YMMV / The Soulless Duchess

• Arc Fatigue: Tristan and Gaspar takes three seasons to be defeated and even then Gaspar manages to weasel his way out. In the past timeline, Gaspar only accomplished so much because Yvona was his shadow and in this timeline, he shouldn't be much of a challenge. Yet he continues to run free coasting on his reputation, causing death and suffering through sheer incompetence. Meanwhile, Yvona is uncharacteristically passive and delays dealing with Gaspar under a vague "let's wait for him to dig his own grave" reasoning which makes her Unintentionally Unsympathetic as she lets soldiers and civilians die rather than act and stop Gaspar once and for all with the knowledge she knows about his lies, lies that she could tell his cousin, the far more competent Crown Princess, and let her take care of the rest.
• Broken Base: Tristan and Gaspar are polarizing characters, especially in the West, primarily due to the Depraved Homosexual trope being very controversial. The scene where Gaspar is cheating with Tristan while plotting to make Yvona a Baby Factory leans into some pretty ugly stereotypes, and it also doesn't help that Tristan is implied to be transgender as he clearly suffers from heavy gender dysphoria and openly mourns not being born female. Particularly in a genre that is lacking in LGBT representation, having the only LGBT characters be evil tends to rub readers the wrong way, and the implications have turned many a potential reader off the story altogether.

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