#eckartcest

INCEST: PART THREE / Death is the only Ending for a Villainess

For a year or so you feel happy and loved. You glow up under the care of your brother. Your body matures into that of a woman and will have shopkeepers staring at your boobs. More men fall for your looks and you catch the eyes of the boyfriends of the girls who had been bullying Penelope Eckart and flirt with them just to make their girlfriends mad. Sometimes you let them touch you. They are impressed by your skills and for once you feel like you have the edge over your rivals. You feel like a mature lady who makes the boys go wild. They prefer you because you are easy to have unlike their boring virginal girlfriends. It's a pity, they just don't prefer you enough to leave their betrothened for you, but it's okay. You have your brother. It's fine (it's not).

On a sunny afternoon after another quick connection before dinner you lean you head against his shoulder and ask him when he will marry you. He is silent as his eyes widen. Smiling you go for a peck on the lips and he pushes you away. He calls you crazy. Accuses you of wanting to ruin the family name after ruining him. You realize he's never planned to marry you. You were always meant to be his dirty little secret. The "other" mad woman living in his attic. You are Penelope Eckart and you are 15 years old almost 16 and whatever has kept you going for the past two years has been broken.

You steal wine bottles at age 16 and arrive drunk to the church service every sunday. You jump into bed with every man who wants you. The tailor who is getting a bit too touchy taking you measurements, the doctor who sticks more than a thermometer inside your mouth, the painter who wants you to take your clothes off for another secret extra session, the teacher who you send laughing home because your brother has already taught you everything there is to know. Once you kiss your second brother with tongue and he punches you in the face so hard your nose is broken and bleeding. He calls you a whore, you think you might be one.

You are 17 when you attempt your 7th suicide attempt and nobody cares. You feel like something bad is going to happen, you feel like it might have already happened but you don't know it yet. You are hurting everywhere, your body, your heart, your mind, your soul. Things break without you having touched them, you wake up screaming from the same bloodcurling nightmares you had since you were a child, now dreaming them in shorter intervals as you are an adult, you are sleepwalking and waking up in different beds each night, servants accuse you of stealing things you can't remember taking and harming yourself with sharp knives and needles. You think you are slowly going insane. You worry you might have your mother's illness and you are going to die young, confining your fears in your ex-lover, but your brother just accuses you of simulating to get attention. He's going to marry Gloria Kellen soon and you'll be all alone. (Weren't you always alone?)

It's your debutante ball. The day you are turning 18. You feel like you had been alive for centuries, you feel like you were just born. It's the day your dead sister returns to the world of the living and the day you die. She is welcomed by the Eckarts with open arms. She is loved like a daughter should be, like a sister should be. You realize finally what you have been robbed of and feel an anger in your chest rising, almost choking you. You want to kill her. You must kill her, because if she is not dying you will. (When was the last time you ever felt alive?)

currently reading her tale of Shim Cheong and her relationship to the mistress is roughly how I imagine how Ivonne/og Penelope would be. Ivonne picking up Penelope like an abandoned puppy and trying to turn the street urchin into a real lady, playing with her like a magnificent doll, dressing her up in her old dresses, drizzling her with perfume and teaching her how to curtsy and say please and thank you, how to sew and embroider, use the fork and not the hands, laugh not too loud, keep the head high but bow to everyone she meets and always turn the other cheek, in short: how to become an obedient daughter and read the wishes from men's lips. And Penny who had hopes her life could become easier on Ivonne's side, feels like the field mouse invited to the storage room of the city mouse, who found it was better to be free and starve than to hide and be quiet and live in constant fear of being killed. She recognizes that Ivonne has locked herself into her own tower with all the restrictions she put on herself and doesn't really feel happy or free.

I don't really ship Ivonne and Penny but I find this AU rather compelling. I always find it regretful when an isekai doesn't show two sides of a story and how the golden child might suffer from this perceived perfection and the high expectations placed on them. That comparing two daughters (or in this case a gender conforming and non-conforming woman) will harm both of them, even the one that is put on the pedestal. You can never truly live by acting according to the rules of a patriarchy, you can only barely survive and the only way out is not to beat the other woman but to remove yourself from the rotten system or destroy it alltogether.

The Lady's Love Project sounds like it could be one of those games that have a recommended route order and locked routes. I can imagine that Reynold's route is availible from the start wheras Vinter's route is among the most spoiler heavy and only unlocks after the player has completed at least two or three other routes. His route is probably among the "easiest". The deaths that were directly caused by Reynold were mostly accidents or crimes committed under the influence of emotion. I think the player would have to focus more on accident preventation than in other routes (like when Cha Siyeo threw away the fork and removed anything sharp with which she could be killed). The route could include minigames where the player might have to look out for and remove a trigger which sets off intricate chains of events resembling Rube Goldberg machines that lead to a creative and gruesome death of the player.

Another important way to survive Reynold's route is to learn what moves him and the key to that might be found in the past. I think Derrick and Reynold's routes would implent liberally flashbacks in form of dreams or nightmares. At a touch of an object of the past (like the locket) Penelope would be send back to a memory of the past. Reynold's route would be about untangling misunderstandings, finding forgiveness and overcoming grief. It would be a coming of age story centered around Penelope and Reynold as they navigate their family conflict, awkwardly attempt to learn how to be good siblings until they realize they want something more and experience the shock of their first love together. As the route progresses the player must succeed to incite a positive change in Reynold and drastically change his worldview or he will continue to struggle into adulthood. Reynold won't mature into a responsible adult if he keeps waiting for Ivonne in the past, instead of walking with Penelope towards the future.

I feel like the romance would be alot more toned down and the majority of the time would be spend on fixing their sibling relationship before the story suddenly picks up and turns romantic towards the end. Reynold's route would be one of those where players would complain that there was too much plot and too little romance or that the romance was rushed towards the end. I could imagine that in the bad/normal ending Penelope would take Reynolds advice and pretend to be a good substitute for Ivonne and she would be miserable but Reynold would pretend not to notice. There could be an ambiguous ending where the Duke was forced to dissolve Penelope's adoption, because the evidence for her "crimes" was too incriminating but not enought to sentence her to death and after a timeskip an epilogue would play out where an older Reynold with a flower bouquet would ring at the doorbell of her tailor shop. Rather than going down the path of a magician Penelope might hone her skills as a marksman in Reynold's route and convince him to let her train under his instructor. A civil war between Callisto and the Second Crown prince could break out or the Delman rebellion starts, Derrick is killed and Reynold becomes the new Eckart heir and Penelope has to support him in his new role as the new leader of the Eckart army. They would train and fight side by side together with sword and crossbow. They might die together in battle or commit double suicide in another bad ending.

The Villain

In Callisto's route, Penelope sides with him in the conflict against the Second Crown Prince, but remember the family had previously remained neutral and in another route they might actually side with the second prince. Derrick would lean towards the second crown prince, because he would believe he can be reasoned with unlike his insane brother. (Derrick would absolutely project his own sibling issues onto Callisto and his wish to destroy him might be enhanced by his wish to destroy Penelope.) I could actually see Reynold back up Callisto under certain circumstances. I headcanon the brothers as total opposites. Derrick: reactionary, Reynold: revolutionary. Derricks wants to follow into his father's footsteps, keep upholding old, dusted traditions and the status quo. Reynold could be made into an archetypical storm and stress hero. He is all youth and youth's desires, hope, passion, indignant strenght cry from within him for change and greater human freedom from despotism. The brothers are bound to clash in their own routes. I would take their differences and as Reynold and Penelope's relationship improves, Derrick and Reynold's would crumble.

Derrick would be against Reynold/Penelope and this is where the game would scatter hints that Derrick might have feelings for Penelope. Reynold's decision to pursue Penelope would cause a huge rift between the brothers. Derrick might cite the law and would threaten to withold Reynold's part of his inheritance should Reynold decide to move outside his jurisdiction to be legally wedded to Penelope in another dukedom, or worse remain a bachelor and live with Penelope as husband and wife who are married in their hearts only and sire numerous bastards. Should Penelope become a victim of another conspiracy, Reynold would struggle to collect enough evidence on his own to prove her innocence and would turn to his older brother for help. In a normal ending, he might agree to a deal where he will give up on Penelope if Derrick saves her from certain death and they will have to part ways as this would be the only way for the two not to succumb to their feelings. Penelope, unaware of this secret agreement, might believe Reynold has abandoned her when he agrees to finally marry the woman that his father had chosen for him.

If the player had made the mistake of raising both affection meters, Renyold's route might branch off into Derrick's route or lead to a bad ending where Derrick noncons Penelope. Reynold might be roped into the conspiracy and is the one who dies and Derrick blames Penelope for ruining both of their lives. Penelope might be saved last minute from execution and her punishment transformed to slavery or a home confinement for the rest of her life (or both). Can you imagine what this would do to Derrick? Being able to own Penelope?

The minor villains of Reynold's route would probably be servants, I think this time Penelope would listen to Reynold and kick out Emily and look for a maid together with Reynold who might give her one of his maids, which would bring them closer. Since Reynold is training alongside the knights, it would make sense if there was an episode where some ugly things they did to Penelope were revealed and they were bought to justice be Reynold. As for the main villain in Reynold's route, I don't think it'd be Derrick per se (maybe he'd be a misguided grey character?). He is a character who creates problems for the main couple, because he is jealous of Reynold obtaining the happy ending with Penelope he could never dare to imagine for himself, but I think the author would go for a sibling tragedy rather than making Derrick, who has already lost a sibling, desire to end the life of his last blood sibling. He would never want to kill Reynold, only if his hand was forced, like in times of war on opposing sides (and even then he would try everything to sway his mind and save him first). His warnings against Penelope might come from a genuine place of concern. He would believe that woman will be ruinous to his brother. Except for one bad ending or two he won't touch Penelope. He has his own route for that.