The shit is done now.

Enoch is a handsome prince. The one true heir to the throne, but his father hates him so much. So, so much. He will never have power because of that hate.

Where did it all go wrong?

Empress Letina and Emperor Evan. Two shining examples of the greatness that holds the Splendor Empire together. Her blue eyes represent the great barrier, built by an ancient dragon who once loved a man. The Emperor's flaming red hair and gold eyes have been a symbol of power since the country came to be.

Surely, their handsome son is the target of only envy?

How could it go wrong?

It was so perfect.

Letina thought she was going to break the curse on her family. Once, a long time ago, a handsome human tricked a dragon. He stole her heart. A huge magic stone, all for power. He never loved her, even though she adored him and trusted him truly.

Revenge was sweet. The dragon lives on, watching it all.

The descendants of that beautiful man are doomed to chase love forever, and never have it. No amount of gold or beauty or power will ever get them their one true love. Even the original man, now a peerless mage, lived with only suffering when the woman he truly loved ignored him. He dreamed of her always. It broke his heart, and just like the dragon he betrayed it became a jewel. A weakness that could be taken from him and used. How fitting. After taking a heart he willingly gave up his for nothing. For someone who didn't even look his way.

Juliet is a victim of a different dragon.

Thats why she really has a chance.

She thinks she married a monster.

A possessive bastard.

When he dies she doesn't feel relieved though, and she gets a gift.

A necklace that cures her frail dragon curse disease.

It's literally his heart.

That was always his plan.

To sacrifice everything in order to give his dream woman the normal life she craved.

She's not bedridden anymore, but the guilt eats her up.

(sorry for any typos, I'm using a translator).

It’s okay, I’m not a native English speaker myself, I understand how hard it could be to talk a foreign language!

1. At what age did Fuyumi start caring for her younger brothers? I believe there was a nanny before, but Fuyumi doesn't mention her. What did she do with the children and the household? Did Fuyumi help Natsu with his studies and send him to school, but she stayed home herself, presumably to be with Shoto? Did she cook his favorite dish, soba? Did she provide them with emotional or other support?

Well, technically Fuyumi AND TOUYA were probably involved in taking care of Natsuo just after his birth, though it was likely a gradual thing and they weren’t immediately fully entrusted Natsuo but just helped Rei taking care of him.

We know from School Briefs for example that, after Shouto’s birth, Rei, who previously would bathe with Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo, stopped doing so to bathe with Shouto, leaving her other three children to bathe alone, meaning Touya and Fuyumi were helping Natsuo, who was 3, to take his own bath.

Entrusting the older siblings with taking care of the younger siblings, where possible, is pretty common in Japan (and not only there).

In Vol 10 there is a small story about Asui’s family and we see since her parents travelled a lot she was left in charge of taking care of her younger siblings, even cooking for them when she was 13 and who knows if she had started doing so earlier than that.

Long story short, in Japan it wouldn’t be seen as a big deal but a normal responsibility that would fall on the oldest siblings.

We don’t know if there ever was a nanny in the Todoroki house. Japan normally do not use nannies, Chap 302 says Enji hired help after Shouto’s birth but insisted for Rei to look after Touya so said help might have been just for housework (In chap 2459 is said they used to have someone to cook for them), or for looking after Shouto, and not after Natsuo, though School Briefs insists it was Rei that looked after Shouto, with the result she had no time for her other kids.

We see an old woman watching as Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo play but I doubt it’s a nanny as in Japan Touya and Co are old enough to play on their own in the garden of their house without supervision while their parents are there. After all Midoriya and Bakugou, at 4 could go alone to play in a playground that was near their house and we see that Tomura does the same as 5. Really, Japan is pretty lax about children’s supervision, they didn’t need to have a nanny in that moment.

It is also worth to mention there is no nanny that is held accountable for supervising over Touya and his trips at Sekoto Peak, Enji blames just Rei so even more it is unlikely there was someone looking after the kids.

The result is the old woman might have been their grandmother or a servant passing by. We’ll never know.

Touya, Fuyumi and Natsuo likely all went to school together, with Touya and Fuyumi checking over Natsuo and helping him with homework if Rei wasn’t available, though kids are often pushed to handle their homework alone so it’s not like his siblings HAD TO supervise him, they more likely offered help. After Touya’s death I guess all this was done by Fuyumi only.

Fuyumi went on with her studies so she didn’t remain home to supervise Shouto either, and when she stopped studying she started working as a teacher so no, she didn’t have to look after him the way a mother would.

In theory Shouto should have gone to their own same school once he was 6 so Fuyumi and Natsuo should have gone to school with him but since Natsuo apparently had zero interactions with SHouto growing up… who knows. It is more likely a plot hole.

(And no, Enji’s driver wasn’t their home’s driver, Kurumada worked for Enji the Hero not for the Todoroki the family so he likely didn’t carry his kids at school and we have no mention of other drivers. The kids should have gone to school by foot like the rest of the kids of their age.)

We know for a long while the Todoroki had a servant who cooked for them, then she retired and  Fuyumi AND NATSUO started taking turns to cook food. Apparently they never ate with Shouto as Natsuo has no idea if Shouto even ate what he cooked (it really doesn’t make sense as if that wasn’t the case who was cooking for Shouto? Enji? And didn’t Natsuo realized if the food was being tossed away or not?).

From School Briefs we know Fuyumi cooked Soba for the new year, as that is a traditional dish to celebrate it. She probably cooked it in other circumstances as well.

We also know Fuyumi supported Natsuo and became a teacher because she was ashamed she couldn’t help Shouto.

We don’t know how her interaction with Shouto was but, if you ask me, from the little we see it seems she wanted to be supportive and look after him… but Shouto seemed to keep distant in the early chapters and he calls her nee-san instead than nee-chan like Natsuo does, nee-san being a more polite way to say sister that might imply he is not as close to her as Natsuo.

2. How close is Fuyumi to Shoto? The communication ban was lifted after Toya's loss, so does that mean Fuyumi was raising Shoto? Was she like a mother to him? How does Shoto feel about Fuyumi?

We have no idea if the communication ban was ever lifted or if it was formally lifted in the first place but also, after Rei is hospitalized there is no one to supervise them and maintain the ban since Enji works till late most of the days, so it is possible the ban simply went forgotten and they could have talked if they wanted to. It was just that Natsuo was so grief stricken it never dawned on him he could talk with Shouto.

The relationship between the Shouto and Fuyumi is mostly left unexplored and is riddled with plot holes but Shouto doesn’t seem to see Fuyumi as a replacement for his mother. He doesn’t even seem particularly close to her.

We also know Fuyumi took care of Natsuo WHO DIDN’T INTERACT WITH SHOUTO, so Fuyumi couldn’t really split and be there for both. She likely focused on Natsuo because she was used to do so and Natsuo likely asked for her and tried to look after Shouto too who might not have been open to it due to the trauma of losing his mother because she had protected him.

This is speculation though. The truth is we don’t know.

3. Did Fuyumi visit Rei in the hospital before Shoto started visiting his mother in Season 2? What is Rei's relationship with her daughter?

Yes, she did. According to chap 250 apparently Rei only had problems seeing Shouto post Touya’s death (again this is the result of a retcon and things got messed up futher).

Fuyumi and Rei seem to have a good relation. We see them interact in School Briefs too and it is clear Fuyumi is taking care of her mother and supporting her and so she had been doing for years. We don’t know when exactly it started though as in the beginning it could have been done by Rei’s mother or by a servant. Still the two get along well.

4. I'm very interested in Toya and Fuyumi's relationship. Toya called Fuyumi useless as a child and didn't share secrets with her like he did with Natsu. But Toya agreed to play with Fuyumi, didn't attack her like brothers in the future, and continued to call her by the close suffix "chan" and didn't speak ill of her. Does Toya love his sister? How close are they?

We need to look at the contest.

Touya called ALL OF THEM ‘failures’ because that’s how he believed his father saw them.

He also said his mother and sister are no good BECAUSE THEY DO NOT UNDERSTAND him. We know Fuyumi sided with her parents, she didn’t want Touya to train because he would get hurt and she was worried for him, and she also didn’t want people to argue in the family so she meekly obeyed to what she was told and pretended everything was all right because she was too scared to act (with good reasons considering how Enji used to beat Rei because she acted).

We see though that she invites Touya to play and worries when he falls and he agrees to play and calls her Fuyumi-chan which is an affectionate way to call her, so it is not that they had a bad relation all the time, it was just Fuyumi couldn’t offer Touya the support he needed… and back. They were just kids after all and that was too big for them. We can’t compare them to adults.

5. Fuyumi is often accused by fans of forcing Natsu and Shoto to reconcile with their father, calling it manipulation and disregard for their feelings. Were Fuyumi's attempts to reconcile her brothers with their father selfish and manipulative? Did she truly neglect her brothers for the sake of a family reconciliation? How was this portrayed in the original? I'd like to explore this further.

Fuyumi is not FORCING anyone. She has a right to say she wants the family to reconcile, she has a right to invite them to family dinner with their father. They have a right to refuse.

The way Natsuo has the right to express his feelings on how he doesn’t want to reconcile, Fuyumi has the right to express her own. They are family and they are siblings, she doesn’t have to keep her feelings secrets same as he doesn’t have to. They have to be honest with each other.

Of course their own problem is that their respective wishes are conflicting and this makes things complicate because Natsuo is so traumatized he is not ready yet to meet her midway.

Still Fuyumi creating chances for reconciliations is not wrong per se if she leaves Natsuo the freedom to reject them.

In School Briefs we see that she warns Natsuo Enji will come back home and Natsuo decides he’ll leave before he’ll be home and she doesn’t stop him. In Japanese culture a reconciliation is something the family SHOULD DO and it is viewed as a good thing for all the members. Japan is big on reconciliation and group harmony.

To give you an idea Bakugou is not part of Midoriya’s family yet because they know each other from childhood he and Midoriya are expected to be friends by society.

As for Shouto, Shouto started seeing Enji after his match with Midoriya and decided to give Enji a chance after the latter decided to atone. Fuyumi didn’t force him to do it all, it was Shouto’s decision and saying it was Fuyumi who forced/manipulated him brings away Shouto’s agency in the matter.

I forgot to ask in the previous message. Was it a bad thing for Fuyumi to give Shoto's phone number to their father without his permission? I constantly see this moment presented as an example of Fuyumi's disregard for Shoto. But maybe she gave his number out of mentality or circumstances? I'd like to know if Fuyumi should really be blamed for this and said to have done something bad? Or is there something else that fans are missing? I love Fuyumi and I'd like to know she's innocent, but if she is guilty, I'd also like to understand that.

It really depends on your culture. In mine a minor cannot independently purchase or register a telephone contract or SIM card. However, they can own and use a telephone if their parents are aware of it and allow it. Basically no minor as a right to have a phone and keep for himself his telephone number. To me it seems ridicule that Enji had to ask because Shouto is a minor and he is just not allowed to that kind of privacy as it is a parent’s duty to check on a minor’s phone and Fuyumi couldn’t buy a phone for him and give it to him without Shouto’s father’s approbation.

But other cultures might feel differently.

For example in Japan Shouto can do all of the above… with Enji’s money as Shouto doesn’t work and has no money of his own. Or yeah, I guess Fuyumi could buy one for him without asking for Enji’s permission. However in Japan parents can—and are strongly urged to—control and monitor their children's mobile devices (they even have a law about it, the Act on Development of an Environment for Safe and Secure Internet Use for Youth).

So the scene more than of Fuyumi violating Shouto’s privacy speaks of Enji’s failure in parenting as he wasn’t controlling Shouto’s mobile device. Fuyumi is not violating Shouto’s privacy in this setting, she is helping Enji to act like a father.

On the whole the scene in chap 203 is meant to be humorous, Enji is making a big deal of gaining something he should have had from the start, and then he proceed to stress Shouto by sending him plenty of messages because Horikoshi is trying to paint him as an helicopter parent instead than an abusive parent.

As I said before though, if in a country a boy of Shouto’s age can have a phone and doesn’t have to have parental control in using it, it might feel like a violation of his privacy. He gave his phone number to Fuyumi and, if Fuyumi didn’t ask Shouto first, the fact she gave Enji his number would be a violation of Shouto’s trust. Since Shouto isn’t surprised to receive messages from Enji I think Fuyumi told/asked him beforehand and then passed the number to Enji, mediating between the two.

The truth though is that we don’t really know how things went, just that Enji had that number thanks to Fuyumi’s help.

Said all this… there are mostly my interpretations. Horikoshi doesn’t really devote much time on the relationships between the Todoroki siblings so we have no canon answers and people is free to disagree with me and come up with their own interpretation.