The Fated Magical Princess: Who Made Me a Princess

Episode 15

Is it worth being annoyed that The Fated Magical Princess chose to abandon the manhwa in its final few episodes? I'm still trying to decide. On the one hand, I'm a big fan of the source material (or at least the first adaptation of it; I've only just noticed that the novels are also available in English on Tapas' site and app, so I haven't read them yet), so I really wanted a faithful animated version. But even with sixteen episodes, there simply wasn't enough space to do that – especially not given the pacing of the earlier part, which stuck much closer to the comics. And if they're not going to be able to do the whole story, perhaps it's okay to manufacture a way to get to the important bits at the end?

I know many people (self included) may think about it and say, “Absolutely not!” It certainly doesn't help that the donghua-only portions of the past two episodes feel much more pat than the more book-faithful parts, which is interesting when you consider that the show went out of its way to take out the biggest trope of them all, the isekai component. But at the end of the day, the most important piece of the story is Athanasia's relationship with her father and his emotions about losing her mother, and that's what this episode is about. Harvest festivals and random magic trees in convenient locations notwithstanding, the plot's resolution needs to be about Athy and her dad, and that is what we're getting.

It's no surprise that Claude deliberately sealed away his own emotions after Diana's death. In the conversations Athy sees in his mind, he was clearly aware that giving birth could (and likely would) kill Diana, or at least gravely injure her. I'm hesitant to ascribe her hemorrhage to the baby having taken her magic (although it could be that she lost her ability to form a protective shield?), but even without the fantasy aspects, childbirth is dangerous. Claude, being terrified of his beloved wife's death and wanting to have her and not some random baby, feels very real, especially if he never wanted kids in the first place. Diana sees the child as a product of their love, but to Claude, the baby's just a risk to the woman he loves. So when the worst happens, it makes sense that he'd want to cut off all of his feelings. If he'd never fallen in love, he never would have known what it was to lose it.

And then, despite his best efforts, he felt love again – for his daughter, the very existence he resented. I think it's fair to say that in the moment when he sacrificed himself for Athy, he finally understood what Diana was talking about: he'd rather die knowing he saved his child than live feeling as if he'd failed her. The memory at his core, the one Lucas told Athy to find, may be of the moment he sealed his heart away, but that's because it's emblematic of both his loss and what he believed at the worst moment of his life. And since he clearly does love his daughter, it also represents the fact that he was just fooling himself – not even dark magic can close off a human heart completely, and the moment stands as both symbolic of his pain and of his hubris.

With one episode left, I suspect that we'll get back to the manhwa's ending; we're most of the way there, anyway. It does feel rushed, even discounting adaptational choices, but this version of the story has always been about Athy and Claude, with Diana's spirit hovering above both like a Victorian ghost photograph. Claude needs to see that she's not just a cheap spiritualist trick. Maybe then he'll finally allow himself to be happy.

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The Fated Magical Princess: Who Made Me a Princess is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.