Nina the Starry Bride

Episode 3

It's getting so that you can't trust anyone these days. Or at least, no one in the royal family. As was briefly mentioned last week, they've been playing the substitution game with their offspring for some time now, with Azure taking the place of a dead prince long before Nina was picked to become Alisha. It's an interesting implication about how this family functions – did they start with Az, or is Nina just the latest in a long line of false royals? That the first thought was to find a similarly aged child to take the original Azure's name and role does seem to imply that that wasn't the first time it had happened – and then knowing that he was a fake, Az's immediate plan is to find a false Alisha is just him carrying on a shadowy tradition. Since the swaps are kept under wraps except for a select few, that means that this potentially dark history would be relatively unknown. After all, only a handful of people know about Azure, and they don't appear to be talking.

Unfortunately for the queen, this just makes her look worse, because unless she's a lot more subtle than she's been painted thus far, it means that she just hates Azure for being the son of a previous consort. She's like a less bloodthirsty Nakia (from Chie Shinohara's Red River), trying to fully clear the way for her son to take the throne, even though she arguably doesn't have to; her husband apparently voluntarily demoted Azure in favor of Muhulum right after the prince of his blood was born. Granted, the queen doesn't seem to be a major player and the title of next week's episode indicates that Nina will be leaving for Galgada, but still. In court tales such as this, it's never a good idea to write someone off just because they appear powerless.

That's something that Az is quickly realizing about Nina. He picked her for her looks, but he assumed that a child from the slums would just go along with the princess masquerade without asking too many questions. Possibly he drew this expectation from his own experience, not remembering that there's a big difference between uprooting a four-year-old and a teenager. But Az also is a planner. His great-grandfather raised him to always put king and country first, and that's what he was doing when he bought Nina: putting the good of the kingdom over the good of an individual – and he may even have seen it as making things better for both, although the former king's words imply that no one expected the false Alisha to survive very long.

The fact that she has a drive to live surprises Azure. While Nina is busy making the best of her situation – cleaning your jail cell with your blanket is Disney princess levels of perkiness – Az is realizing that she's not a pawn, she's a person. And maybe, just maybe, that means that he's a person, too. He's spent most of his life thinking that he must live up to the expectations of the royal family who took him in as a substitute for their dead son. He's all but erased himself, even to the point where he's willing to let the queen's assassins succeed if that's what's best for the country. But Nina's unabashed confidence in herself, which has only solidified since he agreed to call her by her name, is changing that. Is that a sticky situation, since they're masquerading as brother and sister? Absolutely, plus she's engaged to the prince of Galgada. But when Az kisses her, he's acting as himself, not as Prince Azure.

How this will work out for him isn't clear, although we can make educated guesses based on the pictures in the ending theme's book, images that are slowly revealed as each “night” passes. And maybe the most important thing is to remember that even if Nina started as a pawn, in the game of chess, a pawn can become anything – even a queen.

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Nina the Starry Bride is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.