Now before you jump to conclusions, let me explain in detail why I chose to give this score. I have read all 92 chapters up until this point and I intend to read this to the (bitter) end. This is a good romance, political manga with great art that starts out strong and becomes more generic/weaker as time goes by. It is really only based on Isekai around the beginning and is based on the main character's perspective from there.
The female lead (Chartiana).
Upright yet strict. She is a person that was cheated on, died due to drowning from a slip while drunk in South Korea and ended up becoming a girl of the Duke in another world. This girl had apparently died and swapped places with her to be in her body. Getting on with the story, she handles her situation well and manages to get a good grip of the situation once she figures out that she has been thrown to the dogs in of politics. Chartiana is clever, calm, calculating and is someone that tries to keep her emotions under control on the surface. Under the surface, she is upright yet can be rather silly, sweet and innocent. This is how Chartiana is for the first part until everything gets flushed down the drain once she meets the crown prince. I say that the manga is getting weaker and worse as the time goes by, due to how she is handling several of the situations. I enjoy the parts where Chartiana is acting as herself and I find this to be the case when she is with her ers (along with the 5th prince) but I will get to that. To clarify, Chartiana is the main reason why I read this story so I feel that the author managed to make a likeable female lead with all of her flaws (few in number) and strengths. I would like more scenes with her family, maids and the like.
The Crown Prince.
I am not going to mince words so for those who hold him up to esteem, leave now as I will be blunt.
The crown prince is a major problem for many reasons and the more that I see him, the more I dislike him as a character, as the eventual husband for the main character and for his role in the story.
He is a creep and an incredibly jealous, controlling person. He limits Chartiana where he can in his presence, he even intervenes when she is simply going to hug her own brother. His jealousy for her is shown to friend and family alike. This is consistent throughout the story from the start to finish and it is undeniable due to how many times that it occurs (along with directing it for the smallest gestures). You may call it sweet, I call it a gigantic red flag if I have ever seen one. It gets worse as he has no problem with disregarding her personal space (in most of their experiences together), kissing her when she is ed out drunk, is usually getting reports of everyone that she meets and had been doing all of this while giving her the impression that he has a lover. Don't worry, it gets even worse. He is also a sadist that wanted to humiliate her and her family in front of all of the high ranking nobles for his own satisfaction. His jealousy was bad enough for him to almost hurt his own brother during training when his brother mentioned that he had met up with Chartiana to have tea (despite being responsible for the whole situation to begin with). It turns out that this trait isn't exactly a new thing for the crown prince considering that he was incredibly close to being replaced as the heir for the royal crown until an incident occurred (leaving the previous heir dead). It is a problem with how much screentime that the crown prince gets recently and it is clear that he is the male lead. The crown prince only really gets interested when she shows that she is competent and able to solve his problems that he cannot fix. He treats her like trash prior to that and it is rather obvious to see that he does the same for the people surrounding him (including his family). All of these events are being done to set the cliche of "a villain turns sweet through love" as is common in the Shoujo romance genre, it is not pleasing.
The worst part is that Chartiana actually does have a great catch by her side the entire time that has been ignored for the most part. The 5th prince (Cailanden) is exactly what I would expect from one of these manga. It is a guy that respects her, has been her ally the entire time, are always having pleasant interactions when they interact and is someone that has been rather selfless most of the time. This is shown not only in his interactions with Chartiana and his family but to other characters. It puzzles me why he has been consistently thrown to the sidelines and his screentime is less for someone that is much worse, overall. The worst and let me stress this, ONLY mistake is when he didn't deny the rumours of which he was put on the spot suddenly and had no idea of what was occuring (due to no experience with the matter along with conflicting feelings on it). That's it and it is not a problem in the grand scheme of things.
I actually do enjoy the villainess and her rivalry with Chartiana, it brings a little bit of excitement into the story.
I should mention that I enjoy this manga, that it is nowhere near as bad as some others (like The Emperor's Companion). I find the crown prince and his involvement to be a major flaw, not an asset to this story.
The story, characters and the art all have their good points. It is the direction and the crown prince that has me disappointed in it as it has a lot of potential. I don't expect it to turn out like I want it to but I know the author can continue to surprise me so I will continue to read and enjoy it.
