Welcome to another round of Rose reads horrible shoujo because she’s insane! And yeah, I definitely knew what I was getting myself into with this one, unlike a couple of other series I read recently (like Love Witch for example). This is the fabled French Revolution Omegaverse manga from Cheese magazine! And yes, it’s as wild and god awful as it sounds and I wish I never read it.
As a warning, there will be spoilers for just about everything in this manga because I hate it and don’t care enough to not spoil things.
Imagine the time just before the French Revolution, but with the Omegaverse! King Louis XVI is an alpha, and Marie Antoinette is an omega. Our main character is Fran, a girl whose brother is slain by the hand of a mysterious man, who disappears into the palace of Versailles. Fran makes it her mission to kill this man and get revenge on behalf of her beloved brother. Thus begins a story of alphas, omegas, political intrigue, and maybe guillotines?
And yes, this manga is as stupid and unhinged as it sounds. I’m going to be honest and say I had never read anything Omegaverse related before and had barely any notion of its existence before this year. I just knew Alpha > Beta > Omega, and that it had something to do with m-preg. And yeah, I don’t think I like the Omegaverse and I have some observations. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on the Omegaverse or anything because I’ve only read this and my knowledge of the Omegaverse functions and tropes is solely based on this one specific manga.
It reminds me a lot of rape culture, if that makes sense. Like how people will say “Boys will be boys! They can’t control their urges!” That logic is applied to the alphas in the series (who interestingly enough are only portrayed as men in this manga). Alphas are shown to be stronger, more intelligent, and worth more than any other type of people, and they are slaves to their sexual desires, particularly their desires for Omegas.
Omegas on the other hand are supposed to be weak and stupid and useless for anything other than giving birth to future Alphas. When they go into heat and release pheromones, they attract Alphas and become incredibly horny and because the Alphas cannot control their sexual desires, because pheromones I guess, you can imagine what happens. And yeah, there’s usually no consent involved. Consent is not a thing in this manga. Pretty much anything that goes on here is assault.
Unrelated note: Every time they mentioned pheromones it reminded me of this one kid I went to school with back in 9th grade who refused to wear deodorant because “it blocked his pheromones and kept him from attracting girls.” (Sadly for him, it had the opposite effect.)
It’s just so easy to apply these dynamics to how super misogynistic men operate. They think they’re stronger and smarter and more intelligent than women, and tend to view women as useless for anything other than being baby makers. I know guys who think like this in real life. And the whole thing where when the Omegas go into heat it’s perfectly legal to sexually assault them is very reminiscent of “she was asking for it”. Basically, this feels like living under the patriarchy but a fantasy version and somewhat worse. I don’t really understand how this is a fantasy for people, but I literally know nothing about the history of the Omegaverse and I do not want to know.
Anyways, now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, it’s time to talk about the actual story this godforsaken manga tells. Fran is invited to court after being assaulted by the king because she discovers that she’s an Omega. Fran is honestly the least important character in this manga and serves as a vessel for the Cheese readers to self insert onto as she gets caught in a passionate love triangle between two Alphas: her childhood friend Maximillian Robspierre and King Louis XVI, the tortured king. (I wish I was joking.) Of course, they both think she is their fated partner because she’s not like the other girls and can deflect their supernatural abilities?
This manga is so bad that it’s funny. I started laughing hysterically in certain parts because it was so insane. In this world Marie Antoinette is a gay Omega male who is forced to crossdress and dreams of bearing Louis XVI’s children. The characters go to a seancé (which is just a poorly disguised orgy), and I could not contain my laughter.
Also, Louis XVI is heavily implied to be Maximillian’s half brother. It’s so funny because Louis has a tragic backstory about how his parents didn’t want him, and how his father who was a Beta was jealous of his Alpha son, and then Maximillian was like “I walked in on my parents sleeping together, which caused them to break up, and then she became a nymphomaniac and was known as the village slut.” This manga is wild.
Louis XVI can see the future because of his fancy Alpha powers, and he predicted the French Revolution! Instead of looking for the reason why people would start a revolution and try and fix it, like any sane, reasonable person, Louis chooses violence! Specifically murder! He goes around killing people before they can cause the revolution. So he’s a mass murderer, killing innocents for things they haven’t done yet, and one of those innocents is Fran’s brother.
Louis monologues about how he didn’t want to kill anyone, but it was something he had to do. And Fran is like, “Poor you! I thought my brother was murdered by some soulless monster instead of some tortured soul who doesn’t want to be a killer! This changes my revenge plans completely! Let’s stop the French Revolution together!” Even though it’s pretty clear that Louis doesn’t have to kill people. He’s choosing to kill. Every single day. He’s making the choice himself to kill innocent civilians. He’s a literal mass murderer. I was so mad at Fran during that scene.
I also hate how the French Revolution is just attributed to Maximillian being a mastermind who wants to overthrow the perfectly fine government, instead of class struggles and extreme poverty. They could have even incorporated the Alpha, Beta, Omega caste system into this in an interesting way, but this had to be a Cheese manga where they do stupid things that make no sense, and overthrowing a corrupt monarchy is made out to be a bad thing in this universe.
Basically, I hate Louis and want him dead. Hopefully he doesn’t succeed in stopping the French Revolution because I know that’s the only way I’m going to get my wish. The man is a murderer and a rapist, and the story acts like he’s completely justified and noble because of his tragic backstory and Alpha-ness. He acts like he’s got so many unsolvable problems, but they could honestly all be solved by paying attention to his people’s needs and the invention of birth control.
You see, Louis is neglecting his queen, because he doesn’t want to have children with him. The future shows Marie Antoinette’s children all dying, and Louis doesn’t want that to happen, so he refuses to sleep with his husband. And Marie is pissed about this because he’s horny AF and madly in love with his emotionally distant husband. Marie is probably the most sympathetic character in this manga (apart from the part where he and Fran contemplated giving Louis a date rape drug to “help their marriage”).
When he gets a lover it’s made into a big deal, despite the fact that everyone and their mother is a serial cheater in this manga, and it’s established as part of the worldbuilding that monogamy is pretty much dead in Versailles? There was literally an orgy party a few chapters before Marie’s affair.
This is also a smut manga. I skipped the smut parts to the best of my ability because I do not like smut. The glimpses I got made me kinda nauseous, and from what I’m hearing, these smut parts are completely nonsensical (just like everything else). Like parts of their clothes just disappear and body parts do things that aren’t physically possible. And to think if someone asks me what the first smut manga I read was, I’d have to answer the French Revolution Omegaverse manga. ;-;
The art is pretty and one of the saving graces of this manga. The character designs are nice (though Maximillian is so basic looking, if he were wearing modern attire, he’d be some guy in a high school romcom). Fran, Louis, and Marie are all quite pretty at least.Anyways, my review probably makes no sense, but the general gist of it is: This manga sucks. Don’t read it. It makes no sense and the characters are stupid and unlikeable. It’s everything you would expect upon reading the premise and I mean that in the worst possible way.