The Tyrant’s Etiquette Tutor Korean Novels 1-3 Review – Review

Unlike its Japanese light novel counterparts, Korean web/light novels tend to favor what they call “transmigration” rather than full-out reincarnation. This does sometimes involve the death of the heroine/villainess (book dependent), but more often, my reading experience has shown that characters aren’t aware of any death before they find themselves in the body of a character from a story; they simply find that their souls have migrated into the world of a story. It’s an interesting mechanic, mostly because it feels different after years of reading Japanese texts, and the fact that characters are more likely to end up in a novel (typically but not always a web novel) than a game or a game-based fantasy world just adds interest.

Livia is one such heroine. She was a reader of the novel she now finds herself stuck in, but the problem is that she never finished the book. She’s familiar enough with the characters and plot, but that’s about it. It is, however, enough to know that she’s nothing like the person whose body she’s now inhabiting. Livia the Original was cold, haughty, and valued etiquette and nobility above all, the quintessential duke’s daughter. But Livia the Current isn’t like that at all: she’s much warmer and more interested in getting things in order…and she has exactly no interest in what she knows to be Original Livia’s fate, which is death.

As you may have guessed from the title, that makes Livia perhaps not the best person to become someone’s etiquette tutor, even if she does have all of her new body’s memories. It is, however, what she needs to do, and for no less a personage than Croft, the new emperor. Croft is largely viewed as a barbaric tyrant, raised on the battlefields and claiming his new position with exactly no finesse or nobility. The idea of having Livia tutor him is based on ideas of beauty taming the beast, which may or may not work out when the beauty is a little beastly herself.

Unsurprisingly, things begin revealing themselves to be much more complex than the novel Livia read made them out to be. Croft was raised on the field of battle, but that doesn’t make him a horrible person: it makes him a damaged, maladjusted one. He knows he needs to learn to run the kingdom, but he’s not quite sure how to pull it off; just being a general clearly isn’t going to work with courtiers and nobles. He needs Livia on an academic level, but it quickly becomes clear that he needs her on an emotional one as well. Croft has never known kindness, and he really yearns for it. He’s in a terrible position: exiled as a child, he’s trying to figure out how to be a good ruler while also being fully aware that he’s failing at it. He’s clearly capable of making friends and forming attachments, but he’s completely lost in the stuffy world of the court. Everything he does backfires on him, and by the time Livia comes around, the poor man is at his wits’ end, losing more hope by the minute.

Livia, or rather the new soul in her body, is able to see this almost from the start. She takes no garbage from Croft or his military subordinates, but that works for him; she’s essentially speaking his language. From there, she can work with Croft to help him change, showing him understanding while being strict with him. Does she notice that he’s falling in love with her? Maybe; on that front, she’s nearly as oblivious as any other heroine of this novel type, although Croft leaves her very little choice but to acknowledge things by roughly the middle of the first novel. There aren’t any sex scenes per se, but Croft, once he falls for Livia, isn’t shy about expressing it physically, and Livia is only able to do so much – especially after the two of them are married in a bid to fend off political rivals. There’s naturally a magic contract element of their wedding, which Croft intends to use to his advantage, but it’s much less creepy than, for example, the magic contract element of The Villainess and the Demon Knight. And Livia isn’t opposed to Croft, which goes a long way towards making their romance palatable.

Alongside the romance plot, there’s also a political one. New Livia is determined to be much more proactive than her original, and she devotes herself not only to helping Croft with his manners but also to working to make the empire a better, more politically healthy place. Both incarnations of the duke’s daughter are intelligent, but New Livia uses her modern knowledge to help her work with both her home duchy and the empire at large, proving a boon to Croft in more than one way, as well as showing his loyal retainers that she’s trustworthy and invested in making him a good ruler. It’s not just Croft she works well with, but his entire entourage, and she even proves an ally to a young woman Croft’s political opponents want to force him to make his second wife. Livia is hypercompetent without feeling overdone, and that’s a major strength of this trilogy – she’s no more one-note than Croft is, and everyone feels more like a real person rather than a cliché, even if they have tropes in their makeup.

The Tyrant’s Etiquette Tutor really is a three-volume novel in the Victorian sense – a single book stretched out over three volumes. I’d definitely recommend having all three on hand because the first two end on substantial cliffhangers (especially the first), but also because it really feels more organic to read them together. If you enjoy political romances with emotionally damaged heroes and competent heroines who take no garbage from anyone, you really ought to give this title a try.