villainess yuri part two
Okay, so now we know the background. Onto the actual yuri.
Adrienne is a villainess because she’s spoiled, rude, and mean. Ruthlessness & cruelty for her own amusement are hallmarks of her personality as well as a general unrepentant attitude. This is made worse by the fact that her parents hardly ever scold her and they’re the only people that really can. She orchestrates many a public humiliation.
Adrienne does not pick on Eliza much because you can’t really embarass a girl who is shameless, and Eliza is shameless. Eliza is also into it which quickly sucks out all the joy from it for Adrienne and makes it weird.
Eliza is so quick to make innuendos. "You're so...uneducated" is flipped into "So you'll give me private lessons?" with full earnesty. This is something Duchess Anastasia also did when courting Ambrose.
Unlike Asya, though, Eliza has a very weak stomach. Anastasia threw up a lot as a girl because of her chronic illness, but had a good stomach for gore and torture (half of Ambrose's hobbies). However, Eliza has no stomach for it. She’s a bit of a scaredy-cat meanwhile Adrienne hasn’t been scared of anything since she was five, so she initially delights in being awful and scaring the shit out of Eliza whenever she can.
The one thing Adrienne can never successfully do is scared Eliza away. Eliza screams and sobs and throws up in the moment, but wipes her tears and goes back to clinging in a few hours. After all, she already knew Adrienne had an awful personality beforehand, she can’t be deterred by it actually showing.
While both the Duke and Duchess offered to scold Adrienne and make her stop (Ambrose because Eliza's display is pathetic enough to make even him wince, Anastasia because she is fond of Eliza), Eliza refused. Firstly because she knew what Adrienne was like from the start and likes her for it, partly because her goal is Adrienne's affections and she knows she’ll never gain those if she has Adrienne's parents regulate their relationship. While it would work to have Adrienne stop and apologize (of all the things you can call the girl, she certainly isn't unfilial, ribbing her father excluded. She listens to them with very little fuss), and be nicer, it’d stop them from ever getting close personally, and that, above all, is Eliza's goal.
Ambrose and Asya don’t tell Adrienne to stop, but they do mention one time that they think she’s being mean and they know she is mean as a default, but cannot see why now. After like two months of weekly scaring, Adrienne starts to feel bad organically. Which is the first warning sign that she is starting to like the pest. Harrowing for her, truly.
The Astielos have the whole "protector of the North, go on monster hunts to stop them from overpowering the cities" thing going on, so in the Duchy, they are in fact quite beloved. Ambrose and Adrienne have their awful personalities, but most of that is shown to the noble faction, their peers, and especially whichever noble pest from the rest of the kingdom (note: the North is autonomous and self-governing, but is still technically a part of the kingdom, which functionally just means a tax, and sometimes social events. The Astielos of the past found that a small price to pay for the others to leave them the fuck alone) that’s bothering them. The Astielos are feared, yes, because of their strength, power, and might, as they always have been, but their people adore them for they have never been unkind.
Ask a Northern count and he may have endless stories of Ambrose's sharp tongue, ask a Marquis' daughter and she may have endless stories of Adrienne's distaste for high society, and ask the King and he will absolutely have countless tales of their disrespect and disregard, but ask an average citizen and they will tell you of safe towns, of fair laws, of disaster relief, of regulations for nobility, of the care taken to make sure nobody goes hungry and the free public schooling for their children. Ambrose and Adrienne are incorrigible (and Anastasia both a gleeful enabler and equally as awful in her own way), but Astielos are known to be good rulers for a reason.
Anyway, Eliza is from the central reason as aforementioned, and the central region (where the capital is), and the central region has by far the worst relationship with the North, so all she knows is their battle prowess and vicious, bold nature, and she admires both endlessly. She’s got a tragic backstory, but that will be revealed later. However, it is the reaaon a fifteen year old packed her meager belongings and voyaged alone with very little money to the frigid North. Stay tuned...