YMMV / Polissena Del Porcello

• Designated Hero: Polissena's actions of ghosting her adoptive family (who have been nothing but kind and loving to her for ten years) can be easily seen as cruel. While she still loves them and misses them during her long trip, she also tries to forget them at any cost, without caring about how they feel after her disappearance. Her reasons to find her biological parents are selfish too: she absolutely believes her real parents are aristocratic, and that she is the heir to the throne and the princess of somewhere. Then there's the way she acts at the royal court of Mirenai, where she's pretty much an entitled Spoiled Brat who thinks the kingdom belongs to her because she's the only real princess and hates Princess Isabella for being an "usurper".
• Sweet Dreams Fuel:
  • Polissena's adoptive family. Polissena's mother Ginevra is the World's Most Beautiful Woman who rejected many rich admirers because she only wanted to marry Polissena's father Vieri Gentileschi, even if he comes from a poor family. Only after they get married, Mr. Gentileschi becomes a rich and successful Self-Made Man. Then they become wonderful parents to three beautiful daughters (Polissena being the oldest), living in a beautiful house with a caring housekeeper. Polissena was basically raised in the perfect family, and she has literally no reason to abandon them. At the end, it turns out Polissena wasn't adopted, and Vieri and Ginevra have always been her real parents, so she's very happy to return and get back her old life with them.
  • Pacuvio's farm is described as an idyllic place in every way possible, while Pacuvio himself is a super-sweet and hard-working All-Loving Hero who saved Polissena's life in the past.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: This is a children's book and according to the cover it's "for readers age 9 and up", yet it features torture, violence, alcoholic parents, horrific child abuse (Lucrezia used to be whipped and beaten with a stick by her grandfather), animal cruelty, teenage girls being enslaved (forced to work as scullery maids and sleep in cold attics), Parental Abandonment, and violent acts of bloodthirsty pirates.
• The Woobie: Lucrezia, Isabella, and the fisherman's children were (or still are) abused by their parents or step-parents. When it comes to Isabella, it's more emotional abuse since she's a princess. Lucrezia and Isabella get a happy ending, while things were never resolved for the fisherman's family. It's implied Polissena will do something to help them at the end of the book, due to her friendship with the fisherman's son Bernando.