What an absolutely big disappointment when there was such a strong beginning. I don't know what happened, but after s1 ended, everything was just super rushed. The relationship with Ersella and Vicente was going well and it is really the only good thing about this story. Well, okay, there's that girl too, Adora. We had some good mystery with the unknown illness, there was all this political intrigue, and the art was really nice. I suppose that's another good thing. The art was consistently really good. But still doesn't excuse the fact that the story and all the male characters except Vicente were absolutely horrible and irredeemable in my eyes.

I think the biggest flaw for this manhwa is the pacing. It took half the time or even less than it took to explain characters and their backgrounds in s2 than it did in s1. In order to make the political intrigue interesting AND make sense, the author needed to either create a family tree/famous houses guide and/or spend multple chapters going over why certain characters are important and related to the story. Like the emperor for example. He is Ersella's brother-in-law. And I think we really only have 2 chapters out of 113 focused on his character and reasoning for his treatment of the late queen Ersahilde (forgot the spelling). For someone who plays a big role in the country the characters live in and plays a role in affecting Ersella's family, you'd think we would spend more time on him to get an understanding.

There's also pacing when it comes to certain events like Ersella going to another country. We get maybe 4 small panels of her travelling time with Vicente and Adora and suddenly she's in that country. But then she's in that country only for 3-4 chapters and suddenly she's back home, no explanation of how they got back, or how they reacted to news that urged them to come home or anything. The manhwa also has a huge jumping back and forth problem with flashbacks as well that don't really tie in well with the current events happening. Some of these flashbacks deserved 1-2 chapters to really make the writing more substantial, emotional, intriguing, etc. Overall, for the pacing, it felt like there needed to be at least 50 more chapters to really develop the plot and characters to make it easier to follow, to understand characters, and to develop characters's personalities/motivations.

Since the pacing was rushed, then the characters and their relations to each other fell apart. The whole point of the story, Ersella's relationship with Vicente, was completely pushed to the side and forgotten. The supposed romance with Ersella and Harzen is absolutely one of the most toxic and terrible endings I've ever seen in my life. Not only is Harzen a possessive, toxic, unapologetic, and abusive man, he loves Ersella, so it's okay for him to do horrible things like kill people for her. That's totally okay and it's romantic. Ersella on the other hand was well written to me at first. She had trouble separating from Harzen, understandable, and it took her a while to realize she didn't love him and she hated him, etc. And then the next chapter suddenly she'd be saying something like "Harzen is a good man" or "But I do remember loving him". And that happens up to the very end. So the whole point of their romance is that it's okay for Harzen to abuse her because he loves her, and Ersella loves him, so I guess the abuse can be forgotten....

Maybe, maybe, maybe the romance would've worked if there was more time spent on it. If there were more chapters showing Harzen changing, realizing his abusive ways were wrong, and maybe Ersella gains a position of power that puts her on equal ground where she doesn't have to be dependent on the love for Harzen to give her life meaning. There's still that thing where "if I love him enough, I can fix him of his abusive ways" that I still don't like, but at least that would've been better than no apologies, no character growth, and happily ever after.

TLDR; Anyways, I highly recommend to just not bother. It could've been great, but for some reason they didn't want to spend the time to really develop the plot and characters and it suffered greatly, leaving the message of "abusive relationships are ok since they love each other" at the end.