May we also admire the accidental brilliance of Rozemyne choosing a tablet form for her Grutrissheit? Prince Sigiswald literally saw her using it and he completely missed it!
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 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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Sigi seeing Roz with Glowing slate - nothing strange here, just a gremlin with another weird thing after turning hot by the gods. No point in thinking about it
Sigiswald at beginning of chapter: Must I marry her...?
Sigiswald by end of chapter: I get to marry her?!
Meanwhile, in Damuel's thoughts...
Poor Damuel. Fortunately, Philine will eventually get there. Unfortunately, she's getting advice from Clarissa.
How fortunate that is, is a matter of perspective... Clarissa is an oddball even within her oddball duchy, so taking after her, might not be all that good an idea. Especially for someone in Philine's cicumstances. She'll have a hard enough time being accepted in the Sovereignty just from being a laynoble alone, so she certainly doesn't need to be seen as weird on top of that.
Although, only because she's suddenly beautiful.
To be fair to him, marrying a child would reasonably feel creepy. But to be unfair to him, I hope he shows soon that he cares about more than her looks.
Congratulations Leonzio, you managed to shoot up to the top of most hated people in the story, even above Detlinde! I hope you are proud of yourself. I was kind of hoping he'd be disgusted by how aweful Detlinde is and only playing the love-stuck fool to manipulate her, but nope, he seems to be at least as evil as her, taking outright delight in tormenting Letizia... except that he didn't get tortured and abused by his mother his enough life, like Detlinde was, to turn him into this monster, which makes him even worse than her to me.
I hope his death will be exceptionally painful and drawn out over a long time.
Not sure whether to put Georgine on his level or slightly below him though.
Looks like I guessed correctly, that they hid an antidote in the candy, so facilitate balming Letizia. Still nice to see that Ferdinand's first instinct was to kick Letizia out of the poison cloud to protect her. Though I was clearly wrong about Ferdinand initiating the contact with Rozemyne intentionally. Seems like his shouting of her name, was a reaction to her mana surging out of the charm, rather than a deliberate act to show her what was going on, as I had assumed.
I'm also glad Ferdinand has Jsutus. That idiot Eckhart was so lost in his own little world once again, that he nearly betrayed Ferdinand for his own need for revenge. If it wasn't for their long history together, I would be tempted to have Ferdinand send Eckhart packing, for being too thought- and reckless to the point of being in danger of being a hindrance rather than an asset, unless very tightly managed. In this regard Hartmut is faaaar better as a retainer.
I didn't have much time for Sigiswald before, but this chapter form his POV really made me dislike him a whole lot less. He certainly is a lot sharper and aware than either Rozemyne's or Adolphine's POVs made him out to be and also a lot less selfish and more concerned about the country. Still far from a paragon of good behaviour, but hardly anything too far out of the ordinary among the majority of Yurgenschmidt nobles and a whole lot better than certain other individuals who showed their colours this volume. This once again brings me be back to one of Ferdinand's earliest lessons to Myne, about getting information from all sides, before making up your opinion.
Though I would have liked the Sigiswald chapter to go on a couple more sentences, explaining why Sigiswald immediately allowed Rozemyne to depart, rather than getting at least a perfunctury explanation
It kinda makes me wonder how many people are trugged up. Letizia was until the light of Rozemyne's charm/blessing enveloped her. Detlinde is no doubt living in her own little fantasy world. I'm wondering if either Leonzio or Georgine are too. The question is who's pulling everyone's strings.
Considering how Ferdinand noticed a sweet smell on his first meeting with Leonzio and how eager Leonzio was to make physical contact with Detlinde as quickly as he could, I strongly suspect he's the drug master and that he had coated his hands in something to make Detlinde his mindless puppet.
It would also explain why Ferdinand quite uncharacteristically dropped his facade and showed his true feelings, shortly after he slapped Leonzio's hand away from Detlinde and thus made skin-to-skin contact with him.
I suppose the sweet smell could also mean that he was under the effect, rather than using trug or some derivate, but considering how he's handing out drugs and antidotes to others, I feel like he's the mastermind. I also think that Georgine is far too cautious and aware of trug to easily fall victim the puppet master's wiles and is willingly cooperating with Leonzio or whoever for mutual benefit.
I bet Ortwin is more frustrated, than happy, about being first-in-class solely due to Rozemyne being absent, rather than managing to beat her. Oh well, at least he managed to stay ahead of Wilfried, if nothing else.
But speaking of which... can someone who's taking post-regular semester classes due to circumstances out of their control, rather than failing like Angelica did, still be made first-in-class after the fact, despite having missed the award ceremony? I don't want Rozemyne's streak to be interrupted.
So Ahrensbach become the kernel of chaos that was not caused by Book gremlin (She is still going thou). Letzia was played like a harspiel by Georgine to murder Ferdinand.
So not only Hildebrand, Eglantine have fallen for Rozmyne but also Sigiswald. The royal family is doomed.
Sigiswald doesn't understand Rozmyne or Ehrenfest as a whole. Did all of them became a subculture due to years of Rozmynes influence on society?
I wonder what relationship Lianzo and Georgine have. I think both view Detlined as a manipulable pawn that could probably be disposed of as easily as Latizia.
Also politically I wonder how this would play out. Latiza (in the eyes of other nobles) killing Ferdi would be in a way similar to Arinsbach as a whole going against a royal decree. It would put the entire duchy in a further disadvantage. It also doesn't really give any openings fort Arinsbach to legitmatly declare war on Erinfest.
Its going to be interesting to see how all the domino's fall.
I guess it's possible Georgine wanted to provoke Ehrenfest to strike first, once they learn of Ferdinand's death, and use that as the justification for Ahrensbach to "defend" themselves.
Though even if that was the case, I think she would only have expected Ehrenfest to learn of it a bit later, rather than getting a live-broadcast of the incident itself. I also don't think she considered that they would get Dunkelfelger and the royal family on their side so quickly.
The one thing that surprises me though, is that there was no contingencay in place to intercept Justus, Eckhart... or anyone really, should they try to bolt to the academy... then again, we haven't heard how Justus and Eckhart got through, so maybe there were additional guards and they just managed to fight or sneak through anyway, or the guards were picked by Detlinde, who didn't bother to wonder who they really were loyal to and thus picked some that still listened to Strahl.
Maybe Georgeine thought everyone in Erinfest is dumb (including Ferrdies retainers) and once the mastermind is gone it will be a cake walk.
The noble sentiment across Yogert land was to an extent Ferdi was the mastermind. She probably views her self supearor to Sylvester and still might consider Erinfest partially a bottom ranked duchy (not fully due to royal decrees).
One a side note Georgine in prior volume I think tried to limit Justices ability to cross dress/sneak (she gave some hint to him to not try any funny buisness atleast, though thats when Aub Atinsbach wasnt dead).
I may be going of the rails though
I find myself oddly distressed for poor Letizia. I hope she survives all this - she seems a useful player in the end. Plus I'd hate to see all of Ferdinand's training go to waste.