Gonna get hate for this

Don’t worry cause I was also feeling bad when I was reading the novel. He did so many annoying things but he was just a child groomed by his “parents” to be a ruler and shi

Oh well, most of us are way closer to Astana's behavior, I mean humans are mostly like him. I've read much worse characters that's considered a threat and Astana is cute compare to them.

i get it in some ways, but man, his core itself is rotten. whether its a matter of nature vs nurture, hes a bad person.
take bellesac and his siblings for example. they all have horrid angenas for parents, yet ballsack is the only one thats shitty. at what point does the blame lay mostly with him, instead of his mother?
i also have overbearing controlling parents, so i get it. but i dunno. i’m an adult, and a being separate from them, even if they refuse to see it. same as astana.

Not at all... I hate Tia's uncle and balls cousin more. He was raised well and turned trashy over his own dirtyness and his son is as trashy as him. He has no reason to bully Tia when kids but did it anyway. His Angenas mother wouldn't incentivate it.. she'd probably rather keep him away so she wouldn't be a "bad influence" on him.
Astana is really a victim of his parents situation so I can't excuse but can understand his situation. Another one I can't hate is the queen. Forced to marry into power by her family, cheated on by her husband, not being able to be head of her house when shes better than her brother, beautiful, intelligent and ambitious. She has the makings of a main character herself but was made into a cruel and vicious villainess for the sake of plot... she did many bad things but most of them because she is made to be this way.

To be fair, ballsack is the eldest son so he was given more attention by his parents, so he was also raised to be an asshole. Since he was the eldest son of the eldest son, he expected things to be handed to him, even if he didn’t do anything to better himself.

Meanwhile, Lorraine was probably taught that she would be married off to some rando so her parents can gain more power. She wasn’t taught the same way as ballsack.

Also, Crenny is only ballsack’s cousin, and he was the second son of the second son. He was also bullied by ballsack and the other guy I forgot the name of.(his older brother) Because of this, he doesn’t have the same entitled personality as ballsack and grew up with hardship as well. He didn’t take things for granted like ballsack. He was also young by the time Tia took him under her wing, so he was able to be guided in the right direction.

Ballsack would’ve been the only one to get the treatment of “you can get anything because of your position” unlike his sister and cousins. That’s why he became the way he was. He was spoiled and told he didn’t have to try and that the role as head of family would be handed to him just because he was a firstborn son.

A lot of the children antagonists in this story are basically told that since they’re the first born son, they’re bound to get power. When in reality, it’s the people who have the capability to lead that gain power, not based on the time you were born or your gender.

So, ballsack probably wasn’t inherently evil either. We just met him when he was too far gone to be corrected. Same with Astana.

mmm i see what youre saying. i guess its kinda a mixed bag then huh? its a lot of the gendered expectations + being firstborn + their own personalities getting all caught up in the mix. the story leans way more into the nurture side of the debate, evidently, but my outlook is more along the lines of nature + nurture combined, so to me it’s more that astana and ballsack are predisposed to this behavior anyway, and it got anplified with their positions. it’s difficult to separate who theyd be without all that influencing them, cuz there’s no alternative timeline that i know of.

i would love redemption for ballsack at some point, maybe even astana, seeing as theyre obstacles for the protagonists. like maybe years into the future, long removed from power struggles, they learn new things, let go of their pride, etcetc

i love that everyone just calls this guy ballsack. what an unfortunate name and man i forgot about crenny, i thought he was ballsacks sibling but youre right… this story is so long man

Yeah exactly!!! It sucks a lot to see someone ruin themselves for approval.

I'm not saying Astana is innocent. I'm just saying i feel bad for him. And relate to how he's behaving.

I doubt they'll ever get a redemption. The villains are made to be stepping stones for the main characters and their love. So getting a redemption will never happen.

In another webtoon I read, the villainess decided to change on work towards redemption and everyone was eating her up and hated it. (Valid cause she's a murderer honestly.)

Redemption arcs are based on how bad they were as a villain(also how hot they were tbh lol. Pretty privilege is a thing.) like, if they were a third rate villain or a villain with a good reason for being a villain, they can get a redemption arc. However, some crimes can be so heinous that a redemption arc is impossible. Also, if it’s a female mc story, usually the villainesses that get a redemption later in the series aren’t perceived well by the audience. It sucks but there’s like kind of a bias from the readers, especially when people view the mc as a self insert type of character. Sometimes the biggest critics of women are women ourselves which sucks ass cause women are amazing lol