I hated this manhwa, despite it starting pretty good and promising. The first arc of around 16 chapters was too long-winded, despite being pretty heartwarming and good to read, especially while sipping coffee near a fireplace. But what follows next is even worse. This manhwa loves introducing interesting characters only to forget them soon after their arcs are finished, and demotes them to extras who only throw around the most generic phrases. Some characters just disappear from the story completely. On the other hand, many important events and plot points are mentioned too briefly. IMHO, magic and dragons are totally unnecessary here, as they onlyserve to draw out the plot and as plot devices and not establishing basics of the worldbuilding. Now that I think of it, the manhwa is too drawn out in general, and could've been shortened 2-3 times with such a plot.

The female lead, Larit Brumayer, is established as an estranged illegitimate daughter of count Brumayer who can stand up for herself, but throughout the entire manhwa, her role is narrowed down to being basically a damsel in distress and nothing more. You can make Ian the protagonist instead of her, and nothing would change. While the manhwa looks like a mix of "Father, I don't want to get married" and "I have no health", the female leads in both of them were far more proactive and actually moved the plot. It doesn't help that Larit is simply bleak and plain boring, her main character trait being measuring the prices of everything by how many potatoes she could buy if she sells this or that thing. Her half-sister Rose, despite being a despicable villainess who's been humiliating and torturing Larit all her life, is way more interesting and brighter as a character, and you almost wish she was the protagonist and not Larit.

The male lead, young duke Ian Reinhardt, is a violent arrogant prick full of testosterone, and is absolutely unlikable. It doesn't help that there is no person who could pose any threat to him. For a long time, I couldn't understand why the empress hated him and his guts, and was hell bent on getting him killed, going as far as framing him and sacking the dukedom. I mean, Ian was friends with Oscar the crown prince, and never committed high treason. Then I re-read the first 30 chapters, and it turned out she feared the dukedom as a political force and Ian in particular, seeing them as a threat to the royal power and authority. And you know what? The empress was absolutely right. Ian is too cocky and toxic, doesn't respect anyone outside ot the dukedom, loves throwing around his weight and death threats. We are explicitly told he would sack and execute any aristocrats who even slightly wronged him, and not just them, but their entire families in three generations. And he does all of that without the knowledge or consent of the royal family, only makes them face the consequences of said actions post-factum. Like in the Brumayers' case.

While presented as some smart guy who can read between the lines and figures out the relationship between Ian and Larit and even ships them, Oscar is still an idiot who would do literally anything in the name of his "friendship" with Ian, which is as toxic and one-sided as it could be. Because at the end of the day, Ian doesn't respect Oscar at all, and only tolerates him because of latter's compliance and to keep up appearances before the nobility. It won't take long before Ian and his and Larit's descendants will lay claim to the throne, considering that in the extras we are told that since the son of Ian and Larit has yellow eyes like Ian himself, it proves that he has imperial blood. And it's explicitly hinted that they should participate in the future struggle for the throne.

People actually fear duke Reinhardt more than they do Oscar or his mother. In fact, near the end of the main story, Ian becomes condescending towards Oscar so much that I loathed him. He made it look like he made Oscar a favor by allowing him to handle the punishment of a couple of corrupt aristocrats (and on public, mind you!). As if it's Ian who's actually running things in the empire and not the crown prince (an emperor even by that point). And as a matter of fact, he does. We get to see than even the nobles were baffled by what they witnessed. While at one point Oscar is shown to be bleating to Ian, like, "Hey, Ian, don't you go overboard. Don't forget, I'm still the emperor here!". Pathetic buffoon. Opportunist. Idiot. Loser. Bootlicker.

The evil empress is a complete incompetent moron who is even dumber than Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. She literally has just one henchman to do her bidding, is too impulsive and never thinks things through. She slowly poisons her husband who is already bedridden for no good reason. Oscar witnesses that, and it only cements his resolve to help out Ian. And why would she want the emperor dead in the first place? Who knows. I can only assume that maybe he was as compliant to Ian as Oscar, but that's just a speculation. The empress tried to humiliate Larit in the palace only to fail miserably, and during the dragon attack ordered Berthold to kill Larit while standing right in from of her and countess Rieculla-whatever because... reasons? And yet, I still pity her. Mostly because I wish she succeeded in killing that edgelord of a duke as a threat to the royal family and the country's stability, which he is. And I believe she should be pitied even if only for the fact that Oscar ordered her to be executed in a few days immediately after the assassination attempt on Larit surfaced. He felt no remorse, no regret while sentencing his own mother to death, he never even hesitated. And what sucks even more is that plot-wise, this is passed as something not even worth paying much attention to. As if they executed some dog and not the empress. Did they even give her a proper funeral and burial, or did they bury her in some nameless pit at the edge of the royal palace's garden? I did say nameless for a reason because, as it turns out, the empress and the emperor literally have no names in both the light novel and the manhwa.

Some of the ducal knights were disrespectful towards Larit (because she is an illegitimate child) and refused to pledge allegiance to her in the absence of Ian because... reasons? A very stupid move and arc in general. Ian's nanny, chef, the butler and the staff of the residence punish the knights by denying them food, and it's played for laughts. LOL, the knights can just go home or to the town to buy some food unless they are locked up in the residence. And seriously, what were they planning to achieve? Especially considering how ruthless and unforgiving Ian is?

Larit's mother who abandoned her to the Brumayers hardly mattered to the plot originally, but later the manhwa goes out of its way to justify and white-wash her, even going as far as making her (also the red dragon f*cker) the ultimate plot device that saves Larit from certain death in the end. Then again, the whole thing with dragons and Larit's fatal disease was absolutely unnecessary and is only there because the Brumayers and the empress's plots got dealt with too soon and anticlimactically.

All in all, this is a very bad work. Don't waste your time reading it.