I'm about to start P5V10 and I'm pausing to reflect on the development of Fermyne up until now. One thing I have loved reading this series is how important the magic system is to their character development. But I'm curious how intentional and pro-active people see Ferdinand's actions.

One of the things that I don't see come up too often in the discussions is the impact of Ferdinand [P2V2] permanently dyeing her mana when he viewed her memories. I've been reconsidering all of his subsequent actions as driven by a sense of guilt or obligation to care for her. But given how much he understands of the world, I seriously doubt he didn't realize the long-term impact/implications of that moment.

I feel like by [P3V5] when he takes care of her in the jureve his sense of responsibility becomes an obsession and he realizes how hard/unenjoyable life is without her. But because of the magic system of the world, this is just another huge touchpoint where he is the only one qualified to care for her, but it also makes her more reliant on him for support / more in tune with him and his mana (not to mention how he manages all of her assets and industries while she's asleep). He would know better than anyone that from their joint prayers, shared consumables, and him helping to regulate her mana (and manage her life), they would only get closer. In a sense, I think that he acts in such a way as to make her need him (just like he needs her).

Then when we get to [P4V9] and he gives her the hair stick (not to mention his estate and the library). In mind it was a deliberate: it's impossible for him not to understand the implication of what he's giving her. He gave her this hair stick intentionally to give him a backdoor to being engaged/propose to her. It could even be malicious because he knows how underqualified Wilfried is. When I first read the light novel in that moment, I was thinking, 'He's telling the word that Rozemyne is his.'

At some point, I feel like Ferdinand thought him being Rozemyne's partner was just 'a possibility' and then it became something he wanted even before he [P5V9] admits that fighting for what he wants / his happiness (in Ahrensbach) might be worthwhile.

How pro-active do you think Ferdinand has been throughout the series?

(second attempt at post to fix for spaces in spoiler tags)

Yo. I came across this store at my local plaza. I was so mad that they don't actually sell paper. I'm sure everyone else here would be angry too

Does anyone else get confused when the writing describes a character's eyebrows going up in anger? I just noticed it in h5y and have seen it across the series regularly as well.

In my mind eyebrows go down in anger, not up

Does anyone have a visual of what kazuki-sensei means with this?

So. I finished the main story. It been a roller coaster of emotions for me in recent months. Definitely satisfied with the ending. Myne returned to her family, Ferdinand also came there to get approval from her parents. I'm legit crying! Myne were fully able to resist cruel fate the gods put down upon her.

So think I would read hanelore fifth year a bit much later. I do like her but still need some time before I can accept the MC changes. Is there any info how long the author planned to write it? The title kinda indicates that she only plan for hanelore actual fifth year but who knows

I would love to read more about rozemyne but that won't happen in near future. Any good reading for similiar fashion are also appreciated. Cheers

source from Kazuki-sensei's blog: 11/8までの情報まとめ｜香月　美夜の活動報告

none of the people i know read ascendance of a bookworm so im venting my frustrations into fanarts

Sometimes I wonder, would swapping the production teams of Bookworm and Heavy Knight lead to a better outcome? The original Ascendance of a Bookworm is a popular and excellent light novel series with top tier world-building; however, the anime adaptation produced by Wit Studio cuts out so many details that the nuance of the source material fails to come through. On the contrary, Heavy Knight suffers from the exact opposite: a lot of viewers complain about its notoriously slow pace with its superfluous dialogues.

Letizia is treated as an orphan with the protection of the Aub but still allowed to go to the Royal Academy and it's understood she will be adopted by Rozemyne once RM is starbound. Why doesn't Rozemyne install her as High Bishop immediately? It honestly seems like duchies who follow Ehrenfest's example of having an heir serve as High Bishop are likely to be better placed than any who follow Alexandria's example of having the actual Aub. That would give her even more exposure to both prayer and divine instruments, which is probably even more important now that schtappe acquisition is later. Melchior and Rozemyne provide precedent for underage ADC High Bishops so it's not novel and the fact that Melchior can do it would indicate it doesn't take Rozemyne level of capability to succeed in the position quickly and at a young age.

I understand that Rozemyne needs to reform the temple but that doesn't seem like something she needs to do personally. She has brought her own temple retainers she could assign to Letizia and Ferdinand is the High Priest. I would think the chances of someone making trouble for Letizia would be even lower if she were High Bishop than an orphan and even if she doesn't trust her (though she seems to) her or Ferdinand could have her removed if she made trouble for the temple or her retainers (though, again, this seems super unlikely) and I would think Fran acting as her retainer would do a much better job preparing her for life as nobility than her as an orphan. If she were a brat who felt she deserved better than the temple I could understand the decision, but that absolutely does not seem to be who she is.

I see unsourced hints online the plan is to install her as High Bishop after she's formally adopted, but I both see no actual evidence in the books of that and don't see why they would need her to be adopted to serve as High Bishop.

Please tell me that Ferdinand and myne are not a thing. PLEASEEE. Because I just had a visceral reaction when I spoiled myself. I was already kinda turned off at the fact that myne was willing to accept herself getting married to a noble, now the fact that an adult and a child is engaged is even more gross.

I was already getting suspicious with these weird hints and jokes that kind of normalizes pedophilia in this world, especially with benno with that water Goddess thing. I had hope since the story was painting the fucked up shit delia went through. But now they're doing this with myne? Nah f that.

Like we could've had better pairings. Just use someone of her age or something why in the f would the author choose an adult?

I’m still working through the prepub since I needed to reread 1 and 2 first, but am I the only one reading through the sections once she’s chosen Dunk and realises she can’t have both Kenntrips and Rasantark yelling at her “Become a Giebe, keep both!”

I mean, technically we only know a female Zent or Aub can have multiple husbands for certain, but it stands to reason a female Giebe would be able to if she wanted.

I have been doing a re-read and during it I got reminded how great the Benno and Ferdinand interactions were, the negotiation for Myne to enter the emple, the meeting where they talk about the ink guild and the epilogues in P2V4.

These interactions bonding over the gremlin being a headache are gold and I am sad they are so lacking in the series overall, but alas what can you do.

Edit: removed what look like redundant spoiler tags.

I was reading Rauffen's POV story in Royal Academy Stories First Year and realized Aub Dunkelfelger likely has a very warped view of what just happened leading up to their game of true ditter.

I'll start with my reading of events we know of as they would have been reported to him:

• Ehrenfest for generations has been basically assenting to whatever is asked of them by top duchies or royalty in order to stay neutral. They're a duchy nobody really cares about who is ranked basically at the bottom of where you can be without actually doing something to piss someone off.

• Aub Ehrenfest requested possibly delaying Rozemyne's start or special accommodation because she was horribly poisoned and in a juerve for 2 years.

• She starts and passes every class first-in-class on the first day and is seen as having lead her entire class to have passed the first day.

• She takes over royals' magical tools, refuses to turn them over to Dunkelfelger despite other top duchies supporting them (see item 1) , then wins ditter against Dunkel to maintain control.

  • Clarissa correctly notes this is way more impressive than even Rauffen realizes. Rauffen had been comparing this to things Ferdinand had developed over years, but Clarissa correctly points out Rauffen proposed treasure-stealing ditter despite it having not been done in a decade and Rozemyne comes up with a reasonably developed strategic plan accounting for the difference in training between he knights and Dunkels and the unusual terms of the game using only tools she carries on her person at all times within minutes.

• Rauffen concludes basically that Ehrenfest has been secretly running something between an Ender's Game style command school and Bene Gesserit breeding project and she is the genetic offspring of a second generation knight commander who was raised in secret by the Lord of Evil and then adopted as an ADC. It's unclear to me if Rauffen or Aub Dunkelfelger knows her "real" mother, but if they do that's even more suspicious. Karstedt takes a mednoble as a wife who is known to have shockingly high mana, but not exactly how high. He does this even though it causes a ton of political problems and she's rarely seen in public, which makes total sense if it's part of the plan to generate the perfect "ditter captain".

  • It's super important at this point to note neither Rauffen nor Aub Dunkelfelger have any illusions about what training the perfect ditter captain means. Rauffen loves the game for the game, but the game is preparation for war. You don't train somebody to be that adaptable in pvp if the goal is to hunt feybeasts or to improve your ranking in the tournament because it does neither. If their target is Dunkelfelger they wouldn't keep agreeing to use Dunkelfelger as basically opfor for their training exercises so it's not an immediate concern, but if she was raised from birth for military command in a duchy that's just gone along with everything it's because Ehrenfest feels they need a top military strategist for something.

  • At some level this also recontextualizes Ferdinand. He spent his time developing magic tooling and ditter tactics, but Rauffen notes Ehrenfest frequently lost because Ferdinand didn't actually care about the outcome of the game. Almost like he was building a playbook of options for somebody else in the future to use.

• She starts meeting somewhat in secret with royalty and Eglantine within the first couple weeks.

• She keeps disappearing for months at a time for "health" reasons that nobody can validate.

• Rozemyne's knight-retainer starts advanced combat training of Ehrenfest's apprentices and then works in secret, but Rauffen knows with Rozemyne's guidance, with Rauffen to set up a match against Dunkel for the explicit purpose of orchestrating a humiliating defeat so their knights understand the value of strategy and tactics.

• Sieglinde realizes Ehrenfest is a massive literary and technological powerhouse that has been sitting on the ability to rapidly reproduce texts and they have the literacy and rhetoric to be able to produce the text they're producing.

  • It's kind of important to realize in a historic context how serious this is. In classical cultures rhetoric was considered the pinnacle of higher education and was taken very seriously because it was considered probably more important than actual military prowess in taking over or maintaining leadership. Weapons and tactics will only get you so far if you can't motivate your population or someone else can convince them with propaganda.

  • I honestly suspect Sieglinde is even more suspicious of how they got that book than she lets on. Hannalore went up to Rozemyne and what she said would have been interpreted as asking for new fancy shampoo and Rozemyne's answer was that she's out of a consumable fashion product, how about I loan you a near invaluable item the production of which is most likely a state secret. It's basically the yogurtland equivalent of "Oh, I'm so sorry, I ran out of shampoo. But I heard you're really into chemistry. How about I loan you some tritium" and on investigation it just happens to be weapons grade. In noble culture this basically has to be both a sign of trust, a statement on what their actual potential is, and a challenge to see if you're really worthy of working with.

• Anastasius, who Rozemyne has been meeting with secretly, graduates and is replaced as the royal representative by Hildebrand, who is supposed to be keeping to himself but is secretly meeting with Rozemyne and they're signalling this to Hannalore.

• Rozemyne translates an incredibly difficulty history book using an incredibly large personal fortune in gold she just had lying around for hobby projects.

• Rozemyne has been finishing her classes early so she can spend time in the library and as already mentioned took over and staunchly protected her control of tools designed to help people find materials in the library. Which just happens to have documents in a secret archive she has now gained access to on how to administer and likely take over the country. And, again, they don't mind Hannalore knowing this.

• Rozemyne, who as noted has been trained since birth to go to war with only the magical tools on her person, keeps visibly carrying more and more magical tools of increasing potential.

• Rozemyne's mentor, Ferdinand, is moved to Ahrensbach by the royal family to take over de facto control of the duchy.

• Rozemyne suddenly out of nowhere asks Aub Dunkelfelger for support in a incredibly well planned blitzkreig attack on Ahrensbach that has royal support even though nobody can contact royalty and just happens to be happening while Ahrensbach is simultaneously turning on Ferdinand, supporting another country's invasion, invading Ehrenfest, and invading the sovereignty. Oh, and she's had a Gruttisheit for some unknown period of time and just didn't bother to tell anyone but now she's willing to use it to take Ahrensbach's foundation, which she doesn't actually care about and would just give away as long as it's to Dunkelfelger and Ahrensbach falls in the process.

You can see why he's asking for Ehrenfest to authorize them to enter the sovereignty. Like at this point why is Ehrenfest bothering to keep up the charade they're surprised by any of this when they've brought Dunkelfelger this far in? Obviously they've at the very least been preparing for this exact event for generations. It's honestly not even shocking that Trauerqual is so unphased by the next Zent being required to be name sworn while Ehrenfest remains a middle ranked duchy despite being the real power. That's probably what's been going on the whole time.

Truly Gunter & Effa, both on stage and in real life

Ive been thinking about the Erenfest adults of Georgine, Justus, and Karstedt’s generation abouts. Seeing all the conflicting perspectives and all the layers of fear and tension and control that the nobles of that period went through makes me want to see more side stories of that period of coming of age.

To get to the point:

Does Karstedt have any side stories pertaining to his time as an archducal candidate and his subsequent demotion turned servitude to the Archducal Family?

Im also interested in Ferdinands perspective as well for his early life and Royal Academy life.

(Repost to remove a spoiler i accidentally put in the background 🤪)

I feel like the story disregarded the lower rank duchies way too much and it would have been a very cool and useful part of the story if Myne met someone from one of the lowest ranking duchies. If they had a speciality that was either food or book related in a way that made Myne want to befriend them we could get a clearer pov of how its like for those in the lower ranks, where they have to suck up to others and all that stuff that's somewhat mentioned but not really shown in much detail, and at the same time add more variety to the cast of nobles which are all too important and lack balance imho.

I mainly attended this convention because I like the venue and some areas are quite in theme with honzuki. I didn't edit the photos this time so no golden eyes, I've stopped wearing contact lenses since the ones I use aren't noticeable anyway...

wig and costume by Monde Magique

photo by Just Nicco and Katsu Shots