Literature / Unnamed Memory

The prince and the witch (and their pet dragon)

"Oscar, I’ve made a contract with you, and as long as I’m your protector, I promise to return to you no matter where I go or what I do. I will not die before you. I swear it."

—Tinasha

In the world there are five, centuries-old witches with tremendous powers, who can bring such destruction that the current era has been named "the Age of Witches".

The Witch of Silence one day inflicted the king of Farsas and his son Oscar with a curse that prevents them from having descendants, as any woman who tries to bear their child would die in the process. To save the royal lineage, Oscar, now a young man, goes to meet Tinasha, the Witch of the Azure Moon, who is said to grant one wish to anyone who would reach the top of her tower… which he does effortlessly.

But when lifting the curse proves a near-impossible task even for the witch, Oscar gets another idea: ask Tinasha herself to become his wife, as she alone would be powerful enough to resist the curse. An idea Tinasha obviously rejects, so instead she forges a contract to become Oscar’s bodyguard and live in Farsas for a year. During that time, she hopes to find a way to break the Witch of Silence’s curse… while the smitten prince hopes to make his beautiful bodyguard fall for him. But their relationship and their actions will awaken dark forces and nebulous plots, and might very well change the course of history itself.

Unnamed Memory is a fantasy novel series written by Furumiya Kuji and illustrated by chibi. First published in 2008 on the author’s personal website, it was then released as a Web Serial Novel on Shousetsuka ni Narou in 2012 before being rewritten and published by Dengeki Bunko as a six-volume series of Light Novels from 2019 to 2021, with a sequel series called Unnamed Memory: After the End starting in 2022. The English translation by Sarah Tangney is published by Yen Press.

An anime adaptation by studio Engi covering the first three volumes premiered on 9 April 2024.

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Tropes:

• The Ageless: All witches have stopped aging at the time they became witches. Tinasha became one at the age of 13 and only aged up a couple times to heal near fatal injuries. It is later made clear that witches can resume their aging if they decide to, however. Which is what Tinasha opts to do when she marries Oscar, so that she can die of old age by his side.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Pamyra, a spirit mage who came to Cuscull on Lanak’s invitation, is derided and looked down upon by the Cuscullians for being the daughter of spirit mages (who both lost their magic powers when conceiving her). This confuses and enrages her, as in her native village no one would ever think to treat an act of love as a bad thing. The fact that Tinasha instead genuinely rejoices that Pamyra’s village still exists instead of mocking her is part of why she swears Undying Loyalty to her.
• Alternate Self: The second half of the series follows different incarnations of Tinasha and Oscar after the original Oscar altered the timeline and prevented the destruction of Tuldarr 400 years ago. Their stories are still meant to link back to the originals’ stories, however.
• Anti-Magic: Akashia, the sword inherited through the royal bloodline of Farsas, is completely impervious to any magic spell and can cut through magic barriers and creations like butter. Wounds inflicted by it can’t be easily healed by magic either. It is noted, however, that it is normally ornamental and that very few kings have actually wielded it in combat like Oscar does.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning:
  • Downplayed in the case of Oscar. By the time the story starts, he is already doing so much of his father’s job that he is king in all but name, so when he does become king at the start of volume 2, it’s treated as a natural step in his life rather than a culmination.
  • Played straight in the case of Tinasha: when sublimating the Magic Lakes at the end of the Cuscull arc, she has to summon spirits as part of an ancient crowning ceremony, thus making her the Queen of Tuldarr that she was supposed to become in her youth.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Poor Lazar just can’t get a break with his master Oscar constantly putting himself in danger and often bringing him along for the ride (at least before Tinasha picked up that slack).
• Blessed with Suck: Oscar's curse is actually a powerful blessing which protects any child of the Farsas bloodline with incredibly potent magic. However, the magic is so potent it will overwhelm the body of normal women before a pregnancy can be brought to term.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • Superior and supreme magic creatures exist on a plane removed from the material world and usually never interact with humans… except for Travis, who finds them endlessly fascinating and will bring misery on those who pique his interest with no other motive than sheer curiosity.
  • Leonora only cares about revelling in the absolute freedom she enjoys as a witch and entertaining herself to relieve her boredom. The consequences of her "games" are of little concern to her.
• Chekhov's Time Travel: In volume 1, several hints seem to indicate that Valt comes from a different time and volume 2 tells a story passed down in Elze’s village about a swordsman who travelled back in time to save his mother from a sad fate; despite Tinasha explaining that time travel isn’t theoretically possible under the rules of magic. At the end of volume 3, Oscar is accidentally transported 400 years in the past and ends up altering history by stopping the horrible tragedy that turned Tinasha into a witch, thus erasing the original timeline entirely and himself with it.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Tinasha’s long, lonely life as well as the betrayal of her most beloved person and subsequent annihilation of her kingdom, all at the ripe old age of 13 left her with a pretty distant and awkward sense of relationships with other humans, and a slightly distorted view of what is "normal".
• Curse Escape Clause: Curses are shaped by word and intent, which allows the caster to build in or exclude an escape clause.
• Eating the Eye Candy: In volume 2, when Tinasha brings Oscar to a secret underwater cave for his birthday, she takes a good, long look at his shirtless body while he dries himself after swimming, all with a smile on her face. A significant moment, as for the first time she expresses desire for him.
  Tinasha: So pretty…
  Oscar: What is?
  Tinasha: You.
• The Fashionista: Sylvia the court mage is very keen on dragging Tinasha to shopping ventures and dressing her up (willingly or not), making her the go-to character to add some levity and humor.
• Foil: Lucrezia, Tinasha’s best friend and elder witch, is more or less her opposite. She’s blunt, prone to play dangerous pranks just because, has had many lovers (though she objects to being called a pervert) and is prone to chastising her friend when Tinasha acts too rashly or proves spectacularly clueless about her feelings for Oscar. She’s also less than fond of Oscar, if only because he’s the reason Tinasha, the one person she deeply cares about, is constantly putting her life in danger.
• Head-Turning Beauty: There isn’t a male (or female) character in the series who won’t stop to gasp at Tinasha the first time they meet her. Her black hair and eyes, pristine white skin and delicate features are described as inhumanly gorgeous.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • One chapter in the first volume is focused on a water spirit whose human lover betrayed her centuries ago, leaving her in despair and causing her to steal Lazar’s soul after falling for him. Alas, Oscar has no choice but to slay her to save his friend, despite Lazar wishing to stay with her out of pity.
  • Centuries-old witch Lucrezia is implied to have been in a relationship with Sen, an ancient millenia-old (albeit human-shaped) spirit, in the distant past.
• Invincible Hero: Oscar is already strong enough to breeze through Tinasha’s trap-ridden tower at the start of the story and possesses a sword that nullifies magic, but on top of that his bodyguard protects him with a spell that repells nearly all physical attacks and trains him so that he becomes strong enough to kill a witch (i.e. her) if the need arises. By the end of volume 2, there’s isn’t a single human who would stand a chance against him in a duel.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Oscar presents as this − a brave, powerful, righteous and hypercompetent heir to the throne respected by all his subjects. In private though, he’s also prone to leaving the castle on a whim to go on dangerous quests for fun and tends to have a dubious idea of consent when interacting with Tinasha.
• Last of His Kind: Not only is Oscar cursed to never have children, his mother, uncle and aunt are all deceased and a mass child kidnapping years ago caused the disappearance of all his cousins, meaning that he’s the last member of Farsas’ royal family outside of his father, adding to the urgency.
• Meanwhile, in the Future…: Completely averted at the end of volume 3. Once Oscar is sent back to the past, there’s no return to the present, and he evenually realizes that from the moment the time travel orb activated, the timeline he knew was gone.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: In volume 2, after singer-courtesan Clara and her accompanyist are exposed as the cluprits of the mysterious "deaths by song", Oscar convices Tinasha to spare at least the former’s life (since she didn’t directly commit the murders), despite her warnings that it might be dangerous. Sure enough, in volume 3 Clara sneaks into the castle with the help of another witch to take revenge and manages to sting Oscar with a poison needle, which very nearly kills him. Both Oscar and Tinasha end up blaming themselves for the incident, the former for not heeding his bodyguard’s warnings and the latter for failing to protect him.
  • At the end of the same volume, meeting the young Tinasha in the past and saving her from Lanak’s ritual causes no less than the erasure of his own timeline, including himself.
• Pen-Pushing President: For all his incredible combat prowess, there’s a surprising amout of scenes of Oscar doing paperwork behind his desk while Tinasha helps him or serves him tea. It’s also meant to add a sense of daily mundanity to his life and relationship with the witch.
• Team Pet: Nark, Tinasha’s size-shifting dragon, is a friendly little reptile who will often yawn and ride on Tinasha or Oscar’s shoulders… when he doesn’t grow to the size of a house, that is.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: When Oscar is accidentally sent back in time at the end of volume 3, he’s faced with a hard choice: save the young Tinasha from Lanak’s ritual 400 years in the past, or let it happen to preserve his present where he’s Happily Married with her. He chooses the fomer. Though by the end, he realizes that he never had such a choice to begin with − from the moment the time travel orb activated, history was already irrevocably altered and the timeline he knew was gone.
• Virgin Power: Spirit Mages are a rare kind of mage that can use spiritual magic and possess an extremely powerful mana… as long as they stay "pure". Once a Spirit Mage has had sex, their spiritual magic requires so much more mana that they effectively lose the ability to use it. In the very first arc, Fyra is such one mage who killed her boyfriend because she couldn’t stand the way he looked down on her after he had deprived her of her powers (or so she felt). In volume 3 it also becomes harder for Tinasha to use spiritual magic after her first time with Oscar, although she has so much mana and knows so many non spiritual magics to begin with that it’s only a minor impediment to her.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Tinasha has kept on living this long only in the hope of finding Lanak so that she could free the souls of her fellow Tuldarrians but gets anxious as to why she even bothers to keep living once that goal is reached. Leonora, the Nameless Witch, who has lived long enough to call Tinasha a "little girl", is bored out of her mind to the point she’d rather sleep and dream most of the time, and even her pasttime of derailing the politics of entire countries doesn’t entertain her as much as it used to. Overall, immortality is mostly depicted as sad and melancholic.