Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

Episode 10

For whatever reason, the subtitles weren't available (in any language) when I sat down to watch this episode, so it seemed like a time to check out the English dub. While I preferred Raeliana's Japanese voice—and wasn't wild about adult Heika's—I enjoyed it on the whole, especially a delightfully smarmy Ian Sinclair as Noah. His Noah is reason alone to go back and watch earlier, more Noah-centric episodes in English, and Beatrice's butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth delivery makes a good case for the dub going forward.

Yes, Beatrice, the erstwhile heroine Raeliana has been searching for, has finally made her official appearance. Unsurprisingly, she was the person who gave Vivian the jewel that nearly blew Raeliana up, which cements the idea that whatever else she is, Beatrice is no heroine. The real question we need to ponder is whether she ever was. Raeliana is basing her entire idea of who Beatrice is on the book she read when she was Rinko, but that may not be the safest thing to do. If the original story Rinko read was in the first person, who's to say that Beatrice was a reliable narrator? Can we assume it was written by an objective party if it was in the third person? Whether Beatrice feels Raeliana has usurped her place and is trying to get it back or if she was conniving from the start and determined to marry Noah for other reasons, I think we can all agree that attempting to kill someone by causing an explosion on their head is not the act of a good guy, heroine or not.

The danger is that Raeliana won't figure this out soon enough. She's beginning to feel like she's in over her head, with Noah's and Heika's behavior standing out that are particularly confusing to her. Granted, Heika is being pretty weird—just ask his poor assistant—but the real issue is that Raeliana is having trouble seeing herself as desirable in her own right. Noah could also do a better job explaining himself, granted, but in his defense, he's grappling with emotions he's never felt before. Even he can't quite understand what's going on inside his head – his stunned realization that he's entered a sacred place without a second thought just to make sure that Raeliana is okay tells us a lot about his headspace. This has gone way beyond blackmail for him, and his demand that she explain herself with the impatient handwaving of the royal seal as a viable reason indicates the depth of his emotional involvement. He knows there's more than Raeliana isn't telling him, and that's eating him up inside.

There's one major problem here: Raeliana herself is still stuck in the mindset that she's a side character in someone else's story. Every time she almost dies, she thinks it's the narrative trying to correct itself, rather than considering that someone may be actively trying to kill her. We already know that Francis Brooks was easily manipulated, so since the attempts on her life haven't stopped with his death and that of his co-conspirator, it suggests that someone else was the true puppet master. At this point, it's pretty clear who I believe it is, and that conviction is only growing stronger. Until Raeliana recognizes that she has the right to be the heroine of her own story, the problems will persist.

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Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.