By Kooriame and Nami Hidaka. Released in Japan as “Lady Rose wa Heimin ni Naritai” by Kadokawa Beans Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Heart. Translated by Caroline W.
This came out as a manga from JNC well before the light novel was licensed – in fact, the manga’s six volumes all finished before the light novel was licensed. I didn’t read the manga when it came out, but I experienced it, as this was a popular title to see liveblogged on Tumblr. And from what I saw, it appeared to be a pretty broad comedy, mostly dealing with the heroine’s over the top reactions to things and her obsessive love of bread and cute young women, in that order. (The fact that all the love interests are male is neither here nor there – when she hears a rumor she’s in love, she asks which of the two girls she knows it is). I enjoy comedy. But as I read this first book, I realized that there was a lot more to it. There was mystery, as both our heroine and the reader try to figure out the plot. And there’s traumatic backstory. In fact, that’s one of the mysteries.
We open with a very familiar villainess book trope. Felicia Schwarose is condemned in public by her fiance, the Crown Prince, and dumped for a woman of a lower noble rank. This time, though, our reincarnated girl actually IS the heroine – and she has spent her entire life in this otome game world gunning for this bad end. Now she’s disowned by her family, but they give her a small house in the commoner area and some cash. This means she’s finally free of the noble training that she’s hated and can live a happy life working in a bakery – helped along by her past life, where she also did this, and is the only reason that a duke’s daughter can survive without servants. Unfortunately for her, she is the ONLY one who wants this future for herself, and she reckons without the impact she had on the rest of the cast.
I was expecting the standard “hit by a truck” death, and I got it, but it was everything else about her life that startled me. Let’s just say that a lot of what Felicia, aka Fii, has been doing is driven very heavily by her own past trauma from her previous life. Here, she’s very good at arranging things so that all the dominoes can fall in place and she can scamper off to live in her bakery, but reckons without the impact this has on everyone who knows her. Like so many other otome game imports, she sees this world as a game, no matter how much she tries to deny it, and reckons without everyone just really liking her for her actions rather than the plot. By the way, in case I made this seem more serious than it is, there really IS a goofy quality to some of it, particularly the bread jokes, and the contrast between her inner and outer voices.
There’s only three volumes to this, and I think the third one is a side story focusing on the “villainess”, so this should wrap up next time. Which is good, as it ends with an action-packed cliffhanger. I will get tired of this genre one day, but not today. This was a terrific read.
