which Tiara reciprocates as Big Sister Worship in the current timeline.
- The original Pride's callousness over the Knight-Commander who happens to be Arthur's father causes him in the game to become a knight commander like his father so he can take revenge against Pride for letting him die for her own amusement. In the story proper, the current Pride saving his father and the trainees through her actions and quick wit, defending her actions to the Knight-Commander, as well as her showing faith in Arthur's abilities causes the younger Beresford to vow to become a loyal knight for her sake instead.
- Both Stale and Arthur hated Pride and can fall in love with Tiara depending on the route chosen in To a Beam of Light With You. Due to the change of events caused by current Pride's actions, they both fall for her instead.
- Stale and Arthur become best friends in the new timeline as a result of both finding the other as a kindred spirit when it comes to their desire to protect Pride from any and all harm that comes her way. In the original timeline, their relationship was cold and both were distrustful of each other.
- Balanced Harem: There's a two-tier format, with Stale and Arthur as equal love interests for Pride. Other men also develop feelings for Pride and get their share of Ship Tease with her.
- Differently Powered Individual: In the world this series is set in, certain individuals possess special powers which vary per person. Pride and the Queen and later, Tiara, both possess precognitive abilities. Stale can teleport, Rodrick is invulnerable against sword attacks, and his son, Arthur, can invigorate plants (though it's later revealed that his actual ability is to heal diseases), just to name a few.
- Flash Sideways: Multiple variations of this occur for various characters that show what is normally set to occur before Pride became a different person from her previous life's memories internally warning her of the outcome that is set to occur if she didn't take active steps to prevent it, showing them swearing vengeance on the evil Princess Pride for the hell/torture she put them in via her heinous actions without a shred of remorse or guilt.
- Genre Deconstruction: The story can be seen as a Genre Deconstruction to "Reborn as Villainess" Story genre. The story takes a Darker and Edgier route to depict the villainess, Pride Royal Ivy, as a serious Final Boss in the Otome game she is originated from. Unlike many other villainess in other similar works, the original Pride Royal Ivy is depicted as a truly horrid, formidable and irredeemable sadist who loves to torment, manipulate and enslave the protagonists for her own twisted joy, something which makes Catarina Claes' villainy seem like child's play in comparison. It causes her reincarnated version (the protagonist) to fill with more guilt and distress, so much that she tries to take the matters on her own hands. It also helps that unlike Catarina, who is a daughter of a duke and probably become a Queen-Consort if her marriage proceeds as planned, Pride is slated to succeed her mother as the Queen-Regnant and thus can't afford to make mistakes even before and most especially after she becomes the queen. Nonetheless, despite her own efforts and success, Pride still has nightmares of becoming her evil self and assumes that the world is forcing her to her game counterpart's bad ending, causing more risks in her way to fight fate. As a result, fearing that she will inadvertently fall into the same tyrant in the game, Pride purposefully improves the abilities her family and friends via averting their future downside, so that they will kill her more easily if she became evil and live on in a true happy ending.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: The society in the game is reigned by a Queen, and the first daughter from the Royal Family that develops magic is automatically chosen as the Crown Princess. So this gave the original Pride more ways to torment people and to get away scot-free with anything until the ending of the game. In this series, Pride will definitely end up as The High Queen.
- Hate Sink: The original Pride from the game was clearly designed to be like this, using all of her political power to make the lives of everyone around her miserable, just because!
- Irony: Like Catarina of Hamefura fame, Pride believes that regardless of what she will do, the game will proceed as planned and she will face her death after a decade. Given her actions, however, the harm that she might receive is not probably because of her game counterpart's actions or that You Can't Fight Fate, but most likely the typical violence surrounded by her rule and probably instigated by people who are not up to good for her and for her kingdom. It helps that the characters who have beef towards the original Pride like Stale, Arthur, and Gilbert are already on her side and the likelihood of them betraying her is zero.
- Mercy Kill Arrangement: Pride makes Stale and Arthur promise that, if she becomes an evil queen, that they must kill her.
- "Reborn as Villainess" Story: A Japanese high school girl dies after an accident and reincarnates into Pride Royal Ivy, the main villain of her favorite otome game in life. The new Pride, now armed with knowledge from her past life and horrified over the crimes the original Pride would commit in the future, vows to never become the evil Pride from the game while ensuring that none of the characters would suffer the same tragedies that befell them in the original timeline as a result of the villainess Pride's actions.
- Releasing from the Promise: The first thing Pride does after reincarnating upon meeting Stale for the first time is to steal the key for the magical handcuffs from her father, and to set him free before the contract with her so he can meet his mother again. However, Stale refuses because that would put his mother in danger, and even if it wasn't, another child would be chosen instead.
- Spared by the Adaptation: In-Universe example, due to the current Pride being a completely different person from Game Pride, the fates of many people had been changed for the better.
- Royal-Consort Albert was originally killed in a carriage accident shortly after leaving the estate just after Pride became aware of her Precognition abilities, and that his wife Rosa would die of a broken heart upon hearing the news. This immediately changes when Pride warned Albert of the broken axle on the carriage just before he left, leaving both of her parents alive.
- Downplayed, but many of the palace Staff wound up being either banished or executed due to Game Prides' Royal Brat attitude. Here however, Pride has endeared herself to the staff that she's now on a first-name basis with most of them.
- Game Pride tricked Stale into signing a Contract that completely enslaved him and in a bid of pettiness, ordered him to kill his own mother. Here, the current Pride did not go through with that particular Contract and instead requested for Stale to send and receive letters from his mother which was approved.
- The ambush that resulted in the deaths of several recruit Knights and Commander Roderick that Game Pride foresaw happening but did nothing to prevent. The current Pride learnt of what was about to happen and had Stale teleport in spare supplies to the pinned down Knights before departing for the battlefield herself to wipe out the remaining terrorists and save them from the landslide.
- Gilbert "Gil" Butler attempting to create a Super Registration Act in order to find someone with the Healing Hands Ability in order to save his terminally-ill fiancée. In the Game, the Act was signed; but it went into practice on the same day Marianne died. Here, the current Pride after realizing who exactly Gilbert was from the original game leaps into action and brings in Arthur Beresford; who has the Healing Hands ability Gil was desperately searching for and has Marianne healed, the two of them declare to be officially wed at a later date.
