All of these three chapters were great, but the first two have to live in the shadow of the third one.
Mother and Daughter is one of the best chapters in the whole series. I still cry every time I read it and I think I’ve read it at least 10 times.
Absolute banger of a prepub.
Hartmut’s orgasmic reaction to being namesworn is absolutely hilarious.
Not telling Ferdinand about the adoption and the Zent candidacy…why, Roz, why? This can’t be a good idea.
Telling her namesworn about her commoner origins…also feels like a bad idea.
Mother and Daughter:
Elvira knew the whole time?!! But also: holy shit, sasuga Kazuki-sensei! This was so touching. I think it may rival P2V4.
Elvira best mom? Effa best mom? Doesn’t matter, they both love Roz.
I wonder if the pain felt during name-swearing is a set intensity, or if there are individual differences, like with the mana synchronization potion. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the closer the mana quality and quantity of two nobles is, the less pain the process causes the supplicant. That way it would make absolute sense for Roderick to be in intense pain, after all he barely has the mana quality to still be counted as a mednoble and has only two natural elements.
Hartmut on the other hand was one of the more powerful archnobles to begin with and already learned Rozemyne’s mana compression, has considerably more natural elements and even got Life affinity from divine protection before giving his name.
Of course I wouldn’t put it past him to just be so fanatical, that his bliss drowned out the pain, or he even enjoyed the pain, since it’s part of connecting him with his goddess… or whatever Rozemyne is to him in his own mind.
Not telling Ferdinand about the adoption and the Zent candidacy…why, Roz, why? This can’t be a good idea.
Silly side question does Syl know about/check Roz’s hidden ink messages or does he only really check the dummy messages only (the non invisible ink)?
Syl doesn’t know about the ink at all so he’s completely unaware of the hidden messages. He also wouldn’t be able to check it since it requires Ferdinand’s mana to make the text visible. But he does know they exchange communications secretly.
He knows that Rozemyne has some way to secretly communicate with Ferdinand, but has no idea how and thus can’t check it. And I strongly suspect that he’s more inspecting her letter to avoid Rozemyne accidentally giving anything away to the Ahrensbach nobles, who are sure to read the letter before passing it on to Ferdinand, rather than worry over what she might tell Ferdinand.
That makes sense (guess he’s just doing a surface level check). I wonder how he is secretly conversing with Ferdi (since he doesn’t appear to have a invisible ink equivalent).
Hartmut’s orgasmic reaction to being namesworn is absolutely hilarious.
Ottilie apparently rejected joining in on the name-swearing, so you have to wonder who was subjected to that experience.
I think she was the witness but avoided her eyes, and Roz was commenting that she should do her “job” of supervising it properly.
The end of the pre-pub was so heartwarming, Elvira sharing her emotions with her adopted daughter so freely when no one else could, and assuring Rozemyne that she wasn’t alone. Also yes, Hartmut and Clarissa continue to be completely batshit in their devotion to Rozemyne.
Hope Clarissa can give her name soon, if Hartmut’s reaction is anything to go by.
Great set of chapters, love how this series doubles back and recontextualizes things all the time. This chapter really poked at all of the impacts the story has had so far.
A meeting with Benno (without Lutz) seems to be on the horizon too, not sure how much Rozemyne will want to expose to her namesworn, but they’ll all get to learn something about her past it sounds.
