Bibliophile Princess

Episode 12

It may take a while to get there, but we do see in this final episode of Bibliophile Princess how Elianna is changing and learning to step outside her comfort zone. It is not as loud or flashy a moment as protagonists before her have had, but it is still powerful in its own way. It is fitting that it comes at the end of the Lady Sharon storyline as well; the little imp is convinced that she's figured out a way to get Eli to step aside in favor of her older sister: she offers Elianna access to a very rare book. The tradeoff, of course, is that in exchange for being allowed to borrow the book Eli will have to step aside and allow Sharon to be Chris' date to the dance. The idea is that this would imply that Christopher was willing to throw over Elianna in order to marry the recently widowed Lady Mireille, which has been Lady Sharon's objective from the beginning.

Even if we ignore the fact that Sharon isn't even offering Elianna the book on a more permanent basis (which doesn't feel all that odd to expect, given that she's asking her to give up the position of queen of the country), the whole thing really illustrates very nicely just how smug, confident, and out of her league Lady Sharon is. Chris makes her admit that she is doing everything not on the behest of the duke who rules her home province, but out of her own misguided ambition. Sharon has bought wholeheartedly into popularized myths that mourned the fictional separation of Chris and Mireille. That such stories are revealed to be nothing but base propaganda is unsurprising to everyone except Sharon and Elianna.

I don't think that this is meant to put the two on the same level; Sharon's belief in the stories can be chalked up to her own desperate love for her sister, while Elianna's willingness to accept the stories as fact is a testament to her own deep-seated insecurities. That she refuses Sharon's offer of the book in favor of remaining tied to Christopher is therefore an example of her not only finding joy in something that isn't reading, but also of her faith in Christopher himself. She has decided to take him at his word, and to believe that she truly is the one he wants to marry, no matter what gossiping tongues may say. Between this and the end of the episode where she sets aside her book to take a walk with her fiancé, we can see that Elianna has made real progress as a character.

It does, however, feel a bit like too little too late. That is the major failing of this adaptation: it is difficult to really feel like we know Elianna as a person. We know she loves books, we know that she's smart and insecure, but we don't understand how it is that she comes to change. Even Chris' repeated efforts at showing her how much he loves her don't feel like quite enough to affect the sort of monumental growth that would see her realizing that there are things other than books in which you can take enjoyment. Is it also because she is realizing that if she wants to stay by Chris' side, she has to learn to do the things that will allow her to survive in court? Maybe, we don't really know. To the end, Eli remains primarily a wide-eyed blank slate, and that does a disservice to her as a character, the story as a whole, and if I'm being dramatic, to all of us bibliophiles who would rather read than interact with another human being.

Bibliophile Princess' run does not cover all of the available books. In part that's because the most recent (translated) novel ends on a cliffhanger, but also that's because this really is a very nice ending point. If you've enjoyed the anime even a little, I urge you to check out the light novels; they do a much better job that rounding out the characters and the story. This hasn't been a great show, but if it interests people in the source material, then I suppose it has done its job.

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Bibliophile Princess is currently streaming on HIDIVE.