#anne littstein

(Light Novel/Potential Web Novel Spoiler Warning here)

This had been on the back burner for some time while I was reading through the chapters, but the more I went into the story, the more I saw characters express their longings and laments of regret as "prayers," especially when it came to them in the Guillotine Timeline. And with these prayers, they tend to be answered in the current timeline Mia is making as she (somewhat unwillingly) sets on to becoming the future Empress.

A somewhat isolated case of what I want to talk about can be seen from the side chapter in Volume 4 involving the Perujin princess Arshia.

Arshia, who had seen the horrors of famine, had once prayed to find a way to solve the issue, but over time had thought it was left unanswered, and sought to solve the matter through her hard work and research. Mia wanted to seek her to be an educator for the new academy she was setting up because of her knowledge of botany, but due to past mistreatment and discrimination from other Tearmoon nobles, she refused the offer. In a dinner Mia set up that was meant to make those nobles apologize to her (which failed), was only after meeting the future students of the academy and overthinking Mia's intentions that Arshia's prayer started to come back to her. Through accepting the teaching position, she became a key figure in creating the cold-resistant wheat alongside Cyril Rudolvon.

Additionally, in the web novel site where Tearmoon's story originally is published, the author reveals in a sidenote that he based this chapter on a missionary telling him the parable of the drowning man:

Now, going back to the bigger plot of Tearmoon, by Volume 12, we're starting to get confirmation that Mia being sent back in time (and by extension Miabel and Patricia going to her point in time) is because God/the Holy Deity (as how He's written within the story) willed it to happen. So how does that tie in to "unanswered" prayers?

First, we get Anne's prayer in Volume 1 as Mia is about to be executed:

(WEB NOVEL SPOILERS: In a chapter still unreached by the light novel publication, Mia looks back to this moment, and even thinks that Anne's prayer of protection was where her turn-back in time had started.)

In Volume 4, we see Ludwig beginning to see the "dreams" of the Guillotine Timeline and his prayer for Mia back then:

It should be noted that from Ludwig developing the theory of Miabel's time travel in Volume 12, he has now gotten a better picture on the situation, and may have recalled his prayer from back then.

In Volume 9, we get a look of Mia's prayer of redemption from the Guillotine Timeline as she deliberates her decision on Echard's punlshment:

HmmmMMMmmmmm...