The Grand Duchess Looks at Me Like I'm Nothing
The Grand Duchess looks at people like they're beneath her.
The world has always had its share of people overflowing with an excess of competitive spirit. There are those who will stake their entire pride and dignity on the outcome of even the most ordinary, everyday game. I suspect there are quite a few of them around each and every one of us.
Just glance at the people nearby, and you'll find plenty who take a simple round of rock-paper-scissors or a Staring Contest absolutely seriously. You might even call it the defining trait of the famously passionate Korean spirit.
In that sense, Rebecca Valencia — one of the heroines of [The Crown Prince Wields a Sword.], the web novel I used to read — felt remarkably Korean to me. She was the sort of character whose eyes would blaze at the mere mention of a contest, and who could never, under any circumstances, accept defeat.
And yet the novel was supposedly a medieval-flavored fantasy aimed at male readers. So tell me — was it just my imagination, or was that the proud, familiar scent of Korea drifting off the page?
Anyway, this Grand Duchess, blessed with the extraordinary trait of boundless competitiveness, became a heroine in a rather peculiar way — through a trope that will be familiar to anyone who reads web novels regularly.
"You... you actually beat me?"
Deploying the classic "you're the first one who's ever done this to me," she chased after Mikhail, the novel's protagonist, trailing at his heels and demanding rematch after rematch. Mikhail, the crown prince and hero of the story, for his part, couldn't have cared less about Princess Rebecca.
And honestly? Up to that point, none of it mattered. It's common enough in male-oriented web novels for a few of the heroines to go unnoticed by the protagonist.
The problem came after. When Mikhail showed her little interest, the princess began clinging to him with a fixation that bordered on abnormal. Tormenting any of the other heroines who dared approach Mikhail became her baseline behavior, and whenever he tried to do anything at all, she'd sabotage it in the name of demanding a rematch. Layer her naturally unpleasant personality on top of that, and the result was predictable.
The readers, who had come to watch sweet scenes between the protagonist and his heroines, raged at Rebecca, the walking cancer cell of the story. Even the readers who had defended her at first gradually turned their backs, because every arc she touched curdled into pure sweet-potato frustration. In the end, unable to withstand the readers' white-hot fury, the author sealed her fate: framing Rebecca's family, the Valencia Ducal House, for treason. With that, the character known as Rebecca Valencia never appeared in [The Crown Prince Wields a Sword.] again.
And so, when Rebecca exited the novel, I too — a reader — declared in the comments section that I was dropping it.
"I guess this is where I get off."
My reason was simple. Rebecca Valencia, my favorite character, would never appear again, which meant there was no longer any reason to keep reading. While the other readers gnashed their teeth over how cancerous she was and hurled abuse at the author, I alone remained, writing comments in Rebecca's defense.
Unsurprisingly, this earned me a terror campaign of downvotes and personal attacks from readers who found the whole thing distasteful. Even so, I never gave up on Princess Rebecca. Because the princess, forever burning with competitive fire, reminded me of myself.
As should be obvious from everything I've built up so far, my own competitive streak was every bit as ferocious as the fictional Rebecca's. Playing soccer with friends, I had to win, no exceptions. Losing a game at the PC café with the guys would sour my mood so badly it infected everyone sitting next to me. That should give you some idea of just how seriously I took any contest.
So for all these reasons, Princess Rebecca Valencia of [The Crown Prince Wields a Sword.] had been my absolute favorite. When she stopped appearing, I decided there was no reason to keep reading, tapped the button to remove the work from my favorites without a second thought, and went to bed.
And the next day.
Naturally, I was transmigrated.
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was not the slightly worn ceiling of my own shabby apartment, but a ceiling that belonged to a house with serious money. Realizing the instant I woke up that I'd been transmigrated into another world, I heaved a sigh at this cold, cruel reality.
"...So you're really just going to transmigrate me. Just like that."
It was a cliché ripped straight from every possession story ever written. Still, never in a million years did I imagine I'd be the one living it.
Forcing my reluctant body upright, I surveyed my surroundings. What met my eyes was genuinely lavish furniture, and a room roughly three times the size of the one I'd slept in my whole life. And on the wall hung a single mirror.
Some instinct carried me to my feet and in front of that mirror. I stared into it — and promptly deflated.
"...Nothing's changed?"
The face reflected in the glass was identical to the one I'd seen every day of my life. Not a single difference.
"Did I actually get possessed or not?"
In these stories, even the guy who wakes up as a nameless extra usually ends up devastatingly handsome, or the girl breathtakingly beautiful. So why hadn't one single thing about me changed?
Ah. Well. There was one thing.
"...These look expensive."
The pajamas I was wearing looked like they cost a small fortune. Beyond that, truly, genuinely, nothing.
"..."
Creeeak—
I was still sulking in silence over this pitiful reality when I heard a door open.
"Albert, you're awake?"
A woman's voice came with it — gentle, warm, the kind of voice that radiates kindness — and it promptly called me Albert.
Albert. So that was my name here. I'd just finished thinking it sounded like something out of a dime-a-dozen romance fantasy when a sudden thought stopped me cold.
'...There's no one named Albert in anything I remember.'
No character bearing the name Albert had ever appeared in [The Crown Prince Wields a Sword.]
A flicker of confusion, yes — but the question resolved itself faster than expected. Waking up inside an unnamed extra from the novel is another beloved cliché of the possession genre, after all. I figured I'd simply stumbled into that particular trope myself.
While I stood there lost in thought, the owner of that gentle voice appeared in the doorway.
"Albert Zernias. Are you ready to— good heavens, are you still not dressed?"
Under the gentle-but-firm gaze of the woman who was, presumably, my mother in this world, my head nodded along entirely of its own accord. Resistance was futile.
"...I'll change right away."
"Good, hurry and get ready. Today is the day we go to see Princess Rebecca, remember?"
"...I'm sorry, what?"
Hold on. Did I hear that right? Princess Rebecca, you say?
At my baffled echo, the woman clutched her chest in exasperation and tried again.
"I told you clearly, did I not? That your mother would be taking you to meet your fiancée, Princess Rebecca, today?"
"..."
Um. So, according to my mother in this world...
'I'm... Rebecca's fiancé?'
That was the situation. I — the man now called Albert Zernias — was engaged to Rebecca Valencia.
"So hurry and get ready. We'll be leaving shortly."
Even at the note of irritation in my mother's voice, all I could do was nod along in a daze. My head was still spinning too hard for anything else.
'So they didn't just drop me into the story — they built a whole new backstory for me...'
In [The Crown Prince Wields a Sword.], Rebecca Valencia had never been engaged to anyone. And now I, carrying a name that had never once appeared in the original, held the role of her fiancé.
Was that a good thing, or a bad thing?
Becoming the fiancé of my favorite character was, on paper, something to celebrate. I'd become the betrothed of the heroine I'd loved most in the entire novel — what self-respecting fan could possibly complain? Rebecca had been repeatedly described as a great beauty within the story, too. On this front, there was genuinely nothing to dislike.
'The problem, though...'
The problem was that midway through the novel, Princess Rebecca would be framed for treason and her family would be utterly ruined. Consider the feelings of a fiancé who knows his betrothed is destined for ruin. Not exactly a pleasant way to start a marriage.
The one mercy was that I remembered all of it. Every detail of how the Valencia family would be framed for treason was sitting in my head, which meant all I had to do was cut the scheme off before it ever began. That, surely, would lead to an ending where everyone lived happily ever after.
Mikhail, the protagonist, would coo and cuddle with his other heroines, while I would never have to watch my beloved Rebecca spiral down the tragedy the original novel had written for her.
Really — what could be more perfect than that?
And this innocent little fantasy of mine lasted right up until I came face to face with Princess Rebecca, at which point it did not so much crumble as detonate.
"...Is there some reason you're staring at me like that? It's unsettling."
"..."
Given her famously vile temper, I'd braced myself for something along these lines. But as I met that contemptuous gaze — the look she might give something far beneath even an insect — I steeled my resolve.
'...Fine. It's war, then.'
Either I went down, or that foul-tempered Princess Rebecca went down. One of us was going to fall. Those were the only two outcomes left.
Whatever affection I'd once held for Rebecca as my favorite character? From this moment on, that was no longer my problem.