This episode lacked the punch I was expecting. I think partially because they’re forced to rush through the story, and partially just some bad storytelling choices.

We’re told a couple of things about Veronica, but not in a way that sinks in. If they don’t show us clearly how Veronica is different from other nobles, and specifically in how she treats different people differently, the story is going to lose a lot of its emotional bite. She was cruel to Ferdinand, and we only get like one sentence about that so far.

We don’t really understand what it means if Wilfried fails at his winter debut, as we’ve never seen a winter debut, and I don’t think we’re even specifically told how much time he has. We don’t understand the extent of Wilfried’s running away at a basic level. It must be extreme if he’s not even learned his letters, but if you tell the audience that he’s been receiving private tutoring for a long time and he’s still at exactly zero, it’s just so absurd that there’s no way for us to comprehend.

We’re told that Wilfried’s attendants aren’t raising him properly, but we’re not really shown it. The only time we’ve been shown Wilfried running away was a long time ago in the episode about Rozemyne’s baptism, and it’s not clear that this is what Wilfried does all day, every day.

Instead, we’re given a sort of heartwarming scene at the end where Wilfried and his attendant… was that Oswald?.. nod at each other like everything is better. No, everything has not been fixed. Wilfried’s attendants are utter failures at their primary job.

By the end of the episode, you know that this is a critical event for the future of the duchy, an event where the fate of the next archduke is in the balance. I mean, what happens if a complete failure becomes archduke? What happens if Wilfried is disinherited? Would he be sent to the temple as a blue priest? I had hoped this episode would have a similar amount of impact as the harspiel concert episode.