So I caught that bit implying that Louise's mother and Henrietta's mother were in a Yuri relationship. I need to go back and do a full reread to figure out whether cattlya thought her parents would care if they knew she liked girls.
Afaik, the only thing that confirmed is that Henriettas mother wanted it to be a Yuri relationship. How conscious she was of this desire I wouldn't dare guess. How conscious Karin was of it...
 
Louise-Francoise would come for her. Henrietta trusted her friend. In fact, she thought ruefully, as she began another set of sit-ups, she owed poor Louise-Francoise an apology. How could she have been so ignorant as to have missed it? And Louise-Francoise had tried to tell her it and she hadn't listened. If she had listened to her best friend, everything would be different.

"I'm sorry for not believing you when you told me that Port's Mouth was a trap," she whispered.

Somewhere, Louise-Francoise is both sneezing and feeling like her heart is being stabbed.
 
Afaik, the only thing that confirmed is that Henriettas mother wanted it to be a Yuri relationship. How conscious she was of this desire I wouldn't dare guess. How conscious Karin was of it...
Joseph seemed rather convinced things had happened, and given this was his venting and showing off how brilliant and informed he was without having to omit important information, I imagine he has more than just a few slip ups in the queens personal journal to go off of.
Like seriously. She's just throwing a fit and causing as much damage and hassle as possible because she's in a bad mood over getting her prince back and losing him again. Henrietta is an obscenely powerful necromancer but her prince obsession makes her worth less than the minion 5, or any of Tiffania's brats. Seriously, Louise needs to bend her over her knee and put that gauntlet to work for all the nonsense Henrietta's put her through since they got to Albion.
 
Joseph seemed rather convinced things had happened, and given this was his venting and showing off how brilliant and informed he was without having to omit important information, I imagine he has more than just a few slip ups in the queens personal journal to go off of.
Oh, I'm not saying things didn't happen, I'm saying we've got nothing confirming it was anything other than onesided obsession and fantasies, wild rumours and freakish misunderstandings.

After all, such things tend to run with the blood.
 
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Joseph seemed rather convinced things had happened, and given this was his venting and showing off how brilliant and informed he was without having to omit important information, I imagine he has more than just a few slip ups in the queens personal journal to go off of.

Like seriously. She's just throwing a fit and causing as much damage and hassle as possible because she's in a bad mood over getting her prince back and losing him again. Henrietta is an obscenely powerful necromancer but her prince obsession makes her worth less than the minion 5, or any of Tiffania's brats. Seriously, Louise needs to bend her over her knee and put that gauntlet to work for all the nonsense Henrietta's put her through since they got to Albion.
So you're saying the gauntlet stays on?
 
Seems that Void is affecting Joseph more strongly than Louise or Tiffania. I wonder if the effect grows stronger with age? Or because his familiar is the Mind? Or simply because all Gallian royals are quite mental, even without the Void?

Remember what Tifa said about her long-term goal?

"I'll make them understand each other. I'll make sure that they won't reject people like my parents who fall in love. And I'll stop them leaving parentless children like all the poor orphans I care for. I'll show them all."

This is a classical heart objective, but Tifa's going about it in an utterly counterproductive way. We also know what the inheritance of the Void does to Louise from seeing her without its influence: a nice girl who couldn't even hold a grudge against Madame de Montespan.

"We do!" Louise insisted. "She might have been evil and stupid and… and I might have hated her, but I can't leave her body out here to freeze to death out here in this cold. Even if by some measures she might deserve it." She swallowed. "I'd be a hypocrite if I abandoned one relative to eternal damnation when trying to save another one. Magdalene said she was never quite sane after the Affair of the Poisons. I should pity her, not hate her. And…" she tried to still the shaking in her hands, "all things considered? It's not her fault Wardes took her as his mistress when he should have been mourning me." Louise smiled weakly. "H-having to sleep with that treacherous dog is punishment enough."

So the signs point toward Joseph being right in that the Void having an impact on those who inherit it, but wrong in assuming that it affects them the same way it does him. Based on how Eleanore fantasized about torturing everyone who was even tangentially associated with her imprisonment, it could be that each portion of the inheritance has a characteristic effect; but it could also just be the de La Vallière blood she shares with Louise.
 
So you're saying the gauntlet stays on?
This is a punishment unfortunately, and louise for all her eldritch power does not have the build of a prisoner princess. She'll need the gauntlet for proper oomph to her swing.

Henrietta has been very naughty. Usurping Louise's dark alliance and nefarious schemes in Albion for the sake of personal vengeance and raising her stupid prince from the dead. Running roughshod over Louise's feelings and advice both. Getting herself captured again, this time by an enemy who knows what he's doing. Wasting prime underestimation of her abilities do to how easily she fell for his trap by making toddler tantrum level escape attempts. Not focusing enough to raise a bird or rat corpse with her blood fueled necromancy to warn Louise. She has earned her spanking, and it must be as brutal as it is demeaning. I'm really tired of her getting away with her nonsense.
Remember what Tifa said about her long-term goal?



This is a classical heart objective, but Tifa's going about it in an utterly counterproductive way. We also know what the inheritance of the Void does to Louise from seeing her without its influence: a nice girl who couldn't even hold a grudge against Madame de Montespan.



So the signs point toward Joseph being right in that the Void having an impact on those who inherit it, but wrong in assuming that it affects them the same way it does him. Based on how Eleanore fantasized about torturing everyone who was even tangentially associated with her imprisonment, it could be that each portion of the inheritance has a characteristic effect; but it could also just be the de La Vallière blood she shares with Louise.
I'd say different void items effect people differently, but The king of Gallia has this problem in cannon Zero anime. It's a mental disorder that the void may be exasperating by channeling what he can feel in the most beneficial to evil way, but ultimately it is something of a natural condition of being himself.

Also, while there is probably minute differences in how people handle the Gaunlets magic, I'd argue the effects are the same. Eleanors problem is she has a well suppressed self hatred and desire for punishment the gauntlet increases the same way it increases her hatred and desire to punish others. She very much holds herself accountable for the bloody duke and the Gauntlet enhance the resulting feelings in a way that leaves her in a self destructive mindset.

So yeah, people will respond to the Void magic differently do to being individuals, but the Void magic effect is pretty consistent on an individual object level.

Also, while I'm discussing Eleanor, I'm just going to come out and Gripe about her not joinging Louise, because I like her character and watching new girls join the inner circle, react to the tower, hell, and finding there evil nitch and working behind Louise's back to advance her evil reputation and expand her power in ways she neglects is the very best part of the stories for me.

There is also the whole Catt & and Eleanor drama which while terrible, is also just a very good bit of writing. I would much rather have Louise forced to drag Eleanor along with her to Albion so there was someone with an escape plan and counter measures prepared when Joseph sprung his trap. It's just seriously disappointing how such a nuanced and interesting character isn't really playing much of a significant role compared to henrietta, who is vaguely interesting because Louise loves her, but overall not my cup of tea.
 
So you're saying the gauntlet stays on?
We know that Louise sleeps with the thing on and that it's traditional that the helmet stays on. So almost certainly.
This is a punishment unfortunately, and louise for all her eldritch power does not have the build of a prisoner princes. She'll need the gauntlet for proper oomph to her swing.
Accordingly to Henrietta's first PoV chapter, it's less princess in captivity traditional bulk and more the fact that her family tree is heavy with the sort of person (usually but not always male) who went around lopping off heads of rebellious peasants/foul villains.
 
Accordingly to Henrietta's first PoV chapter, it's less princess in captivity traditional bulk and more the fact that her family tree is heavy with the sort of person (usually but not always male) who went around lopping off heads of rebellious peasants/foul villains.
Right right. The de Valleries got the schemer genes while the royals bulked up, and formed a mostly symbiotic relationship of covering each others weaknesses.
 
Right right. The de Valleries got the schemer genes while the royals bulked up, and formed a mostly symbiotic relationship of covering each others weaknesses.
I mean kinda? Pretty sure Catt and Mags are more typical for the Vallerie family as far as figure goes for the women but I don't quite recall. Though it should be noted that the Valleries do interbreed with the Zerbsts regularly enough so yeah...
 
[QUOTE="Randino Treviani, post: 26005017, member: 70918"

Henrietta has been very naughty. Usurping Louise's dark alliance and nefarious schemes in Albion for the sake of personal vengeance and raising her stupid prince from the dead. Running roughshod over Louise's feelings and advice both. Getting herself captured again, this time by an enemy who knows what he's doing. Wasting prime underestimation of her abilities do to how easily she fell for his trap by making toddler tantrum level escape attempts. Not focusing enough to raise a bird or rat corpse with her blood fueled necromancy to warn Louise. She has earned her spanking, and it must be as brutal as it is demeaning. I'm really tired of her getting away with her nonsense.

[/QUOTE]

It's almost like She has depression in a setting where therapy doesn't exist so she is making a bunch of shortsighted but emotionally satisfying decisions in order to force herself to be happy.

But I'm sure adding physical pain to the emotional pain she is feeling right now is totally going to make everything better!
 
EarthScorpion said:
Standing around the edges of the room were the hulking steam-golems of the New Model Army, a mark of Albion's strength that kept them safe even before
The end of this sentence appears to have gone missing.

Thanks for writing!
 
But I'm sure adding physical pain to the emotional pain she is feeling right now is totally going to make everything better!
I'm sure she prefers it too just keeping her locked up in heart tower from now and letting her in on plans only after there over, which was my first idea, or my second Idea of just burning the thrice cursed princes soul so she can't raise him from the dead anymore. I'm not picky though. I'll take whatever fitting punishment is most effective for communicating that rather than just not listening to Louise about the trap, this entire campaign in Albion was a vast overstep of her authority and abuse of Louise friendship, and it needs to never ever happen again.

It's a little bit harder sympathize with the whole depression thing when she embraces choice after choice to wallow further in her misery and fixate on correcting her loss rather than getting over it. If Tiffania had been less quick on her feet and Joseph had killed most or even just some of her orphans, would they be suddenly less dead because Henrietta was dealing with depression? No? Well then, I suppose the various things Henrietta did to Louise during the albion campaign also happened and aren't suddenly less bad because Henrietta wasn't quite in her right mind at the time.

I really don't care whats done, beyond a desire for Louise to not simply forgive her because she loves her and just paper over all the many things Henrietta should never have been doing in my opinion. Again, I'm not picky, but just being immediately back in a position of trust and inclusion without any sort of consequences beyond the natural ones that come with being captured in the first place is unacceptable. Louise keeping her locked up out of fear of losing her again is the most likely I'll admit, but leaves me fairly dissatisfied as it's more likely over protectiveness and doesn't communicate what Henrietta did wrong in any meaningful way.
 
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Given that Louise is basically Karin2.0 there is a huge chance that she lectured the Queen on the fact that she could have easily broken out of the silk straps tying her to a petal covered bed and that there was no need for her to come to rescue.
Now I'm starting to wonder if half the queens madness and prudishness are a result of overwhelming sexual frustration toward Karin. It would explain a lot.
 
Ye gods people, shame on all of you to believe that the Queen and her often times rescuer Karin with her dexterous fingers and supple yet strong hands were in such a scandalous and torrid relationship! Next thing you'll be saying is that the Heavy Wind spent many nights allowing herself to have her body lapped by twin female vampires who ran their tongues across every inch of skin!


Minds in the gutter all of you, shame! :p
 
Ye gods people, shame on all of you to believe that the Queen and her often times rescuer Karin with her dexterous fingers and supple yet strong hands were in such a scandalous and torrid relationship! Next thing you'll be saying is that the Heavy Wind spent many nights allowing herself to have her body lapped by twin female vampires who ran their tongues across every inch of skin!


Minds in the gutter all of you, shame! :p
Nah. I'm disillusioned now. Instead, I'm convinced nothing happened, and the entire journal he's reading from is the queens fantasy journal of how she imagined things would go if Karin ever go a clue. If the queen got past getting Karin to hold her hand while leading her out of some treacherous dungeon/towers/ect I'll be vaguely shocked. It's just too outside the realm of possibility at the moment.
 
Tbh even a one sided crush on the queen's end feels like a stretch to me. Or at least any that she was conscious of. Given Henrietta's complete failure to understand Louise's confession, I suspect that not even the rumors that stuck around long enough to be taunts to be used on Ellenore were something that actually registered to the Queen, much less her daughter.

Anyways after a bit of thinking, I do suspect that this entire experience is likely to result in Louise and Henrietta settling into a more healthy friendship. For the reveal of the void to Henrietta and some introspection on Louise on top of the entire fiasico likely triggering some protective instincts in Louise are a combo that might just get Louise to put her foot down and reign in her necromancer. Additionally, once access to the Tower and it's inhabitants is restored, Anges is bound to be an interesting influence on Henrietta. For if Louise's little confession becomes known to the musketeer and she decides to educate her charge, things will get interesting. Which is probable given that there's good odds she hooks up with Catt and she seems like the sort of drunk who'd pounce on that sort of detail when Henrietta explains everything that's happened since her "abduction". Also in the pile of things that's probably going to help is Louise getting a chance to actually date someone with potential to give her a healthy relationship. Which is not a quality that Lee seems to have much of whereas Isabella is at least able to work out her familial relationships between her probable full blooded sisters, her cousin, and her human half sister all seeming to have good ties with her now. Though that might not translate to romance but given that Jessica seems to vouch for her cousin I'd say it's probably a safe bet. To say nothing about what both girls' blood might say about the two dating.
 
Tbh even a one sided crush on the queen's end feels like a stretch to me. Or at least any that she was conscious of. Given Henrietta's complete failure to understand Louise's confession, I suspect that not even the rumors that stuck around long enough to be taunts to be used on Ellenore were something that actually registered to the Queen, much less her daughter.
Eh. I feel like Henrietta's failure to understand Louise'c confession is less because Henrietta is clueless and more because she thinks Louise herself is still clueless, which means that anything Louise says that sounds like confession can't possibly be an actual confession.
 
Eh. I feel like Henrietta's failure to understand Louise'c confession is less because Henrietta is clueless and more because she thinks Louise herself is still clueless, which means that anything Louise says that sounds like confession can't possibly be an actual confession.
I'd say that's dumb enough to sound plausible as a theory but with this latest chapter I'm going to have to pass. Assuming it's not a combination of factors, Henrietta failed to realize Louise's confession because of her True Love for her prince, Tristian's general culture (which is something Jessica comments on when she was hanging out with Isabella and the latter was asking out Louise) not teaching her that girls can love girls romantically, or some sort of potentially inherited lack of awareness.
 
My general take on henrietta not seeing Louise's confession is because she wasn't interested in receiving a confession. Ever since she picked up necromancy she's been on some demented nostalgia crawl(like a bar crawl but with memories) where she wallows in her obsession with her lost prince. A confession, any confession, is just a distraction from her true love, to be dismissed out of hand.
"I'm sorry for not believing you when you told me that Port's Mouth was a trap," she whispered.
Like here. She thinks her only mistake was not listening to Louise but it goes deeper than that.
Ah. That was more familiar territory to Louise. "As far as I'm concerned, the Albionese Republic is an ally of the Regency Council and an enemy to my plans. We're here to lend our aid to your plans, because we want to ensure that the Regency Council can't find any support here when I take over Tristain. I want to look towards crippling the Albionese fleet or otherwise making it impossible for them to move assets to the mainland, but our intelligence reports from Albion are… limited."

"Also," Henrietta interrupted, "we want the body of the Prince of Wales."

"We do?" Louise said, trying not to show a disunited front in front of the rival overlady but also really not feeling okay with that bit of the plan.

"We discussed this earlier, remember?"

They had done no such thing, and Louise would certainly have had something to say about Henrietta getting her hands on the body of her beloved.

"Ah, yes," Tiffania said, with a happy smile. "The children do love the stories of revenants returning from the grave to devour those who betrayed them. And I'm fully behind the Republican leadership being devoured by the murderous animated corpse of a prince. I mean, you might need to find him a new head, but…" one of the children raised their hand, "what is it, Chloe?"

"If he lost his head, we can find him a pumpkin. Anna axe," said a snuggly sweet, snotty-nosed six-year old. "Anna horsie for him to ride around cutting off people's heads."

"A wonderful idea, Chloe! I'll have to give you a star afterwards!"

The presence of small children at the planning meeting was also something Louise did not support. They kept on making suggestions. Awful, dreadful, horrible suggestions. There was something very wrong with these children.

Henrietta tilted her head. Her helmet made her expression hard to read, but Louise had a horrible feeling that she was taking the suggestion seriously. "I think it'd be important to recover the head," she said eventually. "I need it."
She totally always planned to side track from Louise's objectives in the name of getting her prince back, and absolutely omitted this from her discussions with Louise.

In my mind Henrietta isn't capable of acknowledging another persons romantic feelings toward her as legitimate and meaningful as long as she has the option of dismissing them in favor of believing in a reunion with her dear prince's soul/corpse.
 
I'd go even a little farther than that. My reading is that in Henrietta's mind, romance is entirely a thing that exists between herself and her prince and nowhere else. The possibility of being with Louise is about equally ridiculous as asking if she would date a random tree in an orchard. Ridiculous. Impossible. Can be dismissed so out of hand as to not merit conscious thought.

Her love story has already been written and the ink has dried long ago. Anyone who tries to disrupt it, to scribble over her perfect romance, must be utterly destroyed so she can keep pushing towards her happily ever after.

Hell, maybe that's why the possibility doesn't register to her; Louise is a both a good friend and a very bad enemy to make.
 
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