The kind and industrious Elsa comes from an impoverished noble family. She receives an offer of marriage from Julius, the eldest son of a duke. For the benefit of her family, she accepts the offer, but doesn’t meet Julius until their wedding day. The wedding and reception afterward mostly seem to go well enough, but when Elsa reaches her new home that night, Julius says he has no intention of loving her and insists that this is purely a marriage of convenience. Elsa takes things surprisingly well, acknowledging that Julius’s demands of her are all reasonable and that she herself accepted his proposal for practical rather than romantic reasons. We learn in a flashback that the kingdom’s prince asked Julius to marry Elsa. It turns out her family is not merely fallen nobility but is descended from another country’s royal family, making who she marries politically significant.

I don’t know what to make of this one. Where do we go from here? Judging from the title, I guess Elsa and Julius will fall in love eventually. There will probably also be some political intrigue, with people trying to use Elsa for nefarious ends. That and the fact that they are actually married (and not merely engaged like so many other series) are probably the only real points of interest here. The dialogue is bland, the characters generic, and the animation uninspired. This is another one of those super mid anime, where nothing stands out as truly terrible, but neither is there anything to really draw in viewers. I might give it another episode, maybe, but you can probably skip this show without missing anything, unless the premise really appeals to you.

The Duke’s Son Claims He Won’t Love Me, But Showers Me with Adoration is streaming on Crunchyroll.