When the talented imperial wizard Nisha makes an unconventional deal with King Frei, she goes on a mission to lift the curse of the Grand Duke of the North, Lanfel Delore! Turns out that the dark and handsome Duke Lanfel isn't as strong as he appears to be, and it seems like the freezing gray days of winter is a bit too much for the Duke's frail body. While Nisha does her research around the Duke's manor to lift his curse, she simultaneously becomes his caretaker. Little does she know that her deal with King Frei could bring her and Duke Lanfel together in more ways than one...

The Northern Duke Needs a Warm Hug has story and art by NUGI. Translated by Jamie. Published by WEBTOON January 10, 2026). Rated YA.

Erica Friedman
Rating:

This is a nice, if not incredibly original YA romance. Nisha's an upright young woman, the duke is a cute puppy of a young man. The details of the story are not the point. You know Nisha and the duke will dance around each other for chapter after chapter, as the plot throws complications at them. There will be misunderstandings and barriers of many kinds and they will, eventually live happily ever after. This is not to diss romance, just that the basic premise really has to be predictable, so that the story can be developed. Hopefully the narrative will become complex, rather than just complicated—it could go either way at the moment.

In the first few chapters, a number of key plot elements are laid out to be developed. Nisha is a talented wizard, something we will undoubtedly rely on later. There was a plot against the king, other court wizards are complicit and there is a curse that will have to be ferreted out, and neutralized. This is all solid stuff for a good story, if the creator has the chops to maintain it.

The art is good, again, solid without being elaborate. In many ways the simple panels and less ornate backgrounds and panel framing makes this a much faster and easier read than other comics which require a lot of scrolling for every panel. This last is a serious complaint I have about webtoons. I don't want to take two scrolls to get past one panel and into the next every single time. My thumb gets achey.

This story is not equipped for out of the box excitement, but as an isekai-ish fairytale like fantasy romance The Northern Duke Needs A Warm Hug is a pleasant, comfy read.

Rebecca Silverman
Rating:

If you've ever read historical romances – fantasy or otherwise – you'll already be familiar with one of the central jokes of this story: there are a truly ridiculous amount of dukes running around. And not just any dukes – young, wealthy, handsome dukes who are all in desperate need of a good woman's love whether they know it or not. Webtoons and Korean novels are not immune from this to the point that there's actually a visual novel making fun of the phenomenon, FFS, Another Northern Duke?!. I haven't played it yet, but it feels like The Northern Duke Needs a Warm Hug is spiritually related to the title at the very least.

Creator NUGI is very much aware of this fact. The heroine of the story, Nisha, realizes one day that she's been reborn into a novel she read as a side character who doesn't even get any lines. Determined to avoid the plot, she goes away from the royal court while it plays out, only to discover that, since the villainess is also a wizard, her going away at just the right time has only made her look super suspicious. The only way to regain the royal trust is to go investigate what's going on with the Grand Duke of the North, whom the king believes to be suffering under some kind of curse. Nisha remembers the duke as another bit character in the original novel, but she's so busy reeling from the fact that life is going on past the plot of the book that she just takes the king at his word and sets off. Better than being executed, right?

If Lanfel, the eponymous northern duke, is actually cursed, however, I shall be very much surprised. Based on Lanfel's behavior in these first five chapters, I suspect he's not so much “cursed” as he is “really bad with women.” Every time Nisha gets close to him, the man turns redder than a boiled lobster and he heats up like a radiator on a cold day. When Nisha's not in the room, his fever subsides and he can bring himself to unwrap from his blankets; the minute she returns, he's back to square one. He probably does have a cold like he says, but a curse seems exceedingly unlikely.

Unless, that is, you consider grief a curse. At one point Lanfel has a flashback to a different woman who used to take care of him, and in chapter five Nisha finds a locked room that appears to have belonged to that same woman. Was she someone Lanfel loved who died or became otherwise unavailable? It seems very possible, and if she was the only woman he ever really interacted with (servants notwithstanding), then her loss could very well have put him in a sad, uncomfortable place. Or possibly she did curse him; Nisha mentions that it looks like there's some black magic paraphernalia in the locked room. Either way, in the grand old tradition of romance fiction, Nisha is being set up to either melt the duke's heart or somehow regulate his temperature. It should be fun finding out which.