Masterlist and GuideI am quite enjoying the Chinese fantasy m/f romance visual novel
My Vow To My Liege, historical RPF set in the 5th Century BC Kingdom of Ng/Wu about various real and mythical people. The protagonist is King Fuchai, now a woman cross-dressing for Reasons (to do with Evil Dragons)
It feels like someone started with m/m xianxia, made the romantic relationships intense bromance to avoid censorship, and then changed their mind and made the protagonist a cross-dressing woman with as few changes to the art and dialogue as possible. Several hours in there's been zero overt romance, but a lot of delightfully fraught and intense f/m friendships where her being a woman has zero direct relevance to the fraught intensity. All the love interests are men she has direct life-or-death power over who call her "my Liege", and she's bitter, depressed, violent, and driven by revenge :D
I mean, it probably was actually written as het from the start and like...she looks like a very
small and pretty dude, and is prone to crying and fainting into the arms of the nearest hot guy who then saves the day etc. And it's entirely possible that at the end she'll do the typical "Hooray I can go back to being a feminine presenting woman and never have to do anything masculine ever again" thing. But thus far it's a nice change from the usual otome dynamic.
The art is good. The writing, Mandarin voice-acting, and characters aren't the BEST EVER but are engaging enough, and so far the plot has been enjoyable fantasy nonsense, with a moody bittersweet vibe.
So I can see why this game hasn't taken the otome world by storm, and don't know how I'll feel at the end, but for now I am quite enjoying it! I'm currently partway through Chapter 5 but this was a better place to stop. I think I
might be on a sub-route for Goujian and Shi YiGuang but I'm not sure.
Content notes: violence, age gap ships, slavery
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