Why, these two are like star-crossed lovers! 

— Marrine still cares about Alexis, but she refuses to be with him because her father died. That proved to her that she and Alexis were never meant to be. I think that’s pretty weak. She’s just giving her enemies exactly what they want. If you want to ape Romeo and Juliet, you’re going to have to do better than this. Now, if she said she was doing this in order to protect Alexis, i.e. those conspirators would target him next, then I’d understand her motivations a little better. But for now, it’s flimsy.

— Villar: “Do you two know how the marquis and Marrine first met?” No and I don’t really ca–… oh goddammit, he’s telling us anyway.

— Is this gonna be an episode all about Alexis and Marrine? I sincerely hope not.

— Alexis is the persistent sort. The creepily persistent sort.

— I hate this sort of love anyway. There’s no real action here. All he’s done is write her a bunch of letters filled with flowery bullshit. Love is more than that. Love has to be more than that.

— And when I say action, I don’t mean this. This sort of thing is just self-indulgent.

— Oooh, he protected her from some impertinent young lord! How romantic~! She then kicked the jerk in the balls. Truly, a couple for the ages.

— Like Romeo and Juliet! O Alexis, Alexis! Wherefore art thou Alexis!

— Ew, now he’s got Alliance cooties all over him.

— By the way, we can’t forget that this is Villar’s retelling of their love story. One wonders how reliable he is as a narrator.

— Well, the love story finally ends, and we’ve already wasted half an episode. Long story short, she fell in love with Alexis for his ideals, but obviously, her convictions are not as strong as his. He’ll probably have to make her fall in love with him again. Maybe it’ll cost him his life.

— After the story is over, Siluca merely glances at Theo. I wonder what she’s thinking. Does she think that a love between her and Theo can also never be? As for the hero, he looks oddly determined as if Alexis and Marrine’s romance somehow falls under his purview.

— Pederico is expelled as we suspected.

— Ah, so much talking. Intriguing political maneuvering, this is not. Basically, people are mad that Villar helped Theo, but he argues his point.

— Eventually, the entire conference is in agreement to go to war with Alliance in order to defend Starck, and Alexis wants to give his powers over to Villar. Wants.

— Villar, however, declines to go to war with his own family. So in the end, powers falls back into Alexis’s hands. And with that, the lords continue to pursue peace… which ends up pissing the Alliance off, so Marrine goes forward with her war plans. She even intends to join the frontlines to prove that she’s a capable leader. Nothing happens without a reason, so this must be Villar’s desired outcome, no? And Alexis remains blameless, because as far as Marrine’s concerned, he wants peace. Oh well.

— It’s hard to get too emotionally invested in all this war stuff, because we’re missing the human element. When these nations go to war and these lands exchange hands, who truly suffers? The people. The soldiers, the farmers, the peasantry, so on and so forth. But we never get to see or spend time with the lower class. It’s always about lords and mages, soirees and conferences. The show makes a big deal about how Theo’s ideals and convictions are pure. After all, Siluca pledges herself to him simply because she believes he can unite the land and truly bring peace to the world. But that hope is incongruent with the story’s inexplicable erasure of the lower class.