this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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PrePub - Ascendance of a Bookworm
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- Ascendance of a Bookworm
- Honzuki no Gekokujou
- 『本好きの下剋上』
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Ferdinand wants to do the last step...I wonder what that means. 🤔 Sounds like he has something up his sleeve.
Sounds like there was a trug incident. Not sure what the goal was though? Just to sow distrust? Testing a new batch?
More casual treason by Detlinde. Classic.
I don't understand how more people didn't immediately assume trug was being used. Given that a similar incident has happened twice now, that'd be my first inclination.
Rather than accepting that every incident is trug related, I think there's a possibility the attacking knights were under Magdalena's orders and they were stopped by Raublut's faction.
Or that Detlinde simply said something so treasonous and outright stupid, the knights lost their composure. Even Magdalena could barely keep herself contained when talking to that idiot and barely managed to restrain herself from having her executed on the spot. All the reasons why Magdalena restrained herself from having Detlinde offed right there and then are still as valid as those couple of months earlier, so I do not think Magdalena would go for an assassination attempt... or that she'd ever do it in such a clumsy and easily thwarted way for that matter.
There's also the issue of Detlinde whining that Sovereign knight and royals pointed their weapons at her (my bet is on Anastasius). While I can easily see how the knights might have been drugged, with the royal themselves it's a different matter.
That being said, I strongly suspect it was a combination of both. The knights and Anastasius got offended to the point of threatening Detlinde with their drawn weapons, but then a couple of knights who had their inhibitions lowered by the aftereffects of trug lost it and attacked, without Anastasius' permission, causing Raublut to intervene. Either that, or it was some kind of setup to assassinate those two knights, while making it look like their deathes were their own fault.
I wouldn't be so sure trug was involved. We've heard how brazenly treasonous Detline speaks, even in the presence of a member of the royal family (remember how Magdalena was ready to have her executed and could just barely contain herself after the meeting). So it wouldn't be too surprising if some Sovereign knights (maybe of Dunkelfelger origin, since they tend to be rather emotional for nobles) couldn't take the insults and saw red. Considering how Detlinde complained that also a member of the royal family, and not just knights, bared a weapon against her, I'm near enough sure that is what happened. Though after everything we've learned last volume, I wouldn't be surprised if the knights that lost their temper had been under the after effects of trug, contributing to their short fuse.
Alternatively, through far less likely, it might all have been a setup to get rid of those two knights that died specifically. Either they were getting too close to the traitor, or they were associates of the traitor, that a loyalist wanted to get rid of.
Which brings me neatly to Raublut: I'm still very unsure about him. On one hand we have been given plenty of reason to be suspicious of him, but at the same time we have been given almost too much reason to be suspicious of him. In most other franchises I would say, he is so obviously set up as the villain, that it's going to be a misdirect and he'll turn out to be loyal after all... but then we do have Georgine, Detlinde, Veronica, Bezewanst and more, who proof that oftentimes the obvious is just that, obvious in this story.
I can still see routes of him being either loyal or a traitor. We know that there is a traitor either within, or very close to the royal family. That traitor might be Raublut himself. Maybe he was never loyal to Waldifried, but was placed in his service as a sleeper agent by the first prince and complicit in the second princes death. Or he could be a traitor, exactly because of his loyalty. He was devoting his live to Waldifried and when his master was killed by no one less than the prince's own flesh-and-blood brother (well, half-brother anyway), Raublut became convinced that other than his dead master, the royal family is corrupt to the core and so he stated a long-term plan of wiping them all out.... maybe with the exception of Hildebrand, who's just too innocent to be considered corrupt.
Or on the loyalty side, he might be acting under his own initiative, without the permission or knowledge of the royal family, since he deduced that there is a traitor within the closest circles of the royal family, but he wasn't able to identify them yet, so he feels like he can trust nobody and needs to be suspicious of everyone.
I'm really looking forward to see, where this is going. It'd be especially satisfying, if he was loyal and ended up working with Ferdinand and Rozemyne, to lay the actual traitor low.