#WILL CONTAIN MAJOR SPOILERS + TRIGGER WARNING
Glossary: FL, Ruby-female lead; ML, Izek-male lead
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Summary: I thought I’d finally escaped my hellish life when I died in an airplane crash, but I fell into another nightmare when I awoke as Rudbeckia de Borgia, a minor villain from a historical novel destined to die at the hands of her husband, Izek van Omerta. Surviving with the dysfunctional Borgia family is hard enough, but now I have to marry the man who will kill me! Still, it’s okay, I just have to convince Izek, his family, and all his countrymen that I’m completely harmless! How hard can that be?
The first thing to talk about is, of course, the art because I'm an aspiring artist and am really noticing little things in art that makes it truly good. I know I've talked about atmosphere in manga/manhwa art in every review I've written so far, but I can't stop, as it is never talked about enough and plays an extremely important role in every piece of great art. This series builds mood wonderfully with its art, and I've gotta appreciate that. It's a delight in terms of visual imagery too:
I love the style, it's just the right amount of detailed, and overall very pleasing to look at.
My favorite panels because I decided to grace your eyes with their beauty:
The plot is just chef's kiss. One unique thing is how unreliable the narrative is, as we're seeing the story unfold from the deeply traumatized FL's lenses, and I doubt that we'd ever notice it on first reading. Peeling off the layers of her thoughts to uncover the truth on rereading was certainly interesting, and so was reading all the analyses lmao. Mostly, it's some extremely painful and well written angst, but there is budding romance in the later chapters, which makes it all the more sweet and satisfying. The story's strongly character-focused and I think the portrayal of trauma is very well done, in both of the leads, affecting them each differently. From Ruby's breaking down and apologizing when her trauma surfaces, to how Izek faces and treats others and how emotionally-stunted he appears to be. The way they bond and help each other get over all the trauma (in the later chapters when their drama is resolved and they stop tormenting each other at least) is just beautiful and I don't think I could describe it accurately, sooooooooooo you should just see it for yourself. They are both well-written in my opinion.
Ruby, the main character, is a trauma-ridden individual and it hurts so bad to see the affects said trauma has on her, and the portrayal feels very realistic. She's a damsel in distress indeed, but for valid reasons. She pretends to be your typical lovesick damsel in distress to protect herself (honestly she deserves an Oscar for all the acting she does), but when all the glamor falls off, what's left is just a fragile, hurt, kind human, who is indeed, distressed.
Feels, man.
The same could be said for the ML's backstory....... Let's say that while he hasn't gone through as much pain as our FL, he certainly has had his share. As we see through FL's POV from the first 30 or so chapters, he is a exaggeratedly condescending scary asswipe. As I said, FL is an unreliable narrator and he definitely appeared worse than he actually was, but there was still huge character development to be made, and the story delivered wonderfully. He had already displayed crooked actions of consideration in early chapters, but the way he realized his mistakes and apologized for them and actively tried to make amends is great development for me.
Contrary to the lead's writting, I think most side characters (except for a few of the ML's family members) fall pretty flat, especially the antagonists. What exactly is the motivation of the white lotus woman who wants the male lead's love? The main antagonist, FL's half-brother and abuser, is not fleshed out at all, though he certainly strikes me as terrifying, because FL's trauma responses are really something....His heinous acts are certainly there, but as a character, he's bland as fuck and I want him feel real pain then fuck off from the story forever. We all know the reason why he did the things he did is because he's a sick fuck, but I want multi-faceted villains! Well, I supposed you can't have everything, and other aspects of the story more than makes up for its flaws.
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What can I say more? I just really love this story, and I hope you check it out if you haven't already!
