I Became the Abandoned Prince Whom the Saintess Is Obsessed With

rob z says:

As a pure love fan, I wanted to like this more than I did. It is not poison, and was kind of OK, but frustrating at times and I could see people easily disliking it.

Basic premise: MC is a possessor, and takes over a half-elf prince (Eos) in a medieval fantasy world (Eos’s mother was an elven princess who fell in love with and was married to the Emperor). Eos has a horrible reputation, and is known as a murderer and a wastrel. Unbeknownst to the public, it is not his fault. Rather, his evil stepmother had been poisoning Eos’s alcohol (before MC took possession) with a poison that makes him angry and violent, and also blocks his ability to use his elven magic, all so that Eos’s reputation would go down and her son (wicked stepbrother) could become Emperor. Stepmother also set up an incident where it seemed like Eos killed a bunch of people, in such a stupid way that it beggars belief no one could see through the plot, but of course Eos is blamed for it by everyone in the empire. Oh, and the stepmother is also poisoning the emperor as well, who despite supposedly being some great and cunning warrior, comes across as a dumb@ss. And of course stepmother poisoned and killed MC’s mom (the elven empress), but the emperor is too stupid to figure it out. (You would think with all this poisoning, somebody would have figured something out, but nope)

So stepmother’s plan is working when MC possesses Eos. And for whatever reason, the stepmother Empress is so powerful and entrenched apparently even the Emperor can’t stop her. So MC gets himself off the poison, and trains to regain his magic (elven spirit magic) – all the while trying to hide how he’s off the sauce from the Empress, which of course leads him to pretend to still be a violent wastrel. Eos also believes he has to hide the truth from the Emperor, because if he told ho the truth, the Emperor would try to stop the Empress, and MC thinks Emperor will get his @ss handed to him.

Eos also knows he will need magic healing, so he sets it up where he saves the girl who will become the Saintess, who has massive divine healing power (she is the romantic interest). (In a paralleism, the Saintess is the daughter of a maid and a noble, who is also abused by her stepsister). MC saves the Saintess from her evil stepsister, various adventures ensue, Saintess falls in love with MC, and they get engaged.

Much of the story is directed to Eos working behind the scenes to improve himself and his position so he can reclaim his right to be Emperor (otherwise the empress is going to kill him, which is what happened in the original story.) In so doing, he works to stop the Empress’s and his evil stepbrother’s various plots. Eventually, his relationship with his father and a couple of the nobles gets a little better.

However, what’s frustrating is the whole political plot – it’s just not believable or convincing. And there is a little too much of “hide my powers” because “reasons”, but there really isn’t a way to avoid it given how the author set this up. So I would give it maybe a 6/10 just for the pure love aspect, but I could easily see folks thinking of this as more of a 4-5/10.