A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even: How I Crushed My Homeland with My Mighty Grimoires – Episode 1

What’s it about? Elizabeth Leiston is the daughter of the prime minister and is engaged to the crown prince of the Haldoria. She’s very intelligent and basically helps manage the entire kingdom while her insecure fiancé cheats on her with another woman. After the crown prince publicly denounces Elizabeth for “bullying” his mistress, he imprisons her and spreads awful rumors about her to the commoners. After enduring so much humiliation from her family and ex-fiancé, she decides she’s had enough. Elizabeth makes a promise to herself that she will destroy her home kingdom and will use her magical grimoires in order to achieve her goals.

I like a female protagonist who’s got big dreams. Ruin her ex-fiancé singelhandedly? N’aw! Destroy the entire kingdom and by extension his entire bloodline? Now, that’s ambition! I’m a sucker for villainess stories that actually enact any form of vengeance against anyone who’s actually wronged them. Unfortunately, we have to suffer through the usual set up often seen in this genre such as the ballroom scene, the mistress being secretly conniving, etc., in order to get to the good stuff. I feel like at some point there needs to be more creative ways to reinvent this template because that alone could lose an audience, especially if they want to see something new.  

What’s refreshing about this premiere is Elizabeth’s demeanor and her level-headed attitude. She viewed her engagement as nothing more than a political marriage and was more in love with her role as crown princess rather than feeling any form of affection for her fiancé. Elizabeth only worried about him when he wasn’t fulfilling his role, but beyond that she didn’t care about him at all. Elizabeth found genuine joy in serving her subjects and only wanted to continue her good work as Queen, but eventually, started to feel the heavy weight of the ingratitude of everyone around her. It’s frustrating that the Emperor and her father depend on her so much, yet when she gets arrested, no one from their faction comes to her defense. 

While I would’ve preferred for her to snap on her own, it was nice to see her maid, Mireille, vehemently get angry on her behalf and encourage her to fight back. My only gripe is that Elizabeth is also targeting her anger towards commoners, which is completely unnecessary. Oftentimes, commoners in these stories never meet royals and they generally don’t care who’s in charge as long as they live their lives peacefully. I can understand Elizabeth feeling frustrated that nobody appreciates her hard work, but taking it out on normal people who had nothing to do with the crown prince’s stupidity isn’t the way to go. Either way, she showed true restraint on her part for not revealing that she could use several magical grimoires with ease.  

I also enjoy the fact that the most important relationship in this premiere was between Elizabeth and Mireille. Obviously, the class difference between them creates a power imbalance in their relationship, but the fact that they mutually respect each other is so lovely. I can only hope that Mireille’s status could be elevated in some way so that her and Elizabeth can treat each other as equals. The animation is decent enough and while this premise isn’t going to reshape the villainess genre, I think this can be an enjoyable time for anyone who wants to see the usual villains in this story, suffer. I might stick around for a few more episodes, but honestly, I don’t think anyone is going to remember this show by the end of the season.