yeah but i think there's more to it. i haven't read spoilers so i don't know what exactly is the shadow that speaks to yuri about following the plot, or just how many times she must've gone through the typical cycle of the story to have given up so much at that point, but it must've been too many to count. it's like being put in a groundhog day situation, where you just relive the same day over and over, except it's probably her whole life or a large section of it, over and over and she had resigned herself to being hopeless and with terrible men surrounding her for eternity on loop. melissa until our mc comes in, is a terrible person to yuri so some changes in this one storyline would still make it hard to change her perspective on what must have been dozens of occurrences of melissa being a terrible person to yuri.
I don't know about that theory, but looking at the chapter I'm on, I'm wondering if Yuri didn't actually have a choice. She seemed to acknowledge what she had done to Melissa in canon was pretty shitty.
Melissa didn't have to earn her favor for her to do that, if you go back to the earlier chapter you'll see that the very first time that the Prince started flirting with with Yuri, her reaction was "What the f is the clown doing". She has always hated his advances, but he's also the crown prince of the kingdom so she could only be but so dismissive of him outwardly. Given the fact that she and her family couldn't even afford to be rude to a wealthy merchant like Peacock Melody, how rude do you think she could get away with being to the future ruler of their kingdom?
Also it's true that Yuri didn't have a choice. She's been reliving the story over and over again and hates all the MLs, but no matter how much she struggles against the story, she can never change anything and things always happen the same. That's why she has such dead eyes thinking about it, because at this point she's gone through it so many times that she's given up all hope. Except this time, because of our Melissa, things are different.
Yeah, I saw that. She had that reaction AFTER Melissa earned her favor. There was no indication that was the first time around. In fact, since she’s relived this story, I wouldn’t be surprised if she willingly did it the first time around.
It did NOT happen after. Melissa "earned her favor" as you put it and became friends with Yuri after rescuing Yuri from the bandits and then fighting with Peacock. Their ONLY interaction before that was when Melissa (and Ian) ran into her in the garden at the ball where they spoke literally one line to each other. Yuri thinking about what a clown the Prince is shown in flash back in Chapter 27, which is the chapter right after Melissa saves Yuri.
Yes. By "after" I mean not the original time of Yuri's however-many groundhog days. Earning her favor I meant being nice to her. Calling her beautiful. THEN Yuri rejected him, because Melissa was nice to her.
I know I'm not supposed to think so deeply about it, but I dislike that Melissa had to earn Yuri's favor for Yuri to tell the prince, "Hey, you're with someone, so don't flirt with me. That's messed up."