So there will be an extented version of the game I read. The program sounds interesting. I'd buy it if we can also have it on Steam.
(What am I saying, I know I'll buy it for Zel anyway. Can't say no so such a rare pastry. He's not the kind of character most popular in Otome games. So with the bonus of his realist personality and character development, it must have taken careful work to make him neither virile nor camp, yet romantically attracted to women. He's quite the rare treat to find.)
To amend a point (spoilers): about 'Mer', it's not him inhabiting the body while loathing noblity that feel so wrong. This does feel wrong, but nothing close to the fact that Charming mostly keeps calling him by the same name both in her thoughts and when she is alone with him...this feels as testimony for her denial.
This: her lack of acknowledgment that he is really a stranger (to the point she doesn't even know how he really looks like or how old he really was - don't even come telling me that it doesn't matter for trusting someone);
this, plus calling him by a name that isn't his is what finish making her love quite messed up.
So yeah, it would solve nothing to punish 'Mer' since he is already off in the head, enough for both of them (his reactions show signs of schizophrenia: he goes from a poised flirting persona, to bawing incontrollably from loneliness, to a self-centered phycho persona showing pleasure in his deceiptions more than once if you pay attention).
The truth serum tells us he doesn't even regret anything except maybe not having enough power to feed everyone. Remember how all the other stories he told Charming never happened? No boat, no village rescuing him, no accidental killing since he knew exactly how his voice worked since the start, peharps even no bullying in his country - all his explanations about that were incoherent, and* he has been a willing murderer since the start. We don't know what he did to Mer's guards in the end, we can only assumebit was worse than killing or destroying. I can think of two possibilities for it that would make both 'Mer', Nicholls and Charming decide not to even mention the nature of the crime
These things and the traumas he mentionned could be full lies made up as failsafes to his shortcommings as a noble and to manipulate Charming into pitiying him. Or real traumas but for very different events than those he tells.
But he is an idiot to expect Charming and Nicholls to let off after all that.
Charming and Nicholls could and should have waited for him to chill down and reflect on all he did a couple months, while using a magical clone of him on the throne during that time, before using another truth serum to verify his sanity and morale first, before deciding anything else.
Loving him, though, seems messed up, no matter how I think about it: affection, okay, desire, I guess, possessivity, understandable after all Charming has risked for him. But sincere love? That feels a bit irrational for Charming's character.
I think the first, the 'good' ending with him was as irresponsible as her second ending with Zel.
Speaking of it:
- Offering a big and heavy fire breathing dragon to make clones of himself? Just after he boasted about ravaging through many weddings and demonstrating his willingness to kill people on a prideful whim?
- Deciding to abandon her country who asked her help with civil war, just to keep her lover's innocence intact a few years more?
Charming?
Not even mentionning responsibility or selfishness, keeping her decision not to return doesn't event sounds well thought: she could have returned and helped settle things before going out to the world with him again. After the demonstrations of will she can do and the fact she succeeded in rescuing Zel while so many others fail it was made into a poem...I'm pretty sure Lynar Kingdom would have trusted her capability and loyalty enough to allow that.
PS:
Now, back to serious business...and ginger-cinnamon-ginseing rolls. :D
I think I've hear something in game about an apron...New CGI you say?
(What? You think his fingers should be covered in dripping blueberry jam too? Well, that's your idea, not mine...) *poofs away*