Baraou no Souretsu
Requiem of the Rose King

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this won't be the most coherent review but i absolutely adore baraou no souretsu! i read the whole thing so far in about four sittings because i was so intrigued.

Richard is a tragic and cool character and observing how each character treats him is very interesting. his internal struggles are unlike any characters i've ever seen before. we get to see the evolution of how he feels about his body, and about gender itself, like how it determines so much of your life, especially in the 1400s or whatever.

it isn't a spoiler to say it is a tragic story so far, but i can't ... help but want him to have a happy ending or as happy as it can get being in a royal family during turbulent times.

personally, i wasn't confused on the family tree or the names/heritage of other characters. i thought the pacing was good, and the art was beautiful. the story has a way of pulling you in and making you feel completely present while reading it, which i really liked. also love the queerness!! i want to buy all the books so bad but my wallet </3

best shoujo i've ever read lol, i'd love to read more stories like this. and i hope manga and anime continue to include intersex characters, they deserve to be seen.

Firstly - I don't understand why so many of these reviews are calling Richard a trans man. It is made VERY clear from the beginning that Richard is (visibly) intersex at birth, there are many references to Richard being born with/having "both sexes" throughout the series, on occasion the confused "what are you?" reaction to seeing his body, and even references by Richard himself regarding having ambiguous organs. Richards father decides to raise him as a man, and he identifies as such for the entire series. Richard is not a girl, or a trans man, he is just a(n intersex) man.

I found the story ... to be quite interesting from a psychological standpoint - it covers a lot of different perspectives and characters, so I quite liked seeing all of the different reactions and character developments throughout. I'm not particularly into history so can't comment on how accurate the story is, but overall thought it was worth reading, particularly if you're interested in a lot of war and power struggles.

I initially only really read this manga specifically because it had an intersex character - as someone with a likely similar intersex variation to Richard I wanted to read it out of curiosity more than anything (which is partially why it's a little frustrating seeing everyone else erase his intersex identity) but I would probably suggest that this isn't suitable for other intersex people who are sensitive about the topic - Richard is not exactly treated kindly because of it so it may be a trigger for some people.

The artwork is amazing. I wanted to get that out of the way, because it's one of only two redeeming qualities of this Manga. The other is that it's based off of the Henriad by Shakespeare, and that man knew what he was doing. The main conceit of the series, and it's not a spoiler for saying so, is that the main character, Richard, is a girl. But she's treated by her parents and the rest of the world as a boy. Consequently, her mother regards her as a demon and a witch. Because, you see, Richard is a boy, but with the body of ... a girl.... The entire thing reeks of exploiting transgenderism for the sake of having two beautiful boys in a romantic relationship. Shakespeare famously wrote Richard to have a hunchback: that was the external ugliness to mirror his internal ugliness. By treating transgenderism as the external ugliness instead of a hunchback, for the sake of making a yaoi-not-yaoi novel is just completely inappropriate.

But the art is gorgeous.