Yeah, her character is not that realistic I feel. I agree she had an unloving mother. But she was neither hit or insulted by said mother, nor was she unloved as she had her brothers. I understand how the original Serenia ended up like that when she was brought up by that mother, but our mc was already an adult. On one hand she's mature in the sense that she didn't lean/trust on her brothers or even ml. But on the other hand she's childish enough to be affected by her cruel parent and turn twisted as well. So her character is kinda contradictory. Her brothers who weren't reincarnated grew more normal than her. Yeah, exactly, Roxana, even if traumatised, is still normal, even though she pretends to be evil. Giovinetta is a bit crazy tho lol, but it's different anyway, she's not reincarnated. And thank you for the spoilers @NohrNeir Do you also know what happened to og leads at the end? Did they end up with anyone? I did read they didn't appear much. Also, did their mother care for her children at all? Or just her dead husband? And did I understand correctly that she had other children besides the current three, but killed them to gain their powers as she was planning with mc and her brothers? Sorry if I missed any spoilers. I only read the summary spoilers and no chapter mtls.
It's so her mom can die. The author strives to write angst so comparing it to those other novels wouldn't make sense because in other novels, the author would've allowed MC to be able to defeat her enemies and Roxana could be considered OP in a sense. Whereas in this novel, MC is strong but she's not OP. When she fights, she always barely escape almost half dead. Her mother is much stronger. She doesn't trust ML or her brothers can defeat their mother or protect her from her mother so she sacrificed herself for that. She was the only one who could actually defeat her mother at the cost of her life. It's understandable why she lies to protect herself because she doesn't trust them. Also MC had experienced ML almost choking her to death when the curse was removed from him for a bit early on. So the whole time she thinks that once the curse is removed, he would hate her and try to kill her, but she still cares for him to remove the curse. She was reincarnated for that "happy ending". There's still Gaiken after the side stories. Gaiken is still ongoing.
Wait, I actually have questions about the novel I need clarification for and will PM you. Also, excuse the initial annoyed tone in which I wrote the previous post in. I was emotionally vulnerable from Born as the Villainess Daughter......
Can I get examples on how obsessed the ML is? Because all throught out the thread, people keep saying that FL killed herself because of suffocation from ML. I got curious as to what are the things he did for her to really feel suffocated?
The interesting thing about this story is that the ML's trauma is so significant, that the FL's is overlooked in comparison. She is quite damaged, however, and it cannot be ignored. Serina has been terrified of Alastair since childhood. He would throw screaming fits, trying to harm her by breaking things and throwing vases. He would shriek that he hated her and wanted to kill her. He'd even try to kill her; he choked her multiple times. Only for him to be forcibly dragged away... and come back that evening saying he loved her. A vacant puppet repeating and repeating "I love you" and trying to grab her. Serina describes him as an empty, hollow, doll with dead eyes that scared her, saying "I love you" over and over again. Only for it to eventually wear off and he goes back to screaming about how much he hates her and wants her dead. That's enough to seriously twist a person's view on love, like Serina's has been. Brainwashed Alastair is also an unstoppable force with an unending need to be near Serina. She endured some pretty appalling sexual harassment and invasions of privacy at Alastair's hands, from a very, very young age (under 10), and all with her mother's knowledge and encouragement. He would force his way into her room. She would wake up to find him in the midst of kissing/ licking her feet or the wounds he had inflicted on her during his rages and attempts to kill her. He would invade her space, constantly touching her. He'd grab her hands and rub his face on her. She was basically forced to allow him to sleep next to her in her bed, since he would refuse to leave her room or stop staring at her as she slept. She couldn't go anywhere or talk to anyone without him. To her, he was almost like a golem monster, empty and unstoppable, and she had no way to control him except through manipulation. She describes him as "He looks at me lovingly, but his eyes are empty. It was as if maggots ate up all the contents and left his eyes void" and finds him scary beyond belief. Yet she has to play nice and appease him because he's still more powerful than her, and she isn't a monster. Imagine if your mother encouraged a boy like that to be obsessed with you and do stuff like that to you when you were in elementary school. Serina had to learn how to be a sexual tease as a child/ preteen in order to influence and control Alastair and keep him at a distance. Once grown, Alastair became more frightening. Despite the brainwashing, Alastair has more power in the relationship. He is a mage of unfathomable power, an expert swordsman, and so intelligent and intimidating he was able to turn his impoverished duchy around and become one of the richest men in the country in 3 years. He far outstrips Serina in status, strength, power, and wealth. The brain washing only makes him crave Serina's attention and presence. It does not grant her absolute obedience or control, and it does not keep him from causing her physical or mental harm. He is very much inclined to do as she asks because he wants her attention, especially if she gives a direct order, but he is not compelled or required to listen to her. He also enters disassociated states at random, where he tries to choke and kill her, so even that cannot be relied on. Consider the following passage, written from Serina's viewpoint: As we can see from this passage, Alastair is able to physically do what he likes with her, (which he does often,) and he is able to disobey and even harm her. Serina has learned to fear him. Alastair physically intimidates her by looming over or covering her and invading her space. Whenever he is in her presence, he is basically touching her. He is often able to harm her, such as grabbing her too tightly and causing bruises. She once gets a cut on her arm and, angry that she got hurt, he aggravates the wound further while applying a dressing to cause her pain as punishment for not listening to him. Serina has limited to no means of stopping him outside of flirtatious manipulation and threatening to withhold attention. The restraint he shows towards Serina (limited as it is) is nonexistent when it comes to those around her. He has zero qualms killing the people around her. Serina went to an auction house, and was put in danger when the building catches fire. Because of this, Alastair tortures the auction house owner to death. This is a man he has worked closely with, needs for future plans, and had nothing to do with the fire. When Serina appears to be interested in another man (an elf, up for auction) Alastair is willing to spend enough to buy an entire town to keep her from obtaining him, then tries to kill the elf simply for having a matching bracelet with Serina. He stops only because Serina threatens to remove herself from his presence and agrees to stay in his home for a while. If Serina says she doesn't want to see Alastair, he will literally stand outside her room or house, waiting, for days, until she changes her mind. Alastair always seems to know where she is, even when she goes to a seemingly secret place to be alone. When she stays at his palace, he has picked and provided all of her clothes, including undergarments and nightgowns. For a ball, he chooses matching outfits for them to wear and forbids her from dancing with others. Alastair will enter her room at his palace without permission, and sleeps in her bed while she is using it. He has his guards and servants watch and monitor her for him and give him reports on her movements. It is very clear that Serina will never be able to find someone else, fall in love normally, and get married. Alastair would, at best, interrupt their marriage, and at worst, kill the other man. As much as Serina is Alastair's only choice, Alastair is Serina's. It's mutual captor-bonding. She is trapped with him and must make due as best she can. Which generally means trying to scrape up some control via teasing and sexual denial. And as twisted as it sounds, Alastair is one of the only sources of love, attention, and affection she has, and she has become reliant on him viewing her as lovable and desirable. She does not get that anywhere else (except maybe her brothers). She loves him right back. But, there is an element of guilt and the idea that, since he is not fully in control of his faculties, she would be raping him if she ever acted upon their mutual attraction, so she cannot ever give in while he is still brainwashed. He does not understand this and pushes the limits to the extreme. She permits him to harm, control, and touch her as payment for her guilt, and to ease his suffering, but even she has limits and she'll occasionally snap back at him. All of the above is when Alastair is still limited by the brainwashing into craving Serina's approval and love. Once the leash comes off, he becomes even worse, and even attempts to brainwash and enslave her in return.
What the fudge.. omg.. I understand the FL now. She really won't be able trust the ML and I understand her trauma more because of the explanation. Wow, I can't believe that this novel is too dark. Thank you so much for the explanation! If its okay to ask one more, why did ML tried to brainwash her? To make sure that she won't defy him? That's possessiveness on another level but I think we can't judge ML because he became twisted too because of FL's mother. I feel sad for them
ML tries to brainwash her for a great many reasons. One is revenge. He hates her family, he wants them to suffer. Serina is included in that. She is focus of all his suffering during the brainwashing, so a lot of blame gets focused back on her. It would be the best, ironic revenge to have the fate they planned for him reverse-uno-carded in their faces. He also wants revenge against Serina specifically for what he sees as years of manipulation and her jerking around his feelings. He wants a chance to be fully in the driver's seat and have her humiliated in return. He's panted after her for decades, he wants her desperate for him for a change. He flip flops hourly on whether he'd use her craving after him to reject her so she feels what he felt whenever she put him off (he's never really picked up on the fact that basically all of her 'orders' were for his own benefit. Like the one that he live solo for three years and 'prove his worth', when she could have made him a sex slave and kept him in a box) or fully embrace her and live out his fantasies. He wants a have his cake and eat it too situation. He wants to destroy her family, but he's still very attached to Serina. He thinks brainwashing her would allow him to 'destroy' her without destroying her, reconciling these two desires. He also has conflicting desires between wanting to love Serina, and rejecting it since he was brainwashed into it, so again, if he brainwashes Serina, he is able to resolve these conflicting desires. Since he is 'punishing' her, but in a way which allows him to be loved by her, he can have his cake and eat it too. Next, and a very big one, is his natural possessiveness. He has always wanted to fully control and own Serina. That is his nature, when it comes to things he loves. To hide it away to cherish, never share, and make it completely his and only his. Most humans would not put up with his preferred level of control. Brainwashing (or trauma conditioning/ captor-bonding) is necessary. He wants and loves Serina, and he is going to do absolutely everything to make her let him love her. Then, underneath alllll of that, there's the terror that Serina will leave. Serina has often mentioned setting him free, moving on, abandoning everything etc. once his brainwashing is resolved. He knows she has been planning an out. She has spent the majority of her life feeling guilty and like she owes him due to the brainwashing. Serina allows him a great deal of latitude with his behavior towards her (the possessiveness, the control, the touching, etc.) because she feels she owes him, and access to herself and her body are one of the few things she can give him to make up for what he's suffered. Once she finally breaks his brainwashing, she'll have finally paid off her debt and no longer have an obligation to allow what she has been allowing. She will be free. He will actually have to be someone she likes and loves in order for her to stick around. I think he knows, on a very deep level, that Serina was looking for, and hoping for, a certain reaction when his brainwashing was lifted, which he failed to deliver on. So now there is a panic that she is leaving, and he must nail her down and tie her to himself to keep her. Overall, Serina and Alastair remind me of Scarlet O'Hara and Rhett Butler from Gone with the Wind. Rhett views Scarlet and everything she does in the most negative light possible. It doesn't matter what Scarlet does, Rhett has decided she is a certain, horrible way in his head, so whatever she does, it's negative and confirms it. To Rhett, Scarlett isn't a very young, naive girl who's dressed up in her fanciest to innocently and desperately confess to her crush: she's "no lady" and a vixen. If she's excited about a new bonnet, when she's been a dirt poor teenager who's worn only black for a year, it's because she's shameless and hated her dead husband, not because she's a young girl and everyone likes presents. If she sacrifices herself to marry a man she doesn't love so she can keep the family plantation, and support the dozens of people she doesn't have to support, it's because she's an opportunistic skank, not selfless; if she's asking for attention from her husband and wants more input in how her daughter is raised, it's not because he's been neglecting her and she's trying to figure out how to be a mother, it's because she's horrible, wicked woman who is jealous of her own daughter. Scarlett can't win, and it doesn't help that every interaction in their relationship is designed to keep her in a state of defensive, simmering rage, which further confirms to Rhett that he's right. Similarly, Alastair has decided that Serina is an evil, seductive temptress, and nothing she does will ever convince him otherwise. The power imbalance means that their every interaction requires Serina to be a manipulative, teasing flirt to keep him at bay, or else be mean to him to get him to stop, confirming to Alastair that he is correct about her. When she is viewed from the eyes of a total newcomer and stranger, such as the elf, she is freed of this role and can act like herself. Elf guy sees a person who has selflessly dedicated decades of her life to research to help Alastair, at great personal cost, and around the elf, Serina is able to express things like worry, doubt, relief, and even joy. Which she cannot do around Alastair. He has decided the role she plays with him. It isn't a good one, but it's one she's trapped in. When she's free of Alastair, Serina is able to be seen as she actually is, (a kind, burdened, broken person, who does her best to help her friends and family) and it makes sense that she is the true "Saintess".
Idk if I get banned again but the Author should be reincarnated as Serina. This novel resembles a shitty Chinese novel. I thought it was different and end up with hope. I am disappointed from reading the spoilers.
im so grateful for your explanation, its detailed and i could understand how both of the lead acted that way. thank you so much
Do they have any children in side stories? and the novel is a full shit i wish manhwa is different and it has good ending
This is a superb and thorough analysis of the dynamics between the two and each character's motivation. One of the best I've seen in all of the spoilers threads I've ever read. I've seen people complain about the MC and how the unrealistic turns her personality took after suffering trauma, and how it made her annoying and not 'normal'. There is nothing normal or consistent about trauma often times especially when it comes to ongoing trauma and being in an environment where one's survival instinct must go into overdrive to at least have a chance at seeing another day. I feel like we have all gotten really used to OP, morally flawless MCs that when a truly dark story with a morally grey character is written, the reactions are... split at best. There are no winners in this novels, in my opinion. Both are victims of their circumstances, and the victims of the other, to a lesser or higher degree
Oh wow the ending is actually pretty good in my opinion. For a story with characters as fked up as these people i feel like it needs an extreme measure for the relationship to be fixed. Obviously MC and ML would never be able to found happiness if they had decided to stick together before MC's "death". Both of them are too broken to even have a "normal" relationship. If anything, they could only masquarade around as a "loving" couple while each holding knifes behind their back, ready to stab each other if needed. It's a situation where MC are fked with bad options all over with basically no chance to ever find happiness had she choose to stay alive anyway. Simply because ML, despite loving her would definitely turn her life into nightmare with how much love hate insanity going inside his brain. But at the same time, MC could never 100% blame him for all the extreme things he did to her because he was also a very pitiful victim. I feel like her choice to k word her self is actually the most peaceful and best option she could do because that way she can finally finish off her mom and at the same time, pay for everything she felt guilty of and finally gaining peace and relieve from all the burden she had to carry her whole life. I still think that it's fked up how k word is her safest and best choice though. She's definitely a very very pitiful person through and through. She deserves happiness, but when life showed no sign of happiness available for her, she could at least choose an option that gives her salvation and peace. This is a very sensitive topic though, so i want to remind everyone that this is just my opinion about MC and her available choices which full of doom. I still believe that k word should never be the answer, and everyone should get all the help that they need. But in the situation potrayed in this story, at least if it's not happiness, i just want Sirina to finally find peace. Although the side story is also very intriguing to me because with how ML finally able to experience firsthand the feeling of actually losing FL, it gives him a good chance to re-asses his actual feelings. For him to finally weight the feeling of love vs hate inside of him with love emerging as victor, making him realise and remember all the gentleness and kindness MC had done for him, little things and gestures that he wasn't able to properly see and feel during his time of brainwashing. This way, he can finally understand that his feeling for MC is actually real. And although not perfect, it gives them a slightly better chance to be able to hold an actual relationship. (Although i still think both of them need professional counseling but i don't think that exist in this setting lol)
can anyone tell me if the manhwa is taking a different turn from the novel? novel's too dark for me right now but i'm so intrigued