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YMMV / Long Live the Queen

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  • Adorkable: Adair is the second-youngest of Elodie's possible suitors and, as of later updates, the youngest to have a portrait and fleshed-out conversations. Said conversations involve him being generally nervous in Elodie's presence, warming up to her if she's good with animals and offering to catch frogs and beetles with her, and even shyly asking for a kiss when she first brings him to the castle as her betrothed.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Has its own page.
  • Awesome Music: Togami's theme, the ending theme, and Joslyn's theme.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Talarist. A relatively decent person who does what he has to do to survive and prosper in the cutthroat world of politics and can be a useful ally, potential mentor, and/or loving husband for Elodie? A complete Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who only likes Elodie for her title and her womb? Somewhere in between? A pedophile? Opinions are varied on his character and people can be quite vocal on how they feel about him. Making the debate worse is the fact that there's a lot of circumstantial evidence implying that he could be behind Adair's assassination but no concrete evidence that he's the culprit. Even if directly asked in one of his marriage epilogues, he denies any involvement beyond simple opportunism, and the text notes that although Elodie has no reason to disbelieve him, she'll probably never know the whole truth. For what it's worth, the ending where Elodie marries him soon after the coronation mentions that he was apparently in no hurry to produce an heir, as he encouraged his wife to play with the exquisite horses he gifted to her and, on his part, enjoyed his new political position. This seems to make it clear that he is at the very least no pedophile; Word of God also has it he is in this for the title. There is one adult in the game who, in certain runs, does have a more personal interest in Elodie despite an even larger age gap: Brin.
    • Julianna is either loved or hated. Her fans say that she's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and one of the only nobles who's actually out for the good of Nova rather than personal ambition. Her detractors, meanwhile, hate her for keeping Elodie in the dark and generally being unhelpful and just as disloyal to Elodie as everyone else. There's also a bit of leftover rage from the old days before the game was expanded, as Julianna used to be unkillable prior to the Steam release.
  • Complete Monster:
    • Hyacinth, Duke of Mead, is the eldest stepson of Arisse, Duchess of Lillah. After a brief reign and an equally brief official relationship, he drops all pretense of being interested in a normal life and goes into seclusion, hiring crowds of young attractive servants and having them killed or maimed in "accidents" once he gets tired of them. Eventually, Arisse arranges for his own assassination that is made to look like an accident or suicide, and years later, the relatives of his victims still struggle to come to terms with their loved ones' deaths.
    • Jael is the second husband of Arisse, Duchess of Lillah. He rapes his teenage stepson Kevan, while convincing him that it was a "seduction". Jael continues to rape Kevan until his own son Thaddeus discovers it by accident, which leads to Arisse divorcing Jael immediately. However, this doesn't stop Jael from tormenting Kevan, so Arisse is forced to stealthily have him assassinated. Many years later, Kevan is still severely unbalanced by his trauma and never heals from it completely even in the best of circumstances. And all of this before taking into account the possibility that Cayleigh was another victim of his sexual abuse.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The game is full of it, the most obvious examples being Elodie's various deaths which are always accompanied with cute little Magical Girl style graphics depicting her demise.
  • Diagnosed by the Audience: Kevan's behaviour (shouting at shadows, suspecting everyone outside his family of heinous crimes) seems suspiciously reminiscent of Paranoid Schizophrenia. Since he is in a mostly medieval setting, this issue is left unexplored.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Goons and /v/irgins alike agree: Your falcon is a badass motherfucker.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple:
    • Shipping Elodie with Charlotte is common, despite them being related.
    • Kevan/Elodie gets the most fanworks; between it being the only way his life can improve and him making a surprisingly devoted husband for Elodie, it's garnered more than a few fans.
    • In some circles, Elodie/Togami. Elodie being able to propose marriage to himnote  but for it to never be accepted can come off as something of a Yank the Dog's Chain for some shippers.
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Princess Maker: Game of Thrones Edition.
    • Princess Maker: Prepare to Die Edition.
    • "The Earl of Pastry," for the unnamed Earl with a passion for baking that Elodie may marry, should Elodie not choose anyone and survive to coronation unscathed.
    • "Spybard" for Sabine, before she was given an official name in a later plot update.
    • "King Dad" for Joslyn.
  • Game-Breaker: Obtaining the Lumen crystal early. Elodie as a Lumen can learn to control her magic, which makes several events that can easily end in her demise result in her victory simply by using magic to incinerate or drown someone. Most notably, having Sense Magic high enough by the gala can allow her to appease, if not kill, the source of two different assassination attempts from later in the game. This allows the player to skip taking classes for the skills required to survive them if they are not used later on and use those weeks to make a difference elsewhere.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • Joslyn's catchphrase ("As you wish") can become funny if you know about a certain movie full of memetic mutations... It can also become Heartwarming in Hindsight when you remember that, in the movie, "As you wish" is Westley's way to say "I love you".
    • A number of fanfics were written around the idea of what would happen if Elodie chose to approach Arisse and ask her to become her advisor before the possible civil war well before an update made that possible.
    • Hanako notes here that she made her Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc name references when the game was only partially fan-translated and had no idea how significant to the plot the original Junko and Togami were going to turn out.
  • Iron Woobie:
    • Arisse. Landed with a Serial Killer stepson and then a vile husband who's responsible for how fucked up Kevan, Corisande, and Thaddeus are. Her non-murderous twelve-year-old stepson is being threatened by a foreign country. Her granddaughter is suffering under a dark secret that affects her parents. And now she has to deal with a queen who may or may not fuck up the entire country. Her response to all of this is to settle in and get to work protecting Nova and her family.
    • Non-cruel and highly skilled Elodie might ended up as this in some routes. Being forced to be a Queen when she least expects it, she has to deal with Nova's problems, both internal and external. Later on, she has to deal with Nova's Decadent Court that aims to overthrow, puppet or even straight-out kill her, might be forced to kill her Evil Aunt while knowing full well that it will stain her relationship with Charlotte and Merva ducal family forever, then having to deal with large-scale foreign invasion that might only be ended with high cost of life, including her father. Elodie might eventually safely reach coronation, but on the way there it's almost inevitable that she has to spill some blood and make tough decisions which she will forever regret.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • If Elodie was cruel and executed everyone that could be executed, there will be long stretches of silence in the game, and she'll reach coronation horrendously depressed and alone. She kinda deserves it.
    • Brin is trying to start a war for some reason, and when it goes wrong she expects Elodie to bail her out. However, the fact she has not one, not two, but THREE lovers dump her — the latest of which she thought she'd be together with, dumped her for being "too challenging", and ran off with a priestess... ouch.
    • Kevan, Earl of Io. Hotheaded, abrasive, jumps to flimsy conclusions, and is willing to murder for them. Being "seduced" by his stepfather and then having this be discovered strained the relationship with his mother and brother, to put it lightly. The subsequent refusal to speak of the matter and the assassination of the stepfather left him with severe trust and familial issues, which he eventually confesses to Elodie, should they marry.
    • His half-brother Thaddeus also counts. Elodie, who's seen how he behaved at school, is incredulous when his mother describes him as "fragile," but walking in on his father with his brother, followed by his father's death clearly messed the guy up. Furthermore, if Elodie marries him and talks Togami out of invading, he assumes his new wife is having an affair, and the game notes that he wouldn't have said anything about it had Elodie not figured out what was wrong. Considering what happened the last time he was witness to an "affair", can you blame him? Then there's the ending where Elodie and Banion really are sneaking around behind his back, culminating in a case of Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe where he adamantly refuses to suspect her and makes people who question the baby's paternity in his presence regret it, for fear of how rumors will affect the child.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Arisse, Duchess of Lillah, is a powerful noblewoman second in influence only to the Crown Princess herself and dubbed Nova's Eastern Queen. She is fiercely protective of her large family, but that protection stopped extending to her oldest stepson Hyacinth and her second husband Jael whom she found out to be a serial killer and a rapist respectively and whom she had stealthily assassinated. If Crown Princess Elodie is an incompetent monarch (especially if her incompetence leads to Arisse's little stepson Adair getting killed), Arisse raises many nobles of Nova to a bloody rebellion, stopping at nothing until becoming the power behind the throne as regent or Royal Advisor. Elodie can only hope to defeat Arisse at all by developing significant political and military skills. However, if Elodie rules capably from the start, Arisse stays absolutely loyal to her, thereby showing that she isn't motivated by her own power grabs but by a desire for a stable and peaceful realm.
  • Memetic Badass: Your falcon is a badass motherfucker. Kevan finds this out the hard way if he tries to force a duel with an unwilling Elodie.
  • Memetic Loser: Banion, at least as far as his love life is concerned. He tried to court Julianna in the past, but the latter was more interested in his sister. During the game proper, his attempts to marry Elodie (sometimes by coercing her) can easily backfire spectacularly. Before Version 1.3.21, his least disastrous marriage endings are the endings where Elodie is also involved with his sister Brin. And even as of Version 1.3.21, which finally provides a Banion marriage ending that isn't explicitly a huge mess, he's now the only person Elodie can be engaged to at the end of the game and then unceremoniously dump in the epilogue. Even the game mocks him! If Elodie has enough Internal Affairs knowledge to learn about Banion's failed courtship of Julianna, the line "Unsuccessfully romanced Julianna, Duchess of Ursul" will stay on his dossier for the entire game, regardless of what's happening in the story when the player checks his information.
  • Moral Event Horizon: The nature of the game means that you may or may not ever get to see enough of a character to find out how far they'll go (and even if you do, they'll probably be wearing a placid smile the entire time), and there's a whole lot of grey morality happening amongst the nobles of Nova, but honorable mentions include:
    • Kevan, the Earl of Io. His first appearance in the game is demanding a criminal be killed for trying to poison his sister; make a misstep, and he'll pull a knife and cut her throat in broad daylight with no fucks given. He remains dangerously unstable even if you manage to have a good relationship with him.
    • Talarist, who is heavily implied to be willing to kill an innocent child to get what he wants. He denies that it was him, but since his bloodline makes him the rightful heir to Adair's lands and title if he dies, he's the only person with a motive, and if someone else is chosen to succeed Adair, he throws a fit. This also doesn't come to pass if you put him in position to score a bigger prize by betrothing yourself to him. Oh, sure, he comes off as nice and generous in person, but several of his actions indicate that he's a vindictive, nasty jerkass underneath.
    • Banion is charming and confidential unless Elodie decides to punish his sister Brin for the Ixion mess. Depending on the exact outcome, he variously resorts to sending an assassin, manipulating her into an engagement, calling a vote of no confidence against her, dueling her to the death, or pretending to marry her out of love and then poisoning her.
    • Togami, who goes around killing Lumens just to collect their crystals (which he can't use himself). It's possible to avert this trope with him, but redeeming him (the Save the Day with the Power of Music achievement) is a difficult Guide Dang It!.
    • Elodie herself can cross a few over the course of the game:
      • Escaping the Old Forest alone and leaving Briony there to be horribly killed by tentacles — or, knowing full well how dangerous it is, telling her to go there alone.
      • Feeding poisoned chocolates to people (or, if your Animal Handling is low enough, cramming one down a chicken's throat).
      • If a servant eats the poisoned chocolates and dies, Elodie happily remarks that she's glad it wasn't her if her Cruelty stat is high enough, indicating she's already crossed it.
      • Sacrificing Charlotte to the kraken.
      • And, naturally, killing her own father to prove allegiance to Togami.
    • And finally, Lucille. If Elodie gets too close to figuring out all those assassination attempts, she'll immediately throw her own husband under the bus to deflect suspicion and then poison him so he won't talk.
  • Nintendo Hard: Unless you're using a thoroughly detailed walkthrough, Elodie will die. Repeatedly.
  • Ships That Pass in the Night: Charlotte/Adair is a downplayed example. It has been showing up more in fanworks, though (currently) always as a background detail and/or as a Ship Mate to another ship. They're probably paired together due to being two of the few unambiguously good people in the game, their proximity in age, and the fact that, as the queen's cousin, Charlotte would likely be the best marriage prospect for Adair after Elodie (as he's the last of his line).
  • Surprise Difficulty: Even with a walkthrough guide to know which skills are actually important, keeping Elodie alive requires an impressive amount of planning and manipulation. Getting one of the best endings is much harder on top of that. It is indeed a surprise for anyone expecting a Princess dress-up game.
  • That One Sidequest: Joining Briony on the adventure into the Old Forest. The number of skill checks needed to both open it up and survive it are so high and so numerous, that you need to plan for it from the very beginning.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Several characters, particularly the Lumens that Elodie can work with. With Alternative Character Interpretation being such a large part of the experience, getting the details on a character's personal tragedies may not balance out how they treat Elodie in person. One of the biggest instances is Julianna, the Duchess of Ursul. As the only openly-acknowledged Lumen, she's subject to a degree of Fantastic Racism and, depending on whether Elodie bolsters the public acceptance of Lumens, may remain utterly hated by the masses; she even has a special segment in most of the epilogues and a number of special conversations suggesting that she's socially isolated because of her powers and feels guilty for not protecting Fidelia. However, to some players, her condescending, snobby attitude combined with her utter unwillingness to actually do anything unless she can't avoid it makes it hard to feel bad for her.
  • What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The developer's website recommends the game for ages 13 and up. It also features incest, decapitation, tyranny, genocide, sexual slavery, and complex political decision-making.
  • The Woobie:
    • Elodie herself if you keep the Cruelty stat low. Everyone wants her head on a platter, their repeated attempts to kill her maim and hurt people close to her, and she's expected to be Queen despite not having the slightest clue. We would give her a hug, but she might interpret it as an attempt to strangle her.
    • Potentially Alice. As a servant to Elodie, she is at the mercy to the latter's whims, and is a frequent victim of Video Game Cruelty Potential. Elodie can beat her for reasons that aren't Alice's fault, dance with her at a ball (which puts her on the spot with the scheming nobility), or even turn her into a Sex Slave.
    • Charlotte can get bitten by a poisonous snake... set by her scheming mother to try and get her cousin killed, or Elodie can kill her mother — one method, by frying her alive in self-defense, or Elodie can have Charlotte executed along with her mother because of her mother's crimes, or, if you're feeling particularly sore about her mom, Elodie can have Charlotte fed to the Kraken, by having people tie Charlotte up and gag her first and then dumping her off a ship, after some horrible ritual has been performed on her. And all this is happening to Elodie's favorite cousin. Even worse is if Elodie killed her mother in self-defense — she'll be absolutely heartbroken and blame Elodie, who is just as heartbroken as she is.
    • Briony has to deal with her parents never paying any attention to her, on top of the hideous secret that her mother and uncle are still reeling from their abusive stepfathers, and once were in a physical relationship. All she wants is someone to pay attention to her. Said methods may get her and her friend (Elodie) killed... if said "friend" doesn't leave her to her fate.
    • Joslyn. First he loses his wife, then his daughter is called on to rule even before she's crowned and is likely to die before the year is out, he's being pressured to provide an heir to his own estate while he's mourning, and may possibly be killed protecting his daughter from the man who murdered his wife, left in a near-vegetative state by the battle if he survives, or worst of all, murdered by his daughter-turned-evil.
    • Uncle Laurent, depending on your path. His wife is fully willing to slowly kill him with a mind-destroying poison to keep Elodie off her scent, and his own niece might be willing to kill his entire family for his wife's crimes. We don't see much of him in the game, but Laurent is basically Lucille's puppet, and there's a good chance he has no idea.
    • Corisande. In addition to her failing marriage and role in the Lillah-Mead family drama, she's likely to lose her daughter and her brother within a few weeks. If Elodie blames her for the former, she breaks down crying.
    • For the background/unseen character, we have Cayleigh of Elath, who got caught in the intrigue between Elath and Sedna, which then she had to cope with the death of her entire family along with the burden of maintaining Elath family line. Due to the pressure for securing a heir, she was pushed by her father Erwin to marry and bear child at such a young age, resulting in her death. Even worse if the Internal Affairs 80 entry, which mentioned a rumor that she was raped by Jael, was indeed true. Not to mention the possibility of her son joining her in the afterlife during the game timeframe, if Elodie botched up the custodian decision after Fabian's passing. In that circumstances, even in death she just seemingly can't catch a peaceful break.

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