Ascendance of a Bookworm: Part 5 Volume 5 Part 8

Adolphine you go girl!

It really is a shame that her and Rozemyne never hit it off, I really think they'd have gotten along extremely well had they had the chance to actually speak like human beings.

Seriously, Sigiswald, go take a long walk off of a short pier. That boy is the worst, is it just being oblivious? Or is there malice to his actions? He's too clueless to tell! He's like Wilfred without the excuse of having met him at 7 years old!

Rozemyne and Adolphine at least have enough of a reason to communicate in the future, so there's still time!
No! He needs to be sent on a long walk off a rocky cliff that has breaker rocks and violent waters below. That and someone give Rozemyne "The Prince" by Machiavelli to hammer into the entire royal families heads.
- I am not sure if the Royal family has the capacity to understand Machiavelli given their inability to understand basoc concepts of diplomacy such as: always threatening people into doing what you want will backfire

Sig really is the most unlikable person in this whole series and it's not even close.....actually I forgot Detlinde existed for a sec but he's a close 2nd

Detlinde is just plain stupid evil, she's dumb but so incredibly dumb you're not worried that she'll actually pull something off.

Siggy on the other hand is just a giant asshole with no skill in picking up social clues and on top of that he's in the 2nd highest position of power currently available. Dude doesn't even realize the only reason nobody has strangled him to death is his position.
Have you forgotten Evil Santa, Count Toad, and Georgine?

Welp here we are, Siggy is an absolute douche. I'd rate him even worse than Wilfried, at least he gives a crap about other people despite all his flaws. Considering the, so far, 0 self-reflection displayed along with arrogance only rivaled by Zentlinde herself I give Siggy a husband score of -10, run while you still can.

Sympathies go out to Adolphine for being stuck with this idiot as a husband (until Rozemyne inevitably upsets that entire balance, I can't imagine Siggy becoming Zent will be a thing given Rozemyne's 100% track record of screwing over important plans)

Raublut being involved with Schlaftraum is not a surprise at this point, the only question I have is what he'll do to his wife and what his reason for acting so treacherous is. I mean seriously, I really don't get "tries to protect the Zent" vibes from this guy.

Do you think the only thing keeping Wilfred in check is his lack of power? I wonder in a extremly hypothetical if Wilfred and Siggy swapped places would Wilfred become worse than Siggy (purely based on personality).
- I think that would depend on the timing and whether he can bring his retainers. Because in my opinion, Wilfried is a good person deep down, but his retainers constantly bring out the worst of him, courtesy to the philosophy of Veronica and her faction, under which they grew up.
  
  If essentially all his retainers, except Lamprecht and Alexis, were replaced with decent and competent people and he'd be given enough time to properly grow up under their guidance, he'd be a much better person than Sigiswald appears to be right now (I don't like what we know about Sigiswald, but we did only get rather limited and biased views of him so far, so I'd rather wait a bit longer, before writing him off as a lost cause). Whether that would make him a good king however is a different issue.
- That is an interesting question.. I'm honestly not sure and I think it depends on when. Wilfried Pre-Ivory Tower would likely manage to become even more arrogant and douchey than Siggy currently is. Wilfried post Ivory Tower incident would likely become a puppet but still be less arrogant than Siggy. The closer the point of swap gets to where we are now, the less arrogant Wilfried would become, in retrospective his lashing out against Rozemyne was because he knew she was propping him up and he didn't like becoming Aub because of his wife and not of his own merrits. So I think his mindset at the time would shield him somewhat from the temptations that his new position would bring

Is Hortensia in danger?

I feel like with the speed at which that information made its way back to Raublet that she has started asking questions that she's really not supposed to be asking about.

Raublet seems to be behind the knights attacking durring the ditter game, no? Hard to say with any amount of certainty yet, but that was the implication that I read. Raublet's been throwing up big ol' red flags for a while now so I suppose that should not be a surprise, but still...

With that final sentence, I think it's pretty clear that Raublut is aware of the connection between Schlaftraum Flowers and trug... but I am still not sure, whether he took those flowers to investigate, and kept everything top secret, because he suspects that someone really close to the royal family is involved, or whether he himself is the involved and he took the flowers to destroy evidence.... though I am leaning more toward suspecting him to be the traitor.

What really had my jaw on the floor was, that after defeating the feybeasts, for who's appearance Ahrensbach is one of the prime suspects, Raublut allowed his soldiers to receive sexual favours from Georgine of Ahrensbach of all people! This more than anything makes me lean toward him being the traitor... but then again he is so obviously being shifty, I feel like he's a red herring...

Either way, if we found out that Georgine (or rather her servants) drugged the soldiers at that occaion, to gain information from them and then used the trug to make them forget it, I would not be the least bit surprised. Neither would I be surprised if one of the students who studied under that herbalogist turned out to be Fraularm.

But I don't think Hortensia is in any immediate danger yet. With her being the sole archlibrarian in the royal academy, she has become a bit too high profile to suffer an unfortunate accident, without raising a bit too much suspicion of her husband. Not to mention she already passed everything she knew to Anastasius, so the damage is already done and getting rid of her won't help anymore. Of course with the magic contract, she can't exactly tell her husband that she already told Anastasius everything she knows... so there is some danger probably.

Sigiswald wants power and he was raised in an environment that enables him to behave like a douche. Drewanchel is catching up with Ferdinand's research in potion making. Adolphine is so unhappy with the marriage that she wishes for the divine intervention.

Hortesia isn't loyal to her husband nor to royal family. She became a neutral party that just does what is asked of her. She isn't distrusting of Raublut but she should have been.

PS. Raublut is "Investigating" Rozmynes future willa. He clearly won't bug all the rooms to eavesdrop on conversations, He doesn't have access to recording shumils. I am curious what will he do?

It being a currently abandoned villa makes me think that it's being squatted in by someone, or used as a meeting place in secret.

So Schlaftraum’s flowers are indeed a euphemism for trug. Raublut, directly after coming of age, was assigned to work at a villa where he worked for five years, but it is now closed and has no lady. The villa had a greenhouse in which they grew and were treasured, and can seemingly not be found anywhere else.

I’m thinking that the villa he was assigned is the one for seeds of Adalgisa, hence his extensive knowledge of them. Trug can’t be found elsewhere, it’s probably imported from Lanzenave, the country that also sends the seeds…

P5V5 really was really a volume.

Interesting that the one who invited Detlinde to the library was Anastasius of all people.

Sigiswald is going to be a wonderful husband. Much better than Wilfried.

Kind of impressed with Anastasius in this part - asking for the contrivance of Rozemyne to overhear was actual genius and quite insightful.

This was definitely one of the more nasty volumes so far.

Wilfried being moody and scheming.
Ann/Egg taking advantage of Rozemyne.
Detlinde.
Immanuel being a creep.
Harmut/Angelica being very serious about cutting off limbs.
Sigiswald abusing authority.
Adolphine spitting insults.

I wonder how this will go in the next volume considering the supposed flying magic circle two parts ago.

Also if Roz did get the gbook what would prevent Roz from making new arrangements?

I'm really confused about the statement that all royal villas are already occupied, despite Sigiswald only having two and Anastasius only one wife. Where did the princes and their wives live, back when there were five princes under Trauqual's father? oO

That being said, giving Rozemyne one of the librarian villas is such a good idea, that I'm sure it didn't come from Sigiswald. Probably Anastasius' idea. ^^

Eglantine mentioned how she was needed to open the villa of her murdered family. The locks seem to be mana based. Perhaps the villas of royals who died in the war can't be opened or re-registered without Grutrissheit access?
- Sorry for the late answer. I did not get a notification on the answer. That may be a problem, but if 7 is the number of villas it would mean the 6? brothers of the current king + father and 3 wives are already over the limit. Also the older teachers of the royal family that gave the ArchDuke Course...
  
  Maybe only 7 villas are connected to the RA and others are not. Others could be named after minor gods. Thinking about it, the palace Verstecken was a minor god of dark, had no portal door to RA (but Ahrensbach) and was on the RA ground.
When we learn about Hildebrandts Villa it sounds like there is one for each major god, so 7 like the stones for the foundation. I also do not really understand how that worked in the past.

The Adolphine chapter really gave me mixed feelings. On one hand Sigiswald's behaviour and lack of consideration is rather infurating... but then again Adolphine of all people calling him out on selfish, arrogant behaviour born from priviledge is really hypocritical. She did the very same thing - albeit admittedly to a lesser degree - to her own brother Ortwin, without apparently noticing eihter.

I can't deny that her getting some of her own medicine was a little bit satisfying. A shame she has yet to realize that she's done the same to her own brother and tried, but never got the opportunity to do the same to Rozemyne.

I thought on it some more... and actually Sigiswald behaviour makes more and more sense to me. He was happily married with the woman he loves, but for the sake of the country he not only agreed to marry another woman, but was also forced to demote his beloved to second wife, and take this stranger he barely ever met as his first wife.

The first wife of the king is the highest position a woman can realistically be expected to ever reach in Yurgenschmidt right now, as far as the general nobility know. And the vast majority of noble women would kill to become the first wife of the king, or successor to the king.

Adolphine didn't actually do anything to earn this highly coveted position, but was just born into it, so it's easy to see why Sigiswald would assume she'd be happy to have stumbled into it.

And to top it off Adolphine was also guilty of only putting in the minimum effort, the same thing she's accuring Sigiswald of.

Of course that does not excuse Sigiswald's behaviour, but it certainly explains it. And in context it is clear that Adolphine is far from guiltless here, after all she didn't put anything but the bare minimum of effort into this engagement either, which coincidentally is one of the things over which she is angry with Sigiswald.

But there's also the motives. Why is Sigiswald doing it? Maybe to secure his own position, but maybe he genuinely does it for his country. We haven't been in his head, so right now we can only speculate.

But with Adolphine, we damn well know she's only acting selfish. She didn't - NOT ONCE - think even in her own head how someone else being Aub instead of her is bad for Drewanchel and how she would be do a better choice than her brother or some other potential candidate. She only thinks that she wants to be Aub.

So yeah... Sigiswald might be a selfish piece of shit, but so is Adolphine. She does the exact same things she hates in Sigiswald and has the same absence of self-awareness. The only real difference, apart from their respective positions, is that Adolphine puts in the extra effort to word her manipulations nicely... unless it's toward her brother.

This was quite a volume, and quite a conclusion!

I really enjoyed how Sigiswald was just kind of lame and spoiled from Rozemyne's point of view... and then absolutely hammered by Adolphine's story. Rozemyne thinks some of the noble errors he's making (like not offering her a villa) are about them being in a rush and thus unusually frantic, but Adolphine's account makes it clear that Sigiswald and his retinue are that thoughtless as a matter of course.

No wonder Eglantine was willing to do just about anything to avoid marrying Sigiswald.

I hadn't realized that Adolphine was so against marrying into the Royal Family, and yikes the idea of what would happen to her if Detlinde became Zent after she married... and that she loathes it so much that the idea of the loathed Detlinde becoming Zent before becomes oddly attractive.

I loved the part where she reads between the lines to assume that Rozemyne crushed him in her negotiations, and cheers. I hope they get to talk soon, as allies. It's nice that Adolphine sees her as an avenue to pursue for their mutual benefit.

Keep praying to the Goddess of Separation, Adolphine!

I love especially how aub Klassenburg did a complete 180 in opinion upon Siggy's starbinding plans.
Also, cheers to Kazuki-sensei for making even Sigiswald's one good quality, that he is devoted to his original wife, look sickly and gross and toxic for him as a person and especially as a ruler. Nice twist of the knife, there.
Now, What the Heck is Raublut up to? And did he help Georgine suborn part of the Knight's Order, or did he just stay out of that because he knew she was doing it?
- Schlaftraum’s flowers seem to be blossoming as beautifully as ever
Eglantine always had the option marrying Anastasius over Sigiswald. Her problem was that she didn't want to be the center of a succession fight.

Come to think of it, being adopted by the royals and moving to the Sovereignty, might be a way for Rozemyne get back to her commoner family, in a limited way. The magic contract that forbids them from treating each other like family is a duchy-wide contract, if I'm not mistaken, so it won't work in the Sovereinty.

Between how well the royal family did in negotiations with Rozemyne so far, and that it would be of benefit to them, to have the Gutenbergs set up their base in the Sovereignty, I'm sure that Rozemyne would be allowed to take them with her, probably with some grace period, so the apprentices can take over in Ehrenfest, not leaving them hanging completely. Now they would only have to make Eva and Tuuli Gutenbergs as well. As a commoner, there is zero chance of Gunther being allowed to guard Princess Rozemyne, but I'm sure she could negotiate to have some commoner soldiers to guard her precious Gutenbergs, with Gunther naturally being the number 1 choice, not only because of nepotism :P but also because he is very well qualified (over-qualified in fact, considering he's a commander) and has escorted them before, albeit only to Hasse and back.

And should that not be allow, Gunther is good enough in woodworking (thanks to having learned it from his woodworker father, before he charged off to become a soldier) to be passed off one of the Gutenbergs too, if push came to shove.

Naturally they would need to keep things secret, but with the magic contract out of the way, I'm sure they could sneak in the occasional bit of family time, every now and then.

Adolphine best royal

So, the secret mastermind behind Detlinde's library escapade was Anastasius.

And the secret meaning of Hortensia's comment on Schlaftrum flowers wad "hey, gremlin, do you have any idea what this means?"

On a positive note, that brewing scene makes me think that Adolphine could actually be a great ally for Rozemyne; being a high ranking noble that actually appreciates that sometimes high ranking nobles should roll up their sleaves and actually do stuff.

Read this chapter and cound not believe I didn't make the connection between women and flowers!

I was kinda meh on adolphine before this but now I am quite an enthusiastic supporter! Especially the separation charm bit. Here's hoping she and Rozemyne can become great friends.