On The Emperor's Lap
Controversy Alert!
This is torture porn. It's just miserable pointless tragedy after miserable pointless tragedy. FL was suffering her entire life because the boy she fell for decided to fuck her over and destroy her life. He rapes her several times before finding out who she is and then spends the next 85 chapters crying about it. And she just fucking forgives him. Because he's the ML. Pathetic.
All Reviews Contain Spoilers
Review: I cannot emphasize enough how hideous this art style is. I did not, for even one single second, connect with any of these characters. Reading this for the first time felt exactly the same as when I would be in a depression spiral so deep I'd find myself browsing watchpeopledie videos. Even just skimming this title again to make a more detailed review felt like self-harm. I am not exaggerating.
Bella kisses Kiris one time and immediately he sells her to a noble to get beaten for sport to the point that her tongue was removed. Then she was used as a fight pit slave, then a regular slave, then a fake noble, and finally brought back to Kiris after a lifetime of--again-- miserable, pointless suffering. She fell in love with the boy who saved her life, and he repayed her by forcing her into a life of endless despair. And he's the ML.
The second ML, Eden, isn't even the type where I can say "ahh, this man is a better ML! our FL deserves a man like this!" because quite frankly, he's boring. He's got the whole opposite color scheme thing going on and that's pretty much the only thing notable about him. His only personality trait is "I want her." I do love a devoted man but there has to be literally anything else about him. This one-dimensional twink has got nothing, unfortunately.
Thankfully, there is one single twinkling light of redemption in this gods forsaken comic, and that is this snail:
This thing is, for some unfair reason, the only goddamn snail I've seen in a webtoon that is 1) an actual snail and not just a cartoon, and 2) treated like the sweet little angel they are, instead of just a pest or a creepy crawly. God I fucking adore snails.
All Kiris does for the first like 20 some-odd chapters is get drunk, cry about how much he misses the child he sold for a castle, and rape Bella, whome he believes to be an uppity stranger. He even has the NERVE to say "I did it because I liked you!" when he finally realizes who she is. Because of course the thing to do after realizing you have feelings for them is sell them to an abusive psychopath. Obviously. The he cries and cries for basically the rest of the comic. Seriously all he does is bitch and moan and weep about how sorry he is. Then he blames his subordinate (who recognized her immediately) saying "why did you make me commit unforgivable sins!" As if Krim is the one who personally waved his dick around and made him rape her.
Then half way through the story Bella gets murdered, makes a deal with the devil, and possesses someone else's body. She says to herself that she'd forgive Kiris if he recognized her in this new body. And of course he does. Of course he fucking does. And thanks to the devil 'eating the pains of her past' she doesn't even give a shit about how deeply mistreated she was by him. And then in order to get her original body back she lets the devil eat her love for him as well.
She loved him so deeply and completely that she was willing to give up her pain and her love in order to make him happy. The man who sold her, didn't recognize her, raped her, then smothered her until she died.
This title fucking blows
Where I'm Reading: bato.to
