Ferdinand

Ferdinand (フェルディナンド, Ferudinando) is the High Priest (Head Priest in the English dub of the anime) of the Ehrenfest temple who served as Myne’s teacher. He later becomes Rozemyne’s guardian and mentor.

As the son of the Sixth Aub Ehrenfest and a mistress, Ferdinand is the half-brother of Sylvester and an archduke candidate of Ehrenfest.

Ferdinand has light gold eyes and pale blue hair that falls to his shoulders. He is tall and has a slender build. Generally, his face reveals little emotion. In noblewomen's society, Ferdinand is considered very attractive.

When Myne first encounters him, she thinks he looks around the same age as Benno, although he is actually about ten years younger. His worn appearance is primarily due to overwork, and he tends to look closer to his real age when he has more time to relax.

As Ferdinand often says himself, he does not have a naturally “likeable” personality. He treats most people coldly, unless he has reason to believe they are valuable to him, and only bothers with politeness when it benefits him. As an opponent, Ferdinand is calculating and ruthless. He exploits every weakness without restraint to secure the best possible result for himself. Likely as a result of the long and intense abuse he suffered from Veronica, he is especially distrustful, cold, and impatient with women.

However, Ferdinand is deeply loyal and will go to great lengths to protect and support the few people he cares about. Despite his often solitary life, he values personal relationships highly, and he admits to Myne that he envies the unconditional love and support she receives from her family.

Due to his difficult upbringing, Ferdinand rarely expresses his emotions outwardly and maintains a calm, pragmatic attitude. When he does show kindness or concern, he tends to do it in a roundabout and hard-to-understand manner. He also is good at hiding discomfort and pain: the more upset he is, the brighter he smiles.

An exceptionally competent and hardworking person, Ferdinand values those same qualities in others. However, he has no patience for those who cannot meet his standards. Myne reflects that he often tries to do everything himself rather than rely on others. Ferdinand also loves research and often forgets to eat or sleep when he’s studying a fascinating topic.

Ferdinand is described as a cold-blooded pragmatist, who cares about almost nothing but efficiency. He would give only explanations and orders that are as short and to the point as possible to save time, create potions that maximize effectiveness but are absolutely repugnant, or traumatize people to teach them a lesson. Ironically, this habit sometimes end up causing delays due to the recipient not fully understanding his intentions. For example, he told Rozemyne to strip during a medical examination, which caused a slew of misunderstandings and troubles. Going into a little more detail, and telling her to remove her socks and expose the back of her torso would have led to her immediate compliance.

Ferdinand is the son of the Sixth Aub Ehrenfest and Seradina, making him an archduke candidate of Ehrenfest. He was raised in noble society and trained to support his half-brother Sylvester, who was favored to be the next Aub Ehrenfest.

His mother was a princess of the country of Lanzenave, who at the time resided in a royal villa in the Sovereignty, which is also where Ferdinand was raised. Since a brother of Ferdinand was chosen as the sole male child to be kept, Ferdinand was decided to be disposed of. Unlike most Yurgenschmidt nobles in this situation however, Ferdinand's father chose to take him to his home duchy rather than see his son executed. Whenever Ferdinand asked him for his reasoning, he always answered that it was the Goddess of Time's guidance and that he was absolutely certain that Ferdinand's presence will benefit Ehrenfest.

Before his death of his father, Ferdinand promised that he would do everything in his power to make his half-brother Sylvester the archduke and aid him henceforth. It is a promise Ferdinand is willing to go to extreme lengths to keep, even if the result is great personal suffering for himself.

Because Ferdinand’s mother was not a legal wife of the Aub, and Veronica refused to adopt him, he could not legally become the archduke, unless every other member of the archducal family died. Nevertheless, Veronica viewed him as a threat to her son’s future position and routinely harassed and ostracized him.

At age ten, Ferdinand enrolled in the Royal Academy, where he excelled in his studies. After Justus told him it was possible to enroll in multiple courses, he decided to simultaneously take the scholar course, the knight course, and the archduke candidate course. Unlike most students, he viewed the Royal Academy as a respite from his difficult life in Ehrenfest and stayed there year-round, only returning home when summoned.

During his school years, Ferdinand studied as a disciple of Professor Hirschur, an avid researcher of magic tools. He also became widely known among the other students for his skill in treasure-stealing ditter and harspiel, and routinely received the top grades in his class. After graduating from the Royal Academy, Ferdinand briefly served with the Ehrenfest Knight's Order, where he left a strong impression on the apprentice knight Damuel.

When Ferdinand was in the castle, Veronica would tamper with his food whenever his father wasn't looking, either switching out ingredients to make the meals taste horrible without altering their appearance or sometimes even lacing it with slow-acting poisons. He could only enjoy the taste of the food for breakfast and lunch where he ate alone. This lead to Ferdinand dreading shared meals and having an aversion to them to this day.

The death of the previous archduke increased Veronica’s power in Ehrenfest. When Ferdinand began to feel he was in danger of losing his life to her harassment, he followed Sylvester’s advice and joined the temple, giving up his status as a noble.

Not content with Ferdinand leaving noble society, Veronica used this opportunity to further harass him by taking away the cape in the duchy's colour that Ferdinand had received from his father at the gifting ceremony. Rather than making a completely new one, Ferdinand instead opted to use the blue cape he had won from the Dunkelfelger noble Heisshitze in a competition at the royal academy.

Initially, Ferdinand was bored with life in the temple and had little to occupy his time besides reading and research. Upon hearing this, his brother Sylvester sent a rather significant part of his own work to Ferdinand, in part so he would not have to work so much himself and in part to help his younger brother stave off the boredom.

When he first came to the temple, he only took on only two attendants in the temple. He also hired a chef solely so his temple attendants would be fed, while he commuted to his estate for every single meal on account of fearing that Bezewanst would try to poison him. A fear that turned out to be well justified, since one day his attendants caught a gray shrine maiden trying to sneak something into the food in his chamber, apparently not knowing that Ferdinand never ate there.

Ferdinand personally interrogated the shrine maiden and took the liquid meant for his food away from her. He diluted the poison to make it less toxic and somehow managed to slip it into the food of the High Bishop's chamber, resulting in everyone there - including Bezewanst - being bedridden and in intense stomach pain for three days.

Despite being more or less caught red-handed, Bezewanst still went to complain to Ferdinand about having his own poison used against him, to which Ferdinand only coldly replied that he was surprised a member of the archducal family would be so easy to poison and that he should be glad he diluted the poison from what Bezewanst tried to administer to him. He further availed himself to give his uncle further opportunities to learn the ways of the nobles in the castle as a veiled threat that he would not hesitate to poison the High Bishop again, which he picked up on. This resulted in it being forbidden for attendants to enter the kitchens of blue robes other than their own master, which marked the end of any poisoning incidents in the temple.

The civil war in the Sovereignty and subsequent political purges caused a serious mana shortage. Young blue priests and shrine maidens were called back into noble society, while those with enough mana were sent to the Sovereignty temple. Due to his mana and family status, Ferdinand was the only one left who was qualified to become the High Priest. Even though his new position caused him a high workload, he didn't say anything to Sylvester about being overworked and just kept doing both the work Sylvester sent his way and his own work. To be able to finish all of this he regularly worked late into the night and used large amounts of rejuvenation potions to compensate for the lack of sleep.

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 * Eckhart - An archnoble who serves as a guard knight. He also helps with paperwork at the temple.
 * Justus - An archnoble who serves as both an attendant and scholar. He specializes in collecting information.
 * Lasfam - An attendant at Ferdinand’s personal estate. When Ferdinand moved to Ahrensbach, Lasfam remained behind to care for the estate, which had been turned over to Rozemyne . It is currently unclear whether he is still counted as Ferdinand's attendant or officially serves Rozemyne.
 * Sergius - An Ahrensbach noble assigned to be his attendant upon his arrival in Ahrensbach.
 * Raimund - A mednoble apprentice scholar who was Ferdinand's disciple for a year, before becoming his full retainer upon Ferdinand's move to Ahrensbach.


 * Arno - A gray priest ,who formerly served as Ferdinand’s head attendant at the temple, until his execution.
 * Gido - An attendant, though it is currently unclear whether he is a noble or a grey priest . Since he was not mentioned among the only three retainers he kept on when moving to Ahrensbach, he must have left Ferdinand's service.
 * Fran - A gray priest attendant reassigned to Rozemyne’s service.
 * Heidemarie - A scholar who served Ferdinand until she married Eckhart.
 * Lothar - A gray priest serving Ferdinand at the temple, until his departure. He was occasionally sent to Hartmut to assist him in his new duties.
 * Zahm - A gray priest attendant reassigned to Rozemyne’s service.


 * Enhancement Magic: Although his proficiency isn't specifically mentioned, Ferdinand is skilled enough in body enhancement magic that he doesn't need assisting magic tools to perform it.
 * Highbeast: Ferdinand's highbeast takes the shape of a white winged lion.
 * Mana Affinities: Ferdinand has all seven elemental affinities, making his mana appear pearl-white.
 * Mana Capacity: Ferdinand has an exceptionally large amount of mana. His mana capacity is believed to be the highest in Ehrenfest. Ferdinand is roughly equal in strength to a seasonal feybeast lord like the Lord of Winter.
 * Research: Ferdinand is a highly skilled researcher with in-depth knowledge of mana, magic circles, magic tools, and potions, as well as feybeasts, feyplants, ancient dialects, and many other subjects. He has also personally invented many new magic tools and potions.


 * Combat: As a knight, Ferdinand can wield a wide range of weapons with ease, including a bow, sword, scythe, and even a thrown cast net. Very few people in Ehrenfest are able to match him in combat. He is also recognized for his skill as a tactician, both in real battles and in ditter.
 * Education: Ferdinand is an excellent teacher capable of training knights, scholars, temple attendants, and archduke candidates. Although his teaching style is exceptionally strict and demanding, those who are able to survive his training are guaranteed to be outstanding, like Fran and Rozemyne.
 * Intellect: Ferdinand has genius level intellect and is a prodigy in almost all aspects. When he was enrolled in the Royal Academy, he took the knight’s, scholar’s, and archduke candidate’s courses simultaneously and earned the title of best-in-class in all curricula every year. He has exceptional memory and analytical ability that allows him to remember tiny details and draw connections from seemingly unrelated facts.
 * Medicine: Ferdinand has extensive knowledge of medicine, which qualifies him to serve as Rozemyne’s physician.
 * Music: While all nobles can sing, dance, and play the harspiel, Ferdinand’s musical skills are widely considered to be among the best in Ehrenfest and even earned him praise in other duchies.
 * Politics: Ferdinand can quickly grasp the political landscape and act to turn it to his advantage, staying several steps ahead of his opponents. He's also good at manipulating others to do what he wants.
 * Wealth: By receiving various allowances for performing temple, knight, and archduke duties, as well as selling his inventions to powerful duchies and people, Ferdinand became extremely wealthy, even by archduke candidate standards. He considers a few large golds "pocket change".


 * Ferdinand serves as the narrator for the anime.
 * He returns debts at least twice the amount he received.
 * Ferdinand's rejuvenation potions taste so bad that it became a running gag in series.
 * Rozemyne calls the original variant "ultra-nasty potions".
 * Sylvester thought it was child cruelty to make children drink it.
 * Charlotte wondered if it's a cruel prank when she took it for the first time, even though it was already the version with improved taste.
 * Feeding a ruelle feystone spiked with a few drops of the potion to a feybeast is enough to make it rampage in agony.
 * Ferdinand's favorite food is consommé soup, and his favorite cookies are the ones made with tea leaves.
 * He is the second most popular light novel male character from 2020.
 * Ferdinand has the habit of pinching Rozemyne's cheek when he is exasperated by her antics.
 * During his time as a student at the Royal Academy, he was often invited to tea parties by a princess to play the harspiel. If he weren’t an archduke candidate, he might have become her personal musician.
 * Ferdinand hardly praises anyone. The best praise he ever gives is "very good“ (大変結構, taihenkekkou).
 * He developed his own mana compression method that has similar effectiveness to the second stage of Rozemyne's method, such that he hardly saw any improvement when performing that stage of compression.
 * Ferdinand is selfless to the point of often disregarding his own well-being when it comes to Ehrenfest, but is often viewed as a ruthless demon lord. In contrast, Rozemyne is mostly acting out of her own selfish desires, but is heralded as a saint.
 * Ferdinand set a very high mana limit for his hidden room in the temple to block out Bezewanst and Sylvester. It is also to prevent his enemies from entering using his feystone if he happens to be killed.
 * Ferdinand and Bezewanst's roles were reversed in one of the early story drafts. In that version of story, the High Priest views Myne as a dangerous threat to be eliminated due to her large mana capacity, while the High Bishop is a kind old man who protects her.
 * Ferdinand is used to being called monstrous and cruel. At the Royal Academy, he was regularly called monstrous and referred to as "the Lord of Evil in Ditter," (ディッター魔王) on account of his devious schemes and strategies at ditter.
 * Since the concept of hell and demons don't exist in Yurgenschmidt culture, the term "Lord of Evil" is comparing him to seasonal feybeast lords like the Lord of Winter.
 * Professor Gundolf refered to Ferdinand as "the lonely genius created by overwhelming misfortune" on at least one occasion.
 * In his graduation year at the Royal Academy, Ferdinand danced the part of Ewigeliebe in the graduation ceremony's Dedication Whirl.