nectar, so sweet

I think one of the hugest and most devastating misconceptions about the cruel Prince is that it's a bully romance. I've seen people say they stopped reading when they found out that the love interest bullies the mc, which is fair, if it were a bully romance. The thing is, it's not a bully romance, because Cardan didn't bully Jude because he was in love with her, but because he was jealous of her. Attraction was part of it, but its mentioned on several occasions that Cardan was extremely jealous of the life Jude had. And why wouldn't he be? The point was that Cardan, a prince, was supposed to be treated better, but instead he was a neglected baby and a beaten child, while Jude, a mortal, was supposed to be treated as inferior and not have any nice things, and Madoc treated her like his own child and gave her everything that all the other children had. Jude was not the classic disadvantaged fmc, and she did not claw her way up from the bottom, she was in fact very privelaged and had a great amount of status growing up, which protected her in a way Cardan's status had not.

jude never fell in love with cardan when he was actively bullying her either. she HATED it. there was no romanticization of bullying whatsoever. she only started to like him when they went to talk to the rulers of the low courts after their power dynamic already shifted. but even when cardan was essentially her puppet on strings, she was still scared of him because she experienced first hand how awful he can be. when cardan proposed they get married she realized that maybe she wouldn’t have to be scared to love him because if she’s queen then they’ll finally be equals. point is, the power imbalances that bred the bullying and control was a major obstacle in their story.