Elizabeth is the prince’s fiancée and pretty much the person who seems to keep the kingdom of Haldoria running: She does all the paperwork while he’s out partying, the people love her for the public good initiatives she carries out, the business she founded and manages is one of the top contributors to the nation’s finances, she dealt severe damage to an enemy empire when she was just ten, and the king and the chancellor (who happens to also be her father) even entrust her with planning a massive, international party celebrating their country’s founding. Of course, this genre being what it is, that doesn’t stop Prince Clueless from falling for another woman’s wiles and then publicly humiliating Elizabeth on false charges. He throws Elizabeth in jail—where he keeps making her do the country’s paperwork. The king and chancellor, on a business trip, get word of what’s happened but decide to leave Elizabeth to her own devices, on the grounds that this is the bare minimum she should be able to handle on her own if she’s going to be the prince’s wife someday. Elizabeth hears all of this, catches wind of a rumor that is turning the people of the country against her, and finally snaps—she breaks out of prison, seeks asylum with a rival country, and plots to destroy the nation she was just trying selflessly to serve not fifteen minutes earlier.

Get ready, because I have Opinions. I’m always intrigued by a good revenge plot. Unfortunately, Livid Lady’s Guide is no Count of Monte Christo, nor even The Remarried Empress. The personalities and their justifications don’t seem to me to get enough screen time to really be developed satisfactorily before we’re off and running. Sure, I can buy the prince being super foolish—that’s a given in this genre—and his new girlfriend being a short-sighted, selfish manipulator, as she’s a lower-class upstart trying to survive in noble society. It also makes sense that the court of public opinion can swing quickly from favoring Elizabeth to hating her; we see this sort of thing in real life quite regularly. But the people whose personalities seem more “whatever the plot demands right now” include the king, the chancellor, Elizabeth’s maid, and regrettably Elizabeth herself. The shallowness of their characterizations becomes evident once we see just how powerful Elizabeth is—and she is OP. With a snap of her fingers, she hypnotizes her prison guard; she smashes a stone wall with a single punch; she magically creates an ice sculpture that looks just like her to take her place in prison; and she can copy—permanently—any magic she’s ever seen. (That’s the power of the grimoire we see in this episode.) Her maid, too, can turn perfectly invisible or transform someone’s appearance to look—and sound—like someone else. So given that Elizabeth and her loyal maid form a walking Duo of Doom…what on earth are the king and the chancellor thinking??? They should be moving heaven and earth to keep her happy! And even on the off-chance they don’t know about her magic, they still know that she’s the linchpin that is holding the kingdom together; their justification for abandoning her feels far too flimsy. Elizabeth herself is played up as so selfless in the first half of the episode that her “fall to the dark side” in the second half seems unconvincing: not that she wouldn’t be peeved and seek some form of redress, but this is too much, too fast. In the first half, she silences her maid for trying to point out how she’s being taken advantage of; in the second half, all it takes is the maid pointing this out again for Elizabeth’s personality to do a one-eighty. The maid herself seems only to exist to convince Elizabeth to abandon her country; if someone told me the maid is a secret agent for a rival nation, I’d believe it. Alas, there’s no indication so far that such is the case (which would make for a fascinating premise: an overpowered, burnt-out noblewoman being manipulated by her trusted but duplicitous aide, somewhat akin to A Wild Last Boss Appeared!). Other series have done the OP villainess trope better (e.g., May I Ask for One Final Thing?, Villainess Level 99). I’ll probably give this another episode to see where it goes, but there are far better offerings this season.

A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even: How I Crushed My Homeland with My Mighty Grimoires is streaming on Crunchyroll.