Monologue of the Reincarnated Princess

Monologue of the Reincarnated Princess

I, Rosemary von Velfalt, was reborn as the first princess of the kingdom of Nevel. Though I began a new life, for some reason, I retained the memories of my previous self.

Basically, I’m an otherworld protagonist. Strange, but true.

The world into which I was reborn was vast and unfamiliar. It spanned an entire large continent, which was shaped like a bird’s wing, and beyond the mainland were hundreds of islands, both large and small.

My kingdom was located on the continent, in the southern portion of the central region. Nevel was a monarchical state, backed by a thousand years of history, and was the second-largest nation on the continent.

Nevel’s southeastern region was blessed with bountiful flatlands and a temperate climate. Agriculture thrived there, and the region boasted some of the largest harvests of wheat and corn in the world. The mountainous north was also rich in resources; it was home to the mining industry, where many workers earned their livelihoods from the iron ore deposits found there.

A trade route cut across the central heartlands of Nevel, connecting the nation of Vint to the west with the Kingdom of Grundt to the east. Dotted along this road were booming merchant towns.

Though primarily famed as a grand and prosperous kingdom, Nevel was held in high regard by other countries for another, odd reason—though it was rare, children with magical abilities were occasionally born in Nevel. This meant that, in Nevel alone, there existed a class of sorcerers.

Some claimed that the source of this magic was a demon lord who had long ago forced the world to the brink of destruction, and who now lay sealed beneath Nevel’s ground. Others suggested that Nevel’s millennium of uninterrupted existence was the cause—they believed that the earliest generations had passed the secret of magical power down through the centuries. Though theories abounded, the true reason remained unknown. To most, the demon lord was just a character from fairy tales, and few believed that he actually existed.

I was one of those few. To be more specific, I didn’t believe, I knew. I knew that magic and the demon lord existed.

To explain why, I’ll have to turn back time a little. As I explained at the outset, I was reborn with the memories of my previous life intact. I’ll never forget the shock I felt when, after dying in a traffic accident, I’d opened my eyes and found myself in an infant’s body.

What’s this, a light novel?! I’d tried to shout as someone resembling a wet nurse picked me up. My infant vocal cords hadn’t been strong enough for words though, so my question had come out as a baby’s cry.

Despite this confusing start, I grew up quickly, dodging the odd plague here and there, until a different realization rocked my world at three years old. Now literate, I had started to read books and, as I learned the names of my country, my family, and myself, I felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It was possible that I had learned them from the wet nurse and the maids talking, but I wondered why they felt so familiar.

Suddenly, I remembered—that otome game. The details of this world were the same as the one in the game I’d played in my past life.

What’s this, a light novel?! I almost exclaimed. This seemed to be a recurring question in my life. However, since prim and proper princesses weren’t supposed to make sarcastic remarks, I managed to hold in my outburst.

I prayed for it to be a misunderstanding, but similarity after cruel similarity mounted up. Both countries had the same names and the same worldview. There were young boys whose names and faces were identical to the game’s main characters. To top it off, I shared a name with the side character who acted as the heroine’s rival. There were too many parallels to shrug the idea off as simple coincidence.

“Well, great.”

I sighed from my chair by the window, which was located in the corner of my room—a space extravagantly decorated in the style of the European Renaissance. The fog from my breath on the window dissipated and revealed my reflection: a young girl with a vacant expression. My skin was fair, my platinum blond hair flowed in gentle waves, and the upturned corners of my large, sky-blue eyes gave me a stern expression. I possessed all the dazzling beauty you would expect from a rival character, but despite my comely appearance, I wasn’t straightforward enough to let vanity put a smile on my face.

A second, longer sigh escaped my lips. Thankfully the nearby maids didn’t see or hear me; a sighing three-year-old staring off into the distance would have appeared quite surreal.

Discovering that this world was the one from the otome game hadn’t left me jumping for joy. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The reason was simple: that game was famous for being terrible.

I think the title was Welcome to the Hidden World. In the story, a high school girl was summoned to another world as a shrine maiden. Her quest was to defeat the demon lord and restore peace, or something like that.

The main plotline was pretty standard, so I didn’t have anything to complain about. The problem was the characters. The “hidden world” in the title didn’t just refer to the otherworld setting, and it carried a double meaning: all of the main characters had a hidden side, a secret nature. This in and of itself didn’t cross any lines, as I don’t have any complaints about a rehashed, slightly cliché setup.

No, the big problem was that the suitor characters’ hidden sides, the main selling point, were absolutely pathetic.

The second prince was a siscon, and the adoration he felt for his sister bordered on obsession. The noble with a tragic backstory was an unaware narcissist. The personal guard was a self-defeating masochist. The sorcerer was a necrophile. The assassin was gay. Worst of all, the priest, otherwise known as the demon lord and the main villain, was a yandere whose love was expressed through violence. He was so bent on his own destruction that he summoned his archnemesis, the shrine maiden.

There couldn’t be a better example of a game trying too hard to be original and failing. If I’d met any of them in the real world, I would’ve turned and bolted away at full speed. They weren’t the kind of people you’d want to have anything to do with.

When I started the game in my previous life and began winning over the noble, the first glimpses of his narcissistic nature made my heart sink.

The heroine must be an angel, or maybe a qualified defense attorney, to be able to take this dumbass seriously, I thought with a straight face.

I suppressed my initial urge to ask the game shop for a refund, and trudged through to the wedding scene at the end. The noble gazed at the heroine in her pure white dress and remarked, “So beautiful. The reflection of me in your eyes, that is.”

I rage-threw my controller onto the floor in disgust at that point.

Is every writer for this game a complete idiot?! Painting a happy ending only to fade to black with a terrifying final line is a format that only works in horror stories. Using a line like that in a romance game makes a mockery of all the character development up to that point.

I tried a different route, and then another. Every single character followed a similar course; there wasn’t an ounce of excitement. The suitors weren’t lovable so much as stabbable. I felt like a guinea pig being subjected to an avant-garde stress test.

The people on the internet by and large shared my opinions. Even so, there was a distinct reason why we all powered through without throwing the game away: accompanying the outwardly dazzling main characters were the so-called side characters. Their purpose in the game was just to add texture and flesh out the story, but these side characters outshone the main suitors in every conceivable way, and that imbalance was what made Hidden World so terrible.

Since they weren’t main characters, they never received much screen time with the protagonist. A few of them even went entirely unmentioned in some routes. For whatever reason though, they were all hotties that were good-looking enough to rival the main characters. Also, unlike the main characters, they had amazing personalities. They were truly faultless.

For example, the first prince was cool and intelligent. The narcissistic noble had a side-character uncle who was a calm and kind gentleman. The guard captain was caring and strong, a man among men. The necrophile sorcerer’s rival was zealous and hardworking. The assassin-turned-waiter was a feminist and a friend to all women. Even the priest’s sister was a stunning beauty with a big-sisterly disposition.

What’s the point in making the side characters so much better than the main characters? If I could’ve interrogated the production staff about how it had come to this, I would’ve.

In spite of my frustration with the main characters, the side characters kept me playing. The best among them was the guard captain, who happened to be my number one heartthrob and the man who boasted the top spot on the internet’s popularity polls. He left all the main characters in the dust. I suffered through the pain of each disappointing route just to see his smile. However small the chance, I pinned all my hopes on the possibility that, after finishing the main characters’ stories, the guard captain route would become available.

Sadly, I couldn’t unlock it. Or rather, there was nothing locked away. His route didn’t exist.

I fought on through pangs of despair as the gallery filled up and up. There’s got to be at least one hidden character, right? I thought, trudging onward. But, struggle as I might, neither God nor the production staff led me to the promised land.

Tears fell down my cheeks when I saw the “100%” in the corner of the scene-select screen. No new routes appeared for the side characters, even after finishing the game. All that remained was the fact that I had wasted my time playing through every inch of this piece of shit.

I’ve never felt so empty. What am I even doing?

I wasn’t alone in this feeling. The most well-liked ending, according to the player community, was the normal ending, which also happened to be the one where the despondent heroine snuck back to her own world with all hopes of world peace and romance shattered. So what made this doom-and-gloom ending so popular? His appearance, of course—the guard captain’s.

As the heroine lamented her powerlessness, he gently stroked her hair, saying, “It’s not your fault. Go home, live a happy life.”

Who wouldn’t fall for him?

I lost count of the number of times I screamed “Don’t do it!” at the screen, but the shrine maiden still chose to step into the magic circle, homeward bound and looking guilt-ridden.

I might have gotten a bit carried away with my explanation, but the point is that I was reborn into that shitty game’s world, which could only mean one thing: endless amounts of trouble were right around the corner.

If I was to live a peaceful life in Nevel, I would have to break the event flags to avoid triggering routes where I would end up with any of my suitors. Though the flags were once just checkpoints in a game, they now carried real-world ramifications that could ruin my new life. I needed to dodge them at all costs.

My head hurt just thinking about how I would mollify the six pain-in-the-ass main characters by myself, all without triggering their flags...but there was no other path to happiness.

The three-year-old me said nothing, but I took a deep breath, scrunched up my face, and made up my mind.

I can do this. I can reach a future where I meet my beloved guard captain.