Now that Rae is Claire’s maid, Rae decides to play some games. However, it reveals something about Claire and, particularly, Rae.
As for the first half, it’s more of a focus on the three princes. As expected, Rae showed her skills at playing chess with Rod. Of course, he ends up winning despite her best efforts. Rae revealed her prior game knowledge of playing chess with an AI for hours, but obviously, she threw the game. Yep, Rae kind of saw through it.
Of course, Rae ended up playing chess with Claire, and of course, she didn’t seem to be winning until Yu came by and told her what move to make. Eventually, he did a change of pace of playing Poker. As expected, Rae does terribly compared to Misha, Claire, and Yu. Yep, Rae pretty much had terrible luck.
Lastly, there is Thane, as Claire barges in after hearing him play the harp. Of course, Rae convinced him to play the prince’s game with Claire, Rae, Lene and Thane. It’s a game where the king tells two numbers to do an order. This consists of Rae touching Claire’s hand and Thane patting Claire’s head. However, Rae rigged the game by cheating with Lene to try to have Thane kiss Claire. It sounds counterintuitive since Rae does have a massive crush on Claire. Sure, Rae takes this as testing Thane, but it’s something more than that.
During dinner, Misha eventually asks if Rae is a lesbian. Ultimately, Rae comes clean and says she has no interest in men and sees a glimpse of Rae or Rei’s former life. Rae seems dejected with the prejudice from others regarding her preference for women, and never had anyone Rei love return her feelings. However, she fears that they will become farther away from her if she falls in love. Rae does this to make her beloved happy and wants Claire to treat her like he always does. In turn, she plans to do the same.
As expected, what Rae did bring out the discussion of prejudice. As mentioned, with Rae’s struggles to get someone to love her back, Claire is very prejudiced. Misha points out that how Claire reacts to Rae coming out makes it appear she seems prejudiced towards Rae because she is a lesbian.
Of course, she reacts to Thane positively despite having feelings for Rae deep inside but shows prejudicial behavior. This is not too surprising, given her classist behavior as well. When two girls discriminate against Rae just because she likes women, it causes Claire to take her anger out on those two girls, as surprising as it might be. While Claire claims to be straight, I feel she has not yet figured out her sexual orientation.
Regardless of the revelations, it appears the status quo remains the same. This episode is a bit serious but shows that Claire is a flawed character as she is homophobic and classist. However, Claire will defrost and eventually change her ways to become more accepting as her character develops and accepts her sexuality along with same-sex relationships and commoners. Either way, we’ll see what Rae is capable of next time, as there is a practical class involving slimes.
Reviews from Other Bloggers
- I’m in Love With The Villainess Episode 3: Things That Were Definitely Said – The Yuri Empire
- I’m In Love With the Villainess and ‘The Talk’ – Okazu
Claire’s reactions were understandable reasons to play games with the Brothers Prince. Totally worth it.
Progressive show is progressive. I know several women who related with Rae’s struggle. It’s especially well presented in this show despite the “trope” not being new for Yuri. Best of luck to Rae in her quest as there is indeed hope. Seeds were already planted showing Claire isn’t as straight as she thinks.
Speaking of Claire so cool of her to show the mean girls who’s the top girl in the school. Hopefully over time her sense of justice will be for Rae’s sake. For now it’s cool she did it to vent her self-anger over misjudging Rae.
Yes, it was an interesting episode showing the struggles lesbians face in real life, but of course there is a lot more social/LGBT issues that will get touch upon later, besides the obvious income inequality. But yes, I do agree that Claire may not be as straight as she believes, but more will get revealed soon as the story develops.
But at least she defended Rae to those girls that prejudged her, so at least she is on the road to redemption. Only a matter of time.