Forum › The Sheep Princess in Wolf's Clothing discussion
Well that's quite a bombshell to drop at the end of an extra lol
Unsurprising, given the seriousness of the development lately. To quote myself:
You can't do it before the end of the story though since the resolution is of course to reveal the secret princess background and make them have an official engagement or even wedding or whatever instead. And as we all know that's when the manga absolutely has to end, or The Heavens will fall from the sky and erase all of humanity.
Nobody ever can write a story that's about getting to together and then just continuing afterwards. It's either or. It's a law of the universe.
Nobody ever can write a story that's about getting to together and then just continuing afterwards. It's either or. It's a law of the universe.
Fun fact, this is the reason why anime helped me get a gf in highschool, but only for 2 weeks cause the shows never showed how to BE in a relationship, only how to get one.
Ending in two chapters? Butbutbutut it's so cute and pretty, and I love the art style and characters... even with the foreshadowing, I was hoping that this would keep going for a little while longer. :'(
Quite the fucking rollercoaster there, friends. One part of me is happy since I'm a simple dude who loves happy endings for all parties involved. Another part of me generally fucking hates endings on a personal, visceral level, and I'm kinda bummed. Definitely still one of the better stories I've had the pleasure of experiencing, though.
So, is the implication that the head butler hired the shorty for personal reasons?
Personally not seeing anything that would imply that but if I'm really looking for windmills to swing at, let's say that head butler encountered one who looked like an efficient, enthusiastic worker, who also incidentally was hella cute, and decided to take them in when the fates allowed. Doesn't sound all too bad, really. Also rather plausible.
Nobody ever can write a story that's about getting to together and then just continuing afterwards. It's either or. It's a law of the universe.
Such a shame, too, especially in this story where the universe itself offers so much to tackle and explore.
Ending in two chapters? Butbutbutut it's so cute and pretty, and I love the art style and characters... even with the foreshadowing, I was hoping that this would keep going for a little while longer. :'(
Man... same...
2?!!!!!!!!!! I need more wholesome series after this one is ending
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Nobody ever can write a story that's about getting to together and then just continuing afterwards. It's either or. It's a law of the universe.
The amount of SOL that exists disagrees.
There's also the Cinderella sequels...
One non-rapey enforcement could be "if you don't want to live by the rules of the royal family, you don't get its privileges. Enjoy earning your living as a commoner." Something like that happened with an English king in the 1900s; he wanted to marry a divorcee, which wasn't allowed, so he abjured the throne for himself and his heirs. And special laws were passed too.
If we're talking about the guy I think we're talking about, the whole thing might have ended up a bit less extreme if he hadn't ALSO been palsy with Hitler and passing him classified information. He may actually have been a key reason France fell so fast.
Crossing my fingers that when they say the "series is ending" that there is a sequel series on its way, just like "Kase-san" and "Yamada and Kase-san"
i'll miss this series. Good luck on future manga the author will create.
And so what is the purpose of going through such intellectual contortions?
A bit of all of what you said. But how I would phrase it myself is : the purpose of criticizing such plot development is to point out that positive portrayal of forced marriage, acceptance thereof, depicting the optimistic possible consequences of it while ignoring the pessimistic ones, and more generally spreading or defending such practices through the lens of characters being happy after having those forced on them is morally wrong, for both the writer and readers.
Being forced to break up with your lover to become the spouse and mate of some stranger without being given a chance to say no is a tragedy, and should be treated as such by both the author and the audience.
Even if we treated as a tragedy, that doesnt means her life is a tragedy or that it sucks, they have a happy life regardless of past bs situations. Getting stuck in a tragic past wont let ppl enjoy a possible better future and guess what in this case they didnt got stuck in the past and, in the end, formed a happy family and now they have the experience required to help their daughter, make the best out of what you have isnt it?
And so what is the purpose of going through such intellectual contortions?
A bit of all of what you said. But how I would phrase it myself is : the purpose of criticizing such plot development is to point out that positive portrayal of forced marriage, acceptance thereof, depicting the optimistic possible consequences of it while ignoring the pessimistic ones, and more generally spreading or defending such practices through the lens of characters being happy after having those forced on them is morally wrong, for both the writer and readers.
Being forced to break up with your lover to become the spouse and mate of some stranger without being given a chance to say no is a tragedy, and should be treated as such by both the author and the audience.
Even if we treated as a tragedy, that doesnt means her life is a tragedy or that it sucks, they have a happy life regardless of past bs situations. Getting stuck in a tragic past wont let ppl enjoy a possible better future and guess what in this case they didnt got stuck in the past and, in the end, formed a happy family and now they have the experience required to help their daughter, make the best out of what you have isnt it?
you mean have the experience to make the same disgusting tragedy for their daughter on the VERY slim chance she will like the chosen dick??? lol
what I hope for is THEY give her the CHOICE and not force this tragedy that you think is sooo positive
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Well that's quite a bombshell to drop at the end of an extra lol
Unsurprising, given the seriousness of the development lately. To quote myself:
You can't do it before the end of the story though since the resolution is of course to reveal the secret princess background and make them have an official engagement or even wedding or whatever instead. And as we all know that's when the manga absolutely has to end, or The Heavens will fall from the sky and erase all of humanity.
Nobody ever can write a story that's about getting to together and then just continuing afterwards. It's either or. It's a law of the universe.
Because everyone complains incessantly on how the story "changed" and there's no more drama after they get together. There's examples on this site.
ENDING IN TWO CHAPTERS???? IM NOT READY
It's sure because of the bad reception of the chapter with forced marriage with men. No other reason.
One non-rapey enforcement could be "if you don't want to live by the rules of the royal family, you don't get its privileges. Enjoy earning your living as a commoner." Something like that happened with an English king in the 1900s; he wanted to marry a divorcee, which wasn't allowed, so he abjured the throne for himself and his heirs. And special laws were passed too.
If we're talking about the guy I think we're talking about, the whole thing might have ended up a bit less extreme if he hadn't ALSO been palsy with Hitler and passing him classified information. He may actually have been a key reason France fell so fast.
King Edward VIII was not remotely a key reason France fell so quickly. While there are a myriad of reasons they folded up, their General Staff is the key reason.
That said, anybody who hasn't picked up on all the foreshadowing that Aki's temporarily embarrassed wolf royalty is reading a different manga than the one I've been reading.
If they need it spelled out, look to ch.23 p.17 top panel.
Yeah, that's a total normie family living in a total normie house.
Easy to forget in the time between chapters, but yeah, having just re-read this, it's one of the two moments I pointed out on the previous page that may indeed point in that direction, the other being the queen's reaction to her last name.
Wouldn't call it "all the foreshadowing", but there certainly are clues that support this reading.
I completely forgot about those scenes, I would definitely not call two or three panels scattered amongst 25 chapters to be "all the foreshadowing". That said, it is definitely there, and to be honest, I am actually kind of disappointed. It seems to me to be a rather cheap solution, "surprise, the servant turns out to be of royal bloodline, all problems solved in a single stroke".
In this case, since this storyworld doesn’t seem to have science babies, a female-female marriage would seem to be acceptable for the younger royals (helping to solidify the connections between two countries without endangering the lines of succession). The whole procreation aspect might well be ignored or handwaved away, though.
I expect it probably will be handwaved away. My reasoning is that Aki was worried back in chapter 13 that Kunya was gunning for Momo and treated such a possibility seriously, without any hint of heterosexual expectations being the norm. I doubt it would even make any difference if Momo was heir apparent, the story never actually focuses on sexuality or producing offspring.
But the queen and the dressmaker are going to keep living their happy forced heterosexual / single life, the queen possibly have yet more sex with the husband she didn't want because the kingdom needs more heirs.
As Lilisionnach pointed out, the dressmaker is not single, she is married herself and has a family of her own. I think that a lot of your misplaced anger stems from you reading your own ideas into the manga. For example, it seems to have never dawned on you that the Queen and the dressmaker might not even be in love anymore. Love is not eternal, love fades, people fall out of love, people fall in love again with somebody else, it happens every day all over the place.
At no point was the Queen, whose point of view we got in chapter 25, shown to be still carrying a torch for the dressmaker, instead what we got was some nostalgic reminiscence. And the dressmaker herself is not royalty, so presumably she was not arranged to marry anyone out of any sense of obligation, yet she married anyway at some point and had a family of her own - not only did it not occur to you that she might have simply fallen in love with someone else, but you were reading your own personal pet-peeves into the story so hard you did not even notice that the dressmaker was not, in fact, single.
So basically, what you are proposing is that two happy families (one of which is not even a product of an arranged marriage) should be split apart so that the Queen and the dressmaker can pursue romantic love from their teenage years that neither is shown to still actually harbour. The fact you want this to be a tragedy and that you would be more satisfied if they were depicted as being miserable and still pinning after one another is quite frankly more messed up than any arranged marriage shown in this manga.
Yet further problem you have is that you keep assigning some sort of moral messaging to the author using these tropes. This is just a tale of two lovers separating due to circumstances, both later finding happiness with other people while also remaining friends. It is a story, not an essay on morality.
This take might be what is most likely to happen, but doesn't really make sense. The whole counter-reaction argument is "this comp-het for the queen shouldn't go away, because she is happy in the end". After you trim down the why and how around it, it's all that remains : it happens, and the characters should accept it, and we should move on.
No, that is just one part of the counter-reaction. The other part, as I explained in my previous post, is that it is a political marriage. It is how politics is conducted when you base your setting on such social structures. Those political reasons for why the Queen married are still there. Your reasoning does not make sense within the presented setting. Like, at this point I have to ask you, did you pay any attention whatsoever to the actual worldbuilding across these 4 volumes?
So... if we take that at face value, why put so much emphasis on the fact that it will definitely not happen to Momo ? She is also royalty, she is no more in love with Aki than the queen and Juju were. Their situations are pretty much identical.
Except they are not. The dressmaker was a commoner, while Aki, as people brought up, is likely royalty herself. The author has consistently put emphasis on inequality between social classes as being the main and basically only obstacle.
Then the author inserted a character who was forced to give up on her lover and sexual preferences...
Did you ever consider the possibility that she might be bi? Honestly, I can not remember any characters here actually discussing sexuality, be it regarding Aki and Momo's relationship or the Queen going down the memory lane of her own marriage.
And if you disagree and think the author meant to show that this is not okay for the queen, please point where you saw that to me; showing her happiness with the current situation very strongly points in the other direction.
So, your own life is nothing but moral virtue? Everything that has happened to you and everything you ever did had a clear moral dimension? When bad things happened to you, you never once found some unforeseen happiness as a result? When good things happened to you it never led to something bad further down the line? I wish I had such a life, it sounds very straightforward and simple, good only ever results in good, bad in bad.
If you paid attention, you would have noticed that not only were both the Queen and her husband talking freely about how bad they felt initially about their own marriage, but Momo's father actually muses that it might be better if they did not do the same to their own daughter. In other words, they are not using the fact they ended up in a happy relationship as meaning that it would automatically play out like that for everyone.
When you think about it for even a moment, you realise that the author is not saying arranged marriages are fine and dandy, quite the opposite. I provided links for all of this in my first reply to you, so it was pointed out, you just chose to ignore it.
And as for the Queen's happiness, that is just how life turned out for her. It is not in any way, shape, or form a statement saying "arranged marriages lead to happiness".
I do not think the "comp-het is a bit sad but okay in the long run" is an acceptable statement for the author to make.
You are putting entirely too much emphasis on the het part. Again, at no point does sexuality get discussed here, all any characters bring up are differences in social classes. It was not the fact that the reindeer prince was a guy that was truly important here, but that he was royalty. When Princess Kunya expressed interest in Momo, Aki actually got worried, clearly indicating that Kunya had a chance as an actual suitor for Momo, despite being a girl. I do not think this setting cares all that much about gender or sexuality, as it is never brought up as a point in anything.
I mean, if the plot line end up with the queen and Juju actually being freed of their forced separation and having a chance to become lover again, I will happily take back my complaints
So, two adult women being "freed" from their families, whom they love and cherish (and bonus points for the dressmaker, who was not pressured by others into marriage and who thus likely married out of love) in order to pursue a romance they shared as teenagers, despite there being no indications they even have romantic feelings for one another in the present, would make you happily take your complaints back. As I said before, messed up. Seriously, seriously messed up.
They were both victims of their forced marriage and seem to be pretty much on the same line of thought, "you're a good person, but I don't feel love towards you", while also having the power to choose to divorce and marry out of love if they want to.
First of all, "I don't feel love towards you" is something you read into the story (kind of amazing, the sheer quantity of stuff you are projecting into all of this). What we were shown of the Queen and her husband points pretty clearly to them loving one another, even if it is not an earthshattering love that only Shakespeare could put into words.
Secondly, no, they do not have the power to choose to divorce and marry out of love if they want to. That is not how arranged political marriages work. That is not how politics within hereditary social structures works. That is not how this setting works. Marriages are done for political reasons in these societies, those political reasons do not go away once you succeed to the throne. Say a princess marries a prince to secure an alliance or prevent a war. Then she becomes queen and divorces him, because now she "has the power". What do you think happens next?
To illustrate this point, Mark Antony was married to Octavian's sister. It was a political marriage linking the two triumvirs. Mark Antony then allowed "power" to get to his head, divorced Octavian's sister, married Cleopatra and had children with her. Guess what pretext Octavian gave to the Senate and the Roman people for why war was needed. That Mark Antony divorced his Roman wife and then married a foreigner was a grave insult in the eyes of ordinary Romans and helped greatly for Octavian to justify going to war against Antony and Cleopatra.
Yikes, you're sure making a lot of excuses for a woman who has only shown same sex attraction being forced to marry a man and pro create with him. She is very clearly still in love with her dress maker, who she makes promise to stay beside her even in her old age. And while she does care for her husband, a nice man who she has shared the better half of her life with, there is no evidence that she romantically loves him or is attracted to him.
"She is very clearly still in love with her dress maker", I would like you to point me to the scene or scenes that very clearly show this. "...who she makes promise to stay beside her even in her old age", because only lovers do that. Friendship is for losers. As for her husband, there is also no evidence that she is not romantically interested or attracted to him. Those same scenes that you interpret as "caring" I interpret as "maybe even loving" and I would like to know what conclusive evidence could you provide me to change my mind.
Also, it is kind of amusing how so many people are making such a big deal out of sexuality, when this aspect was literally never brought up in the story. Personally, I think this was written as "everyone can be attracted to everyone", seeing that nobody bats so much as a single eyelash at two girls being together and foreign princesses are treated as serious contenders for Momo's hand.
The theme here is a woman being forced to marry a man and pro create with him with no option to say no. Anyone who is not opposed to that idea does have a lapse in ethical judgment, period. The question isn't whether the story endorses arranged marriage, because there is no message being conveyed aside from a telling of events. The question is whether or not you grieve for the queen who was forced into her relationship, animal girl or not. Seeing fictional characters in tragic situations and being unable to evoke emotions over them is definitely a sign of something wrong.
You were on such a good trail here with the part I bolded, but alas. The Queen is not miserable with her life (and you are right, there is no message in that, it is simply a telling of the events). The dressmaker is also happy, seeing that she is also married but without the whole "arranged" part. The two of them are close friends. Why in the world would we grieve if the characters themselves are not?? The tragic situation depicted here is in the distant past and everyone found some measure of happiness afterwards.
Also, no one here expressed support for arranged marriages, so I have no idea whom you are even addressing with your second sentence.
The theme is see the groundwork being layed out for, and the theme I see constantly with this trope, is the idea of the second generation being strong and brave enough to break out of the social confines that held their parents and find a greater happiness...
...where older generations look at younger generations as being outspoken and brave, and able to break down social structures that older people thought were concrete.
If Aki really turns out to be royalty herself, then no social structures will be broken down, in fact, it will be the epitome of maintaining status quo. I would actually prefer if she is not royalty, as that would produce exactly the kind of struggle you are talking about, which is something I would enjoy more.
All that nonsense about "forced marriage" I will not even touch upon, Blastaar and luinthoron covered that rather well.
Aaand as I scrolled further and further I basically gave up. Blastaar addressed most of the points quite well anyway, so I will quit the topic of the arranged marriage now. It is abundantly clear that no matter how many times one points out the gaping flaws in the arguments of the complainers, they just come back and repeat their original points almost verbatim.
In short, no, the author was not making any sort of a positive message about arranged marriages (if anything, the Queen and her husband being so scared when they were engaged and the fact the husband is openly musing about not subjecting their daughter to that same practice would indicate the message about arranged marriages, if there is any to be found, is actually negative, but I guess unless printed out in bold all-caps it will go completely over the heads of some people). These specific characters finding some measure of happiness in this specific example are not an endorsement of the practice of arranged marriages, it is just a story.
As a side note, I got desensitised to the word "tragedy" after reading it so many times during this discussion. If a broken teenage romance that people involved have actually managed to move forward from is your definition of a "tragedy", then you must live one hell of a sheltered life.
last edited at Feb 17, 2023 4:57AM
That said, anybody who hasn't picked up on all the foreshadowing that Aki's temporarily embarrassed wolf royalty is reading a different manga than the one I've been reading.
If they need it spelled out, look to ch.23 p.17 top panel.
Yeah, that's a total normie family living in a total normie house.
Easy to forget in the time between chapters, but yeah, having just re-read this, it's one of the two moments I pointed out on the previous page that may indeed point in that direction, the other being the queen's reaction to her last name.
Wouldn't call it "all the foreshadowing", but there certainly are clues that support this reading.
I completely forgot about those scenes, I would definitely not call two or three panels scattered amongst 25 chapters to be "all the foreshadowing". That said, it is definitely there, and to be honest, I am actually kind of disappointed. It seems to me to be a rather cheap solution, "surprise, the servant turns out to be of royal bloodline, all problems solved in a single stroke".
Out of the three foreshadowed paths, secret princess is the probably the least focused on compared to the other two potentials. With just two chapters left it does seem more likely for a quick wrap up than Momo running away to live her life in her Wolfa disguise or Hyena Princess coming to the rescue. The groundwork is there for all, or even a combination of those paths though.
Ehhhhhh????? It’s about to end????
And so what is the purpose of going through such intellectual contortions?
A bit of all of what you said. But how I would phrase it myself is : the purpose of criticizing such plot development is to point out that positive portrayal of forced marriage, acceptance thereof, depicting the optimistic possible consequences of it while ignoring the pessimistic ones, and more generally spreading or defending such practices through the lens of characters being happy after having those forced on them is morally wrong, for both the writer and readers.
Being forced to break up with your lover to become the spouse and mate of some stranger without being given a chance to say no is a tragedy, and should be treated as such by both the author and the audience.
Even if we treated as a tragedy, that doesnt means her life is a tragedy or that it sucks, they have a happy life regardless of past bs situations. Getting stuck in a tragic past wont let ppl enjoy a possible better future and guess what in this case they didnt got stuck in the past and, in the end, formed a happy family and now they have the experience required to help their daughter, make the best out of what you have isnt it?
you mean have the experience to make the same disgusting tragedy for their daughter on the VERY slim chance she will like the chosen dick??? lol
what I hope for is THEY give her the CHOICE and not force this tragedy that you think is sooo positive
Bruh youre blind, the experience they have is so that HER DAUGHTER SHE DOESNT GO THROUGH THE SAME YOU BLIND or what? They made the best out of their bs initial situation, thats it, end of the story. If you want to keep saying the Queen is unhappy and that her husband forces her to stay with him or sum delusional stuff then do it, that wont mean youre right
Sad to know this series is ending in just 2 chapters. I was hoping to see the queen and the dressmaker rekindling their love in some way, leaving it like that feels just too bittersweet, uuggh~