Author: Goyo
Illustrator: Joosang
Publishers: Bomtoon, Kedari Studio
2021
Het-Smut
Completed Series
Unable to endure the greedy and unscrupulous people from his wife’s family, Duke Arthur Kaplan demands a divorce from his wife, Roxanne. Knowing fully well that as soon as she gets divorced her family will sell her out to another man, the Duchess makes a bold proposal.
She asks permission to have an affair with another man before the divorce, so she can finally enjoy a short period of freedom and know what it’s like to be cherished by someone.
Roxanne then meets a kind gentleman with a mask that seems to fulfill all of her desires, yet feels strangely familiar.
World Building
Main Character 1: Roxanne, the Duchess
Main Character 2: Arthur Percy, the Archduke
Setting (s): The world of nobility. European in feeling, with Victorian style gowns and men in formal attire.
Overarching Themes: communication skills development,
Review
Well developed main character: 7/10 – Roxanne goes outside of her prescribed roll in society and starts making demands about her needs within the limits of what is expected from her. She develops into herself as she experiences more levels of freedom and time to form courage where there was no room for it before.
Well developed main character 2: 7/10 He’s an insufferable jerk that only starts developing after he starts figuring out that he might actually have feelings for his wife, but it is a massive amount of jealousy. I wish he would have just talked to her.
Sufficient Setting: 8/10 – the story does not heavily depend on knowing where the story takes place. the fact it happens in an area of nobility, particularly in palaces and a Victorian-esque town is sufficient to give it an air of luxury. If there was much more in the way of character development though, the spicy smut aspect would move from priority to a shared or secondary theme.
Well developed overarching themes: 6/10 It’s a pretty tried and true theme of “if you love them, set them free” but when that love finally develops you get extremely jealous and attached. it’s not a great look and Arthur acts like a selfish, spoiled brat for a long time as he starts naming his feelings.
Spice Level: 9/10 – blurred genitals
Does the provided summary match the story? The ‘strangely familiar’ doesn’t match up. She doesn’t place Arthur as familiar for quite a few chapters into the series because she’s a bit overtaken with hopelessness at knowing that when the divorce is finalized, her dad’s just going to sell her off to the next guy and she’s pretty depressed about that option for good reason. So, she can’t really see beyond her trists to look at the man for familiarity until half way through the series.
Impressions
First chapter enters onto the main male character in the present receiving an envelope of his wife’s underwear and proceeds to jerk off while smelling them. If that’s not a kink of yours, that’s a heads up. It takes several more chapters to fully realize that he was receiving the envelop as the escort and not the husband.
Chapter 2 develops the position Roxanne found herself in when Arthur went to her for a divorce because her father and brothers are jerks and he doesn’t want to be associated with them anymore. She has no funds to keep her staff and must go along with signing the document so as to feed the last servant who stayed on with her. Setting is backed up from the first chapter.
Chapter 3 Works up the antagonism between the Duchess and the Archduke – really outlining how shallow the man is and how forlorn the woman is in this relationship. She does get a payment out of the deal and money for her servant.
After this point, she heads off to a male brothel, get’s the madam to hook her up, and quite obviously Arthur shows up in a mask. She starts making demands of exactly how she wants to be treated and dang it all, I’m not sure how she goes about this entire hentai scene after multiple days of not eating.
Arthur starts waking up to what he missed out on by way of not ever even making an effort to get to know his wife. I’m trying to place my finger on which trope this is, but honestly, it has everything to do with ‘talk to each other’. Arthur could have gotten to know his wife at the beginning of the marriage and figured out what her position vs. her father’s position was and maybe taken a stand against the father. But, as seems to be the way the story is told, women aren’t really viewed as companions because of their monetary and status value. That can deeply impact how some societies do function and how relationships can end up in those types of societies. It feels contrived – and most hentai stories are, because at the end of the day, the story isn’t really why we’re all here, now is it?
Spicy scenes don’t happen in every chapter, but some form of innuendo or intonation is found in most chapters often.
I give it a 7/10. The first chapter was a bit of a turn off for me and I made an effort to push through from that. Afterwards, it really was just the fact that these two probably wouldn’t have had to reach the point of the duchess having a legitimate affair if the archduke had just made half an effort at a conversation. The art’s decent enough, though the faces go weird sometimes.
There are instances where the topic turns somewhat dark. I can’t quite approve of Roxanne’s methods in chapter 38, but then again, neither can I of Arthur’s in several earlier chapters. One of those things where it feels fair in regard to retribution, but neither his nor her actions needs to have happened in the first place if both of them had just talked to each other.
Who I would suggest it to: Relatively baseline het-romance looking for spicy.
