Summary
Six months
have passed since Hero left for the land of the Demons. Lady Knight threw a fit
when she found out he wasn’t there but has settled into a new groove giving
Demon Queen’s students martial training. Queen herself is finally meeting with
a young merchant from the Alliance.
At the
meeting, Queen offers to sell the Alliance corn. She suggests that it could
sponsor the founding of villages in the wilderness north of the Central Nations
and sell the harvests, supplying the villages themselves with supplies in the
meantime. Phase 3: (actual) Profit! Since she won’t be needed once she sells
them the corn, Young Merchant asks what’s in it for her. She says an end to the
war where no one loses. He quotes the party line that only total victory is
acceptable (his conviction highly questionable),
and his companion
covertly signals the assassins hiding in the bushes, both unaware that Head
Maid is watching them using magical defenses. Queen asks what the problem is –
she just saw a chance that would allow both parties to profit. This mercantile
mindset impresses Young Merchant, and they have a deal. Before he leaves he
catches Queen off-guard by proposing. She tries to turn him down, but he just
takes that as a challenge.
That night
Head Maid brings Hero food and drink while he writes his latest letter. She
accuses him of avoiding Queen, even though the teleportation spell he uses
means he could come back every night. She suspects his frequent run-ins with
other women, which he doesn’t omit from his correspondence, but he insists it’s
because Queen doesn’t want him to fight, even though it’s what he’s best at.
Head Maid reminds him to consider Queen’s feelings too.
In the land
of the demons, Hero visits Gate City, the administrative center of the
human-occupied territories. He rescues a demon girl being harassed by soldiers,
and she tells him how the demons are treated as second class citizens. He
realizes this is what will happen regardless of who wins the war.
Another six
months pass, and it’s time for the New Year’s Festival. Elder and Younger
Sister Maid give Queen and Head Maid presents but aren’t bothered that Queen
forgot to get them something – everything she’s done for them until now is
present enough. Queen doesn’t go to the festivities with the others. Her excuse
is because she doesn’t like crowds, but it’s really because Hero won’t be there
and she misses him. He decides to drop in unexpectedly, but her elation quickly
turns to chewing him out for not showing his face in a year. He insists he was
busy with Gate City and name-drops many of the (female) demons trying to endure
the human occupation. Queen isn’t impressed, but he parries with yeah, like she hasn’t been getting appreciative
attention from nobles and merchants. They can’t stay mad for long, however, and
share a dance after hearing the music from the festival.
The Southern
Nations are under pressure from the White Night Country, which has strong ties
to the Central Nations, to retake Bright Light Island, the demon foothold in
human lands. A fleet is dispatched, commanded the king of the Winter Country,
who has been shouldered with the blame for its loss. It’s sunk by giant squid
off the coast, claiming two hundred ships and six thousand lives, including the
Winter King’s. When the king of White Night again tries to place all blame on
the Winter Country the prince, having assumed his late father’s title, vows to
retake the island before winter is out.
He summons Lady
Knight to lead the campaign. Before she leaves Queen asks to be friends,
admitting she was lying about her identity and revealing who she is. Knight
points her sword at Queen – and declares that as prioress of Lakeside Convent
she’s heard Queen’s confession and forgiven her the sin of lying (she decides
not to mention that Hero blabbed about it earlier). The offer of friendship is
accepted, but Queen can forget about Knight giving up on Hero; not gonna
happen.
In Gate
City, Hero terrorizes the troops, with a little help from his demon allies. The
garrison commander, who never wanted the job, quickly grows sick of terrified
soldiers and generals asking to go home from fear.
Queen joins
Lady Knight at the battlefield and proposes a plan of attack. Stakes are driven
into the ice floes around the island and pulled to shore, water and salt poured
between the cracks to connect them into a land bridge. A beachhead is
established, but the demons have retreated to their fortress and the humans
lack the numbers for a siege. Then another force thousands strong approaches
from the south, but this is all part of Queen’s plan – it’s the troops from
Gate City. The garrison commander has finally had enough and bailed, thrusting
his responsibilities onto a general who objected. The latter, faced with
protecting thousands of now-defenseless human civilians, decides he has no
choice but to ask the nearby demon lords for help. Gate City will become a
crossroads between the two races.
The battle
turns in the demons’ favor once their leader, a giant walrus-demon called the
Ice General, takes the field. Knight, who’s learned a few tricks from hanging around
with Hero, challenges him to a duel and successfully takes him down.
The day is
won, with Queen and Knight given honorary titles by the Winter King. Hero holds
himself aloof from the post-battle festivities, but the Old Man tells him that
while he may have fighting abilities beyond any other human, he’ still human
himself and doesn’t need to feel alone – the Winter Country, at least, is
grateful to him.
Thoughts
I gotta ask, is nobody at all curious where Queen is getting foods like
corn and potatoes? It’s clear humans have never heard of them, yet they never
ask where she got it or how she knows about it.
Not that I’m complaining, particularly. These episodes are the ones
where I really started liking Demon Queen. Not only is her goal admirable, but
she’s going about achieving it in a very practical way rather than just
appealing to everyone’s better nature. Not that appealing to peoples’ better
nature is a bad thing, not at all, but for something of this scale there’s a
lot of underlying issues that will crop up if the war were to simply stop. The
fact is, the war is very profitable or even necessary to many people, and
Queen’s solution is not only to offer them equally profitable alternatives but long-term
solutions that’ll help prevent another war in the future. Her solutions aren’t
just new ways for the rich to make money, either; they also give the common
people new food staples and agricultural techniques that will lead to better
harvests and increased prosperity for everyone. She’s even willing to work
against her own people. Obviously, that can very much be a bad thing, but while she did work with the humans to retake Bright
Light Island, she used a plan that got their occupation force out of Gate City.
By ‘work against her own people’ I just meant she won’t take sides or seek a
solution that still privileges one faction over the other. Whether her plan was
really a net loss/gain for both sides isn’t really clear, though. The new
governor of Gate City talks about turning it into a “crossroads” between the
two races, which sounds like he isn’t so much giving it back to the demons as
trying to turn it into some kind of Free City where the two can interact but
not be beholden to either, so if I’m right on that count only the humans have
actually regained what they lost. But I’ve seen mentions elsewhere that this –
Queen going against her own people – gets brought up next episode, so there’s
nothing I’ll say about it for the moment. Probably Gate City will be brought up
again too, so I’ll leave it for now. Smart, hardworking, compassionate; yeah,
Demon Queen’s pretty awesome. At the start it seemed like Hero was the main
character, but at this point it’s clearly Queen. After all, this is her quest, so to speak, that they’re on.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Hero. He’s alright, just a bit
more of a typical fantasy/RPG Hero with his superior swordsmanship skills,
preference for being out and on quests, and that lethal combination of
‘attractive guy + clueless when it comes to women + inability to ignore anyone
in trouble = chick magnet.’ After all, fantasy people in trouble are usually
pretty girls. At the same time, I appreciated how the story addressed his
abilities, like how his abnormally high skills set him apart from others.
Actually, that just came up at the end of episode 6, but it does explain his
actions like going alone to confront the Demon King, or wandering in the land
of the demons by himself for so long. He’s conscious of how different he is and
it makes him uncomfortable around others, especially those he cares about, and whom
he knows care about him. That he’s someone best suited to going on adventures,
slaying monsters, and rescuing damsels in distress has been a source of tension
in his relationship with Queen as well, and not just because of the damsels (at
least there’s some balance since Queen gets attention from other men; hey, when
faced with a girl like that, I can’t
say I blame Young Merchant). All of that generally involves fighting, but Queen
is pursuing a world where that won’t be needed, even as she recognizes that
it’s necessary in the short term to achieve the lasting peace she wants.
Their relationship as a whole is pretty nice too. They have chemistry
and care about each other, thanks in no small part to both of them having strong
senses of compassion and justice that set them on this path in the first place.
At the same time, it’s not conflict free. They have opposing sides to their personalities,
Queen being scholarly while Hero, obviously, is more of a warrior, and at its
heart this is Queen’s ambition more than Hero’s. He agrees with it, but it’s
still worrying for him since it could lead to a world where someone like him
has no place. On top of that, Queen would prefer if he didn’t fight at all,
because as good as he is, it’s still dangerous and she cares about him too much
to want to worry about losing him. She still lets him go off to keep things
under control in the demon lands because she recognizes his need to be out and
about rather than pouring over books and notes, but it’s obvious she misses him
when he’s not there. They both have to balance what they want for themselves
and the other person’s feelings, and it helps make their relationship more
believable.
This series has definitely proved to be better than it first seemed. As
much as Queen is a fountain of new and innovative ideas, it’s not just her
enlightening those dumb medieval people. There’s reasonable skepticism, but
people are convinced of an ideas merits when they’re presented reasonably – or
in a way that shows how it would benefit them, and when there’s self-interest
shown by those in power, their reasons for acting that way are believable. Those
harem antics I was worried about haven’t materialized either. Other than a bit
of a love triangle which includes mostly one-sided feelings on Lady Knight’s
part (Hero certainly likes her, just not romantically) there’s been nothing. I
do hope the show does a bit more with Knight and the Old Man (as in, use him
for something besides ‘old pervert’ jokes), and that girl Mage while they’re
while they’re at it, but whether that’ll happen remains. Overall, it’s a much
better series than it seemed initially.
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