When we last left off, a mysterious man had pulled a gun on Constance, but she is luckily saved by Aldous. Wait, who? Oh, that guy we met for the first time in the previous episode. That guy who was onscreen for about… what? A minute or so? See, this is the problem you run into when your pacing is frenetic. Obviously, Constance isn’t going to die midway through the series. But how she survives the dangerous encounter can still surprise us. When the story is all over the place, however, nothing ends up having any impact. Aldous apparently works for Abigail, who apparently runs a brothel (I’m not even going to get into how gross that is). Shocking? Or just more extraneous details to add to the long list of information that the anime is constantly throwing at us?
Connie’s recent escapades haven’t gone unnoticed. She has worried not just her fiancé (even if it is a fake engagement), but her best friend as well. Kate won’t give up on Connie, though. Constance was her first real friend, so Kate’s not going to abandon the girl now. But this is where our heroine starts to frustrate me with her naïveté. I totally understand why she can’t tell Kate exactly what she’s up to. After all, she’s sticking her nose in places where it doesn’t belong, and as a result, some very evil people are after her — the same evil people who probably framed Scarlett and got the woman executed. Nevertheless, Constance could do more than say, “I’m sorry,” then coldly turning away from her friend. If evil people are after you, they’re going to go after your loved ones as well! Your fiancé belongs to the kingdom’s Security Force. Can’t you arrange a security detail? Even if it’s not possible, you could at least ask!
To be fair, no matter what Constance said, Kate probably would’ve gotten kidnapped anyway. Our heroine soon receives a package containing Kate’s hair along with instructions on what to do next. The kidnappers are employing same playbook that you see in every story: if Constance wants Kate alive, she better do what she’s told! But she also can’t tell anybody about this! If she does, Kate dies! So of course, Constance follows their orders. As soon as Kate sees her, she calls Constance an idiot and I can’t disagree. What exactly is Constance’s plan here? Does she really think the bad guys — the same bad guys who are involved in drug dealing, human trafficking, murders and assassinations, kidnappings, etc. — would just be like “Damn, gotta keep my promise and let your bestie go!” They want something from her, so that something is her only bargaining chip. If she goes and gives herself over to them, then bam, no leverage left. So tell me, why the fuck would you do this? Yes, she wants to save her dear friend, but like the title of this post suggests, nice doesn’t have to mean naive. “This isn’t what you promised,” she screams. Uh, duh. Bad guys don’t keep promises.
Luckily, even though Scarlett can’t directly communicate with Randolph, she manages to send him a coded message through Constance anyway. As a result, our heroine’s fiancé comes to the rescue yet again. We do get a few more juicy revelations (even though it comes in the form of a reckless reporter just inelegantly parroting information at us), so this episode isn’t a complete loss. We can finally confirm that Princess Cecilia belongs to a shady organization known only as Daeg Gallus (among other sordid details), and she’s actually taking the abortifacient in her tea on purpose. I have to assume Daeg Gallus couldn’t control Scarlett, so they had her killed and replaced her with Cecilia instead. The woman has thus been manipulating the royal family as Daeg Gallus sees fit. But I dunno, man. Last week, I was frustrated with the story’s frenetic pacing. This week, I’m frustrated with our disturbingly clueless heroine. Is this mystery worth the shoddy storytelling? Is this mystery worth watching Constance bungle her way through her investigation?
