It's practically narrative law that if the villainess character turns out to be good, the heroine must be bad. We've seen that play out over a plethora of series, and while there are exceptions, it happens often enough to feel like a rule. But Who Made Me a Princess is another one ready to buck that trend, although that perhaps shouldn't be surprising. In the first three volumes of Plutus and Spoon's series, we learned that the original Princess Athanasia wasn't a villainess at all in her source novel; she was simply the scapegoat for whoever was pulling the strings. That means that both Athy and Jeannette are freed from some narrative constraints, opening the door for them to be more well-rounded characters than they might otherwise be.

We see that much more with Jeannette across these volumes. Although Athanasia is present, most of volume five belongs to Jeannette. This shift occurs because of the inciting incident in volume four, where Athy's powers burst out of her control and her father attempts to save her. He succeeds, but at a cost: King Claude loses his memories of his daughter and falls victim to crippling insomnia and migraines. Afraid for her life, Athy flees the palace, which is just the opening the duke needs to get Jeannette into Claude's inner circle. Why he's even able to do this in the first place is important. It's not because Athy is gone, but because something about Jeannette's artificial makeup has the power to soothe Claude, dulling his headache and allowing him to sleep.

The implication here is that, despite her best efforts, Athanasia hasn't managed to subvert the plot of The Lovely Princess. She's shifted it a little, but the result is still her estrangement from her father and the introduction of Jeannette as someone he can care for – or at least wants to be around, an important distinction. But even more interesting is how Jeannette sees her situation. She firmly believes that she's Claude's daughter, although we learned in the first three volumes that this isn't true; she's a dark magic construct or something like it. But her belief that she's related to Claude and Athy is what drives her. She's grown up feeling on the outside of her own “family,” with her main tie to them being her assumption that she'd marry Ezekiel someday. She desperately wants to be acknowledged by Athy and Claude, and she's surprised when they don't appear to return that, even though they don't know about their presumed blood ties. The result is that Jeannette is increasingly unhappy as these books go on, and that makes her easy prey for a new character who pops up at the end of volume three.

We don't fully know who he is, although, by the end of volume six, we can make some very educated guesses. This unnamed person has it in for Claude, although we don't fully know the reasons why, and he appears determined to use Jeannette to get to him. Watching him wheedle his way into Jeannette's life and trust is increasingly alarming; he's like an embodiment of the Big Bad Wolf, with Jeannette as Little Red Riding Hood in the Grimms' version. He charms her and lulls her into a sense of security, gaining her trust while thinking of the ways he'll use her later on. Unlike Athy, who has Lucas looking out for her (although he's gone for the bulk of these books), Jeannette has no one, and she's all too willing to make this nameless man her confidante. As she grows closer to him, we can see her dissatisfaction with her purported family build; she's hurt when Athy doesn't treat her like a sister or when Claude rebuffs her. There's no doubt that those are truly painful experiences for her. But they're also things that can be used to manipulate her if the wrong person hears her pour out her heart, and it looks a lot like that's where things are heading.

There are also some more interesting hints dropped about Athy herself. The most noticeable change she undergoes in these volumes is that she realizes that she's no longer acting like she's living in a book with a pre-ordained plot; she's begun to think of the characters as “people” rather than “characters.” Along with this comes her realization that she truly views Claude as her father and genuinely misses his prickly brand of affection, something that shocks her to her core. This opens the door to changing her relationships with the other characters as well, and she's surprised to notice that Lucas may have romantic feelings for her and that Ezekial very well could, too. If you recall, Lucas is fully aware that Athy is an adult soul that's reincarnated, which definitely helps alleviate any age gap concerns, but more intriguing is a sequence of panels where Lucas implies that she's been cycling through life. We see a noose and then a packet of pills, which seems to hint that those sleeping pills Athy took back in South Korea killed her, but more importantly, that she was hanged in the life before that. Is this her second chance at being Athanasia, à la Doctor Elise? Or is it her soul's third try to get it right and live a full life? Given the prevalence of curses in the story, that could also be an answer; the person presently known as Princess Athanasia has a curse on her soul, and this is her third attempt to break it. Whatever the answer, it significantly ups the stakes for Athy, and if it's true, it also may hint at something concerning about Jeannette.

Who Made Me a Princess was good in its first three books, but it's very good in its second. The final three volumes should be excellent if things continue on this trajectory, and that's definitely something to look forward to. Spoon's increasingly beautiful art highlights the grimmer aspects of Plutus' story, and this story has surpassed being merely good genre fiction to being simply good.