The greatest crime was summarizing the climax of the coup/rebellion "arc". FL swooped in to save the day, said her piece, and then when she's to take down the rebel prince, it goes from detailed to summary. WHAT BLUE B@LL$

Later on the collapse of another kingdom's monarch that the FL indirectly causes is ALSO only summarized, like are you KIDDING?! "But this is a story for another time." Um, no tf it is NOT, you lazy a$$ author!

Btw when we do away with them, they'll also only get a summary cuz, again, who cares!

turns into continental warfare, the FL is mentioned in passing in the third person, and the ending was too rushed. It would have been great if the latter part of the story were told from the FL's viewpoint, and the author had more time to develop the characters and situation towards the end.

The ML falls for her and they have a one-sided relationship for most of the book, as she's a wooden block when it comes to romance. But it's a HE.

I won't spoil the climax, but it was the Princess' birthday and MC brought a gift in the form of a drawing... To be honest, if anyone really expected a commoner prison guard to bring a great gift to the Princess' coming of age, they'd be out of their minds. Like they did in the novel is 100% setting her up for a catastrophic failure, which author brushed aside by gifting MC painting skills suddenly. It left me wondering if, out of nowhere, she'd become skillful at other things.

for example, MC becomes "very knowledgeable" about medicine on the basis that the medical achievements of the time are backward, like very very backward. This is indeed a plausible explanation, but it doesn't make it any less boring.

one of them being the way the martial competition rewards winners. The top 30 can be directly assigned to positions in the ministry of war, and since they're mainly ranked by strength, I'm assuming it's not a role in court, but in the military. This doesn't make much sense. To begin with, such roles are assigned based on connections and merit gained, and the higher you go, the more your intellectual qualifications, charisma as a leader and experience are needed, none of which are being adequately measured. So one cannot realistically be assigned to a role of importance, but only start slightly above a normal soldier (let's say a small commander of a 10 man or 100 man squad). Perhaps if they were a genius, they could be assigned under some general for nurturing, but those parachutes would still create dissatisfaction within the army's strict hierarchy and system. I can see this working for martial arts instructors and assassination squads, although too much of a hassle.

Another flaw is how the involved authorities use shady means to affect the top player in the competition... But this is something so important that the court gave a death order for ALL departments to participate, why do minor officials really believe they can mess with this at will? It seems like the risk is much greater than the rewards.

like Xiaohua infiltrating an enemy camp and obtaining victories