Someone tried to shove Bertia down the stairs, but our “villainess” is luckily fine thanks to her contracted spirit. The downside, however, is that she remains undeterred. She keeps trying to spin this off as a crucial and necessary development in the otome storyline. But as we’ve said before, this is not a game. What if Kuro is too slow to react next time? Cecil needs to stop being so hands-off and take control of the situation, lest his fiancée end up in a coma. I still want Cecil to set Bertia straight, and truly convince his fiancée to just let him love her. But for now — always for now — he’ll take matters into his own hands without looping her in. Instead, he assembles the entire Avengers into his revenge scheme.
It would be easy (and tempting) to pin the blame on Heronia, especially since Bertia describes her attacker as having pink hair and a similar build. But Cecil reasons that it has to have been someone else — some new character we’ve never met before (but we’ve seen her glowering in the background). Why was Bertia so explicit in her description? When Cecil warned Heronia in last week’s episode, it was really Ilynn, some viscount’s daughter, in disguise. She just happens to have the same exact build as Heronia. Not only that, she owns the same exact dress and even a wig with the same exact hair color and length. Yeah, that’s a bit silly.
So what’s Ilynn’s problem? Unfortunately, it’s a tale as old as time: pure and simple jealousy. The guy she likes also happens to be a fan of Bertia. That’s kind of boring, isn’t it? Moreover, girls can hate each other for reasons other than love! Girls have more on their minds than just boys, boys, boys! Let girls hate and let them hate properly!
All of Bertia’s allies proceed to reveal how Ilynn is the true culprit. I’ve seen more investigative work here than that detective show airing this season. Eventually, Ilynn is pinned with the crime of attempted murder, so she’s now awaiting her fate in a jail cell. Unfortunately, solving the crime only fixes one half of the problem. The other half, Heronia, is still beefin’ with Bertia. In fact, she finally reveals that she’s just as big of an otome fan as our so-called villainess. She knows the original story, and she insists that Bertia is just delaying inevitable. Bertia then gets all depressed, because she still thinks Cecil is doomed to… uh, whatever unfortunate fate awaits him. Neither girl ever explains what this fate is. Nevertheless, Bertia gets so depressed that she passes out.
Guys, c’mon, this is so easy to solve. We’ve already prevented her mom from dying. We also prevented her father from becoming a bog standard, moustache-twirlin’ villain. As a result, Bertia now has a baby brother. Her entire family has changed, so why can’t Cecil’s fate change? Hell, you could argue that it has already changed. Cecil is supposed to be cold and robotic, right? And he’s totally not anymore, right? Even the other characters can tell that Bertia has been a great influence on the prince. Why are we pretending to be stupid about this? Okay, maybe Bertia is a little slow on the uptake. But Cecil should be able to reason this out and properly reassure his fiancée that everything will be fine. Just keep doing it. Just keep speaking your truth until she believes it. Instead, however, we jump forward two months to a culture fair held by the academy. So Cecil heard all that nonsense about Heronia being the Maiden of Destiny, and he’s not gonna comment on it…? He’s not going to question Bertia on what his fiancée is so afraid of? Bah.
There’s a contest for best couple, and we already know who’ll win. The only person who doesn’t know is Bertia. Guys, I’m starting to think our villainess is a bit dumb. Still, Cecil seizes this moment to romance his fiancée in front of the entire student body. He literally sweeps her off her feet. We later learn that he planned this whole thing out in order to dispel Bertia’s anxiety. But again, the problem is that he still hasn’t really changed Bertia’s mind. I don’t know why he doesn’t just list all of the things that have changed, i.e. the stuff I mentioned above about her family. Oh well, maybe it’s just not possible to convince Bertia otherwise. At least, not until some drastic happens like, I dunno, Cecil’s life being in danger due to Heronia’s antics or whatever. Maybe that’s the only way to truly persuade Bertia that the heroine isn’t good for the prince. Still, I’m a little disappointed that our villainess is kinda stupid. So what even changed in the last few episodes? Just Cecil finally realizing that he loves Bertia? I dunno if that’s enough in my book.
By the way, why does Kuro look so mad to see Cecil flirt with Bertia?
