... this novel depict the relationship of the main couple as abusive, toxic and "seasoned" with a lot of r*pe, so isn't a novel for everyone.

*A cold and s*umbag male lead that somehow end up entangled with an annoyingly innocent and pure heart female lead.

*After female lead going through humiliation after humiliation in the hands of the male lead and his family and friends, those heroines gets fed up and finally decide to divorce, run away or escape.

*Sometimes we have a nice and gentle second male lead, that try to help the heroine, but their love are never reciprocated or recognized.

*Then, when the male leads notices how they can lost the female lead forever, they repent and have a 180° personality transformation, aka, redemption arc.

*Female leads recognizes that deeply down they still love the hero and the r*ped or emotionally ab*sed women of these stories forgive everything that the men did to them and the couple live happily ever after.

Plot

We have the male lead, the war hero and naval officer Bastian, an irritating cynical, sadist, handsome and obviously millionaire and the female lead, the extremely beautiful princess Odette, a masochist, selfless, poor and innocent fallen member of the royal family.

But for me it was so cringe and forced how after almost two hundred chapters of angst and being an a**hole, in the last fifteen chapters, Bastian suddenly transformed from a cold and cynical man, to a romantic and considerate person (I honestly hated his cynical loud laughs, argh, so disgusting, he deserved being slapped while stepping on poop 💩 every time he gave that laugh...)

I scanned to see if the angst was going to get romantic or if Bastian was still the same. He supposedly falls in love... then when things go wrong, it's "I hate you" and he uses their first time as a weapon. He's not unleashing passionate love/hate and pretending to want to hurt her because he subconsciously wants to take her. It's more like 3 minutes of grabbing, ripping, cramming it in, and being like "yeah, I just used my body to physically hurt your body and make you feel emotionally broken". Beating her with a belt would be more romantic, because at least he's not leaving her to associate intimacy with 5 minutes of fear, pain, and degradation for the rest of her life. There's no unleashed heat or hidden passion or desire to keep her as his own or whatever. It's pure, simple, misogynistic, physical violence with a fat dollop of mental torture and trauma. It's. Too. Real. This isn't like a fantasy with a forceful ML, this ain't no romantic angsty mistake. This is like when any abusive husband would slap his wife for making the wrong supper, destroys her stuff because it's funny if she cries, or uses her like a toy to remind her of her "place".

I've. Been. There. There is nothing redeemable or romantic in that situation. I've been twisted and broken and can pretend some stuff is somehow dark romance. Bastian's actions are not. There's as much romance in what he did as there's romance in a child torturing an animal. NONE. It's like r*pe in war to demoralize the enemy before killing them.

Like in Problematic prince, it's a cinderella story with a control-freak ML and a innocent FL and again a despicable father. There are misundestandings, and again, a miscarriage and finally Odette found finally peace in living alone in the countryside. The ML tries to see her again and feels really sorry for what he has done...

And the way he let her go...

They part their ways loving each other without the other one knowing this fact and they are Okay with this, they forgive each other and it does seem real, not pushed, you understand their reasoning. They both did somethings wrong.

She heals herself and let go of the guilt she feels for the ML and forgives him. After all that is gone out of the way she realises that she loves him and let him go...

. I admit it was too dramatic, I felt like they were dragging out the climax of the entire novel over and over again, I also envy the way Bastian ends up with his happy family, although in "Cry or better yet beg" the protagonists also end up being happy, I felt that the author made the path easier for Bastian, Bastian like Layla is a commoner when he marries Odette who has royal blood at first they see him in a bad light, but society itself admits that the tables have to turn, the noble can no longer stay above the new era, and for the good of Bastian, he manages to be promoted to a high position in the navy, they give him the title of hero, but I feel that he proves his worth above many other nobles, making it clear in the end that he is worthy of a princess and is envied by all of society, a family of the highest elite, but what happens to Layla, they leave her there with her two children happy next to the man she loves but she will always feel that society will point at her, why write that way Layla at the end? I say this because the couple of dukes also appear in Bastian, and society criticized Mathias and his mother for accepting Layla while Bastian and Odette arrive and are envied, I thought that the end of Layla and Mathias was perfect and it is, but it could have given more to these characters..