Platform: Windows
Release: 2020
I picked up My Vow to My Liege for a few reasons. One was that it's set in ancient China, which is unusual for an otome game, but also because it's by a Chinese developer (no chance of being exoticized by outsiders) and I heard that it has a good translation.
This title is less than a year old as of this writing, so be aware there will be spoilers as I get further into my discussion.
My Vow to My Liege is set during the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, probably during 492 BC given that Fuchai has been king for three years. Five years prior to the story, Fuchai's father tried breaking the Sacred Vow that bound their family and their kingdom to the deceitful Dragon God, but rather than killing it, they were only able to seal it away, at the cost of the entire Shi clan (the head priest and priestess's family) and all of King Helü's sons, including the real Fuchai.
The game's Fuchai is actually Tengyu, Helü's daughter. Since a woman cannot rule, and the Sacred Seal binding the royal family to the Dragon God can only appear on the bodies of those of the bloodline, Tengyu took on the name of her youngest brother in order to become her father's heir. When he died, she became king, and only those closest to her are aware that she is a woman.
Naturally this introduces complications, as the Spring and Autumn period is a fractured time in Chinese history with multiple smaller kingdoms rather than a single empire. Fuchai wants to keep her kingdom safe while also researching ways to sever her kingdom's connection to the Dragon God, and one of the traditional ways is to form a political alliance through marriage.
It's not surprising that Fuchai wonders about the point of it all when she would never be able to produce a child with a wife, but she still proceeds with the marriage proposal because it's too important not to. As for how getting a blood-related heir would be conceived, her prime minister advises her at one point to pick a random guy, get pregnant, and he will handle disposing of her partner to keep it secret. She's not keen on the idea.
Fuchai is a complicated character. She wears her royal mask well and is capable of thinking like the man she pretends to be both in terms of romantic interest (she admits that if she really was a man, she would love to marry Princess Shaojiang) and as a king with too much to lose. There aren't too many otome heroines who will unhesitantly cut off an enemy's hand during an interrogation. No one prompts her to do it. She does it on her own without any dramatic build-up because she's out of time and needs answers from enemy agents who are willing to kill themselves, but might speak up to avoid being maimed. (She gets the info from the maimed prisoner's partner after making an example out of the first one.)
That isn't to say that Fuchai is all about being a ruthless king. She has moments of vulnerability, and she wants to live as a woman instead of being trapped by her filial and national obligations, but she's also capable with a sword and will go to hell and back for those she calls "friend."
This makes it unfortunate that part of her backstory deals with attempted rape (and attempted suicide following the attempted rape) because it really doesn't do anything to advance her character. She's already compelling without it and barring one romance route, her experience in the past has no impact on her present. It's just there like it's part of the atmosphere.
Since Fuchai is (sort of) a historical character, one of the more interesting things about the game are the other historical characters around her. This is an otome, so that means there are love interests. The game gives us four, three of whom are historical; Wu Zixu, her prime minister, Goujian, an enemy king currently held by her kingdom as a slave, and Shi Yiguang, historically one of Fuchai's concubines but in this case a male mage and childhood friend. Chenfeng, Fuchai's attendant/bodyguard/childhood playmate, rounds out the group as the fourth option.
Because of this history, savvy players are likely to have expectations on how things will go and who to trust, which can run counter to what Fuchai believes. Given that Goujian is historically famous for nursing his revenge (there's even a proverb about his dedication to doing do) it's quite likely that a Chinese player wouldn't be surprised that Goujian betrays Fuchai on most routes, even if Fuchai herself is. Goujian does a pretty good job of pretending to be cooperative, even saving Fuchai's life at one point, all in the name of obtaining the freedom he needs to do the real damage.
For an otome, My Vow to My Liege leans heavily into dense military action sequences, which is an unusual choice for the genre. Due to Fuchai's duties and the eventual escape of the Dragon God from his imprisonment, she and her love interest have to deal with finding sacred artifacts and threats from other nations. There are land battles, sea battles, operations in another kingdom, filling the middle to late parts of the game with a lot of warfare. And for those liking proactive heroines, Fuchai is in the thick of it, from participating in planning stages (where as king she is the final word) to charging in with her escort herself.
Fuchai also doesn't spend much time wondering about what love is or baffled about the feelings she's having. She acknowledges the affection she has for the men in her life fairly easily, but she does not know what her future will be or if she'll even have one, which is probably the most mood-dampening aspect of her romances. When the Dragon God's plans begin in earnest, the Sacred Seal on Fuchai's chest keeps acting up and it's clear that it's slowly killing her. One of the reasons she tells Wu Zixu that she cannot agree to his secret pregnancy plans is that she doesn't know if she's going to be around long enough with a rogue Dragon God running around.
Fortunately, on most routes the romance and the Dragon God plot move hand in hand, so confronting her feelings about her love is woven in a naturalistic fashion. Between events like Chenfeng being brainwashed by the Dragon God and Wu Zixu being framed by the Dragon God's followers, it makes it understandable why Fuchai would devote time to her affections even though she's simultaneously trying to take down a god.
And no matter what happens, Fuchai will always take down the Dragon God, even in her bad endings. I really appreciated the game's fidelity in sticking to her main quest since some otome will drop the heroine's story in favor of focusing on the love interest's goals in certain routes. Before anything else, it's Fuchai's mission, which only makes sense when she's the liege of the title.
I'd also like to talk about Shaojiang, who plays a major role in the story. She's introduced as Fuchai's fiancée for the arranged marriage, but she's a determinator herself and a powerful mage. When she gets kidnapped by the Dragon God's followers and trapped in the Human Sacrificial Array, she ends up fighting them from inside of it.
After her initial surprise at learning Fuchai's gender, she doesn't freak out or complain about wanting to break the marriage because her husband-to-be is actually a woman. It's just another fact and she doesn't treat Fuchai any differently for it. One ending even suggests she's still sweet on Fuchai and that's the reason she's refusing another marriage proposal. Though, she is a bit of a shipper herself and happily arranges for Fuchai to get some alone time with her chosen man, providing that Shaojiang approves of the match.
As with many otome, there is a common route, a fairly substantial one, that establishes the setting and the characters before branching, and the routes are long enough that I'll be breaking the game up into a series of posts like I do for most of the longer otome I play. So next week will start with Chenfeng!
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