#rr-axe

Firstly, there's FL, who was sent on a political marriage and was tortured for years. By a miracle, she manages to escape and is rescued by a general. The two agree to work together for her revenge and for his ambition. She starts out vengeful, sadistic, and badass, boldly doing as she pleases with no regard for rules or tradition, but as the story progresses, we get to see that it's all a façade. Though she's still quite bold and protective, she's a lot weaker than they initially set up. Not only is she at the villain's mercy constantly, but she's not even that good of a schemer. Though the worst offender is definitely the fact that, despite everything she endured, she genuinely holds no resentment towards anyone and is just a goody-two-shoes who pretends :) I also wasn't a fan of how they handled her trauma. I think she should've been a lot more angry and volatile, but she isn't. :/

Then there's ML. The epitome of righteous and selfless to the point it kinda circles back and becomes selfish again. He's so idealistic, he comes off more naïve than cunning. He's kind, upright, sensitive, and submissive. Even when FL's character falters, his remains mostly soft and malewife-coded. He feels immense guilt for what happened to FL, so he lets her hurt him at first and continues to do so even once he starts openly opposing her. He had such promise to be the perfect prince in peril, and the actor definitely delivers on this as much as he can, but he still can't escape the ML-heroism.

He's deadass crying in every. single. episode. and he looks beautiful.

Now onto their relationship...

Their dynamic is toxic and nasty in the first couple of episodes where FL kidnaps him, locks him up in her mansion, and tortures him a lot. It was giving a bit noncon femdom, but their dynamic is never sexual, so I struggle to use that term. Still, I'd say she's an intimate whumper, and their previous romantic entanglement makes their scenes more intimate and angsty in general. ML ends up being rescued from captivity a few eps in (unfortunately) and starts to actively go against FL's immoral actions. After this, their dynamic fades into egalitarian territory with some slight role reversed moments, like FL withholding information from ML to protect him, and him remaining submissive and docile towards her even after everything she did.

There isn't much else to their dynamic after this. He does end up saving her in the finale and that's where it kind of goes into traditional territory for a bit, but I'd say that in the end, they're egalitarian, mostly due to ML's character being so gentle and submissive by nature and her ultimately being the princess royal. I think they're maybe too similar to truly be traditional, haha.

I was really hoping for some true black-flag FL with maybe a generous load of "I-can-fix-her"ism for the ML, but I only got a bit of the latter.

Overall, the story ended up being more cliché than I was hoping. It's all around a solid watch and I do highly recommend the first couple of episodes for how they handled the role reversal, but after that, it's not really worth watching for the RR. I did still like it despite this, though.

A plus is definitely ML's distressed face and the fact that he spends the entire drama crying. God bless 🙏