I felt that way as well because i read a lot of mangas where witch was a protagonist and everyone Went after them. But you never know which story will say something about them, they could be deceiving monsters fr, and if they are concidered that way, why ruin the story just because of a arguable detail. If the autor want witches to be bad then they are
Now that you said it..
What if she is not purely a witch? Like, her mother is a real witch married to a noble.
So she born with a part of witch blood in her.
But her mother never tell her anything about witches.
But because the empire have long history of knowing that witches are monster that kill human... so, everyone there have been educated since young as such to the point they can't think that there are those good witches out there...
While, for those witches, they have same intelligent as human, and probably have a settlement somewhere, and probably been educated that humans are bad or must be killed...
So yeah.... it is racist....
Ah... I mean, black people are people, while monster do have different nature as they are monsters, like, non humans being with powers that can be an active danger.
As a meztiza with mostly native blood it makes me backwards how you want to compare so bad witches in that world with... ah, idk, black people, I would understand if there was a parallel, an allegory, but so far does not seem to be the case, so far is just a plot device.
I personally don't think it was a wise move from the author to portray the first appearance of the prince murdering someone begging for her life like that, at the very least it would be better if she ends up reveling to be bad, but the poor girl was begging and that's why I personally don't like it, but I really don't know the whole thing, as for example, how did he found out?
She has the same intelligence and appearance as a human not to mention she was completely capable of having feelings of fear, love and trust(since she trusted him, left the tree,yet he killed her).She didn't even know she was a witch, so even if portraying it as an Allegory to real racism of real people wasn't her intention, it still appeared that way, so yeah definitely a bad move. He killed someone innocent who was begging to live. It can't be changed, this made his character completely dislikable.
Personally for me what I understood from reading the manhwa was that the girl that got killed and was accused of being a witch and was manipulated by the queen inorder for the prince to lose another one of his fiance's because of this the queen made it look like the girl was a witch so that would give reason for the prince to kill her even if she is innocent. To me it's all just look like her being a witch was fabricated by the queen so the prince would just lose another fiance. And also it's not that deep of a story they're fictional character in a fictional story I don't think the prince is racist and I don't think he should have killed the innocent girl but in the end he needed to in order to survive the tree monster's that were protecting her
Doesn't change the fact he killed an innocent person, there were many ways to get out of it without killing her. Also he could easily escape the trees, in the first place, he was the one that threw her there, I'm pretty sure he was already prepared for something like that.Also he clearly said he solely did it because she was a witch, that's what's threatening his position, her 'witch blood'. There's no way i can like such a character lol His personality as a whole is dislikable, he even threatened to kill another innocent person(mc) and he would indeed if the mc wasn't strong to impress him. You can call him realistic sure, since he protects his position , but he's in no way a good person. It's my opinion, and i honestly dislike him. Also i know it's fiction, i never said otherwise, or is discussing a fictional character not allowed? (yes, fictional stories can be deep, this could be too)
Kind of like Lord of the Rings by death of the author pov, I get that, but even like that the systematic prejudice against witches does not come close to the one of real racism, they live in the forest, most seem dangerous (or at least that is thought so), some escape the forest and apparently live normal lives until someone can figure out of their true nature, and later are executed without a trial, race is not something (for most most most people) that can be hide, I don't really see it comparable to racism, maaaaaaaaaybe to sexuality or prosecution for religious beliefs, as it happened irl, but racism.... uh, I don't think so :/

so what if she was a witch? It's not like she did anything to him and she was genuinely afraid. I don't think i like the King, to me he seems like a racist fuck (Witches are considered a race right?). He killed an innocent person just because he's racist.He's nothing more than a dislikable murderer.