The Warrior Princess and the Barbaric King

Episode 3

After the first two episodes of The Warrior Princess and the Barbaric King, I wondered how long it would take Sera to realize that the side she fought for was, for all intents and purposes, the wrong one. The answer appears to have been “not long,” because this week, she starts to clue in to the fact that not only are the “barbarians” (gasp) people, but that they have a thriving culture whose only sin is being different from her own. It's a two-pronged epiphany, really, and it starts with Veor's calm statement that none of his soldiers actually want Sera's blood. They don't resent her. They admire her for her prowess on the battlefield, and if they come at her fully armored and armed, it's because they think she's awesome and they want to spar with the amazing woman who took out so many of their people.

It's a weird moment for Sera, but also a culturally important one backed up by her next encounter. In her mind, death is always a cause for mourning. How someone died is less important than the fact of their death, and Sera herself would want vengeance on the killer. But for Veor's people, death is merely part of life. In a society where hunting monsters is the norm, and people hunt for food rather than purchasing it, death is just something that happens. When Sera meets two widows with young children who lost their husbands to her own army, they try to explain this to her. They aren't mad at her. They don't resent her or the war. If it wasn't Western soldiers who killed their husbands, it might have been a monster or a dragon. They lost someone, and they move on.

While that's a good moment to lay bare cultural differences, I do think it's worthwhile for Sera to feel badly about her past actions. That sounds harsh, I know. But what I mean by it is that it's good for her to have some introspection. She's imbibed her kingdom's Kool-Aid for her entire life, and while she went against its expectations by becoming a knight, she still bought into the idea of a “just war.” She'd perhaps used up all of her questioning authority brainpower by insisting on her career path, but she still needs to take a good, hard look at what she did in the name of so-called righteousness. Was it righteous to kill an expectant father before his son got to even see him? Is that what she wants her legacy to be?

It's an especially interesting situation given that Veor's people all admire her prowess rather than see her as less of a woman for it. They think she's perfect for their prince: strong, skilled, and with good birthing hips. She's the total package. Things that her own people resented her for, they appreciate. Are these really the people who deserved her kingdom to come down on them with swords and self-righteousness?

The show is going out of its way to show us how superior the purported “barbarians” are to the allegedly civilized West, and it's hard not to think that there's a bit of real-world commentary in there, be it historical or contemporary. But I think the underlying theme is that different doesn't equal bad. Surely there are things Sera's home nation does well that we just haven't seen yet. Any country that can train a knight to fight off a giant winged dragon with a pointy beak with a fireplace poker has to be doing something right.

With Sera gaining some introspection and spending less time yelling, the show is improving. I don't love the CG monsters or the weird animation… let's call them “quirks,” where every single person Sera sees in the village moves their hands exactly the same way. (You can't unsee it once you spot it, at the one exception, the guy chopping fish, only does one chop and then freezes.) And Veor coming to save her is wonderful, not because he saves her, but because he acknowledges that she was doing something difficult. No one's really done that for her before, treating her strength as a freak thing. To come full circle with Sera's experience in the lakeside town, here she is appreciated. Her tears show how important that acknowledgment is.

And that leaves me with just one question going forward: didn't his name used to be written “Veorg?”

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Warrior Princess and the Barbaric King is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.