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The Light Novel series is the source material for the adaptation of the Anime and Manga series. The information and terminology on the article will be based on the source material rather than the adaptions. |
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I will never give up, no matter what. Forget all that about me being a normal girl. I'm going to become the weirdest, strangest girl who ever lived! | ”
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— Rozemyne to Ferdinand in Part 3 Volume 3 Chapter 5: A Class for Kids
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Rozemyne (ローゼマイン Rōzemain) is the new protagonist of Ascendance of a Bookworm after Myne’s purported death at the end of Part 2 Volume 4.
She is baptized as the daughter of Karstedt and Elvira, and later adopted by Sylvester and Florencia as an archduke candidate of Ehrenfest. She served as the High Bishop of Ehrenfest’s temple and is a student at the Royal Academy.
Once the Lanzenave invasion was defeated, the new Zent Eglantine bestows her the title of Aub Alexandria, the new duchy formed out of old Ahrensbach. Rozemyne stole its foundation during the Defense of Ehrenfest and officially becomes Yurgenschmidt's first underage Aub.
Appearance
Rozemyne has golden eyes and hip-length, silky, midnight-blue hair that is unusually glossy. Her skin is quite pale due to spending her childhood bedridden by fevers. According to Karstedt, she has “a pretty face” and will “no doubt grow up to be a true beauty.”[14] Due to her illness, she is small enough to pass as several years younger than her true age, as of Part 4 Volume 1, she is about 125 cm (4'1") tall.[15]
She wears her hair in complex braids secured by hair pomades, usually with a decorative flower ornament.[16] Her outfits are tailored by the Gilberta Company, typically using fabrics that match the divine colour of the current season.
In her fourth year at the Royal Academy, Rozemyne is magically transported before the former God of Binding Erwaermen, who successfully petitions Anwachs the God of Growth to grow Rozemyne's body, so that her mana vessel can gain the capacity to hold the Grutrissheit. This also grows Rozemyne's body for the equivalent of several years, making her look pretty much her actual age. However she is still on the smaller side, ending up a bit smaller than Gretia and quite a bit shorter than Brunhilde and Wilfried. But much to her relief, she is now a little taller than her younger sister Charlotte. The clothes she was forced to borrow from the slightly older Brunhilde are however a bit tight around the chest for her.[17] She's also still a bit shorter than Tuuli.[18]
Personality
Rozemyne cares deeply about her friends and loved ones, and she will act without hesitation to protect them from danger. However, she draws a clear distinction between those she feels responsible for and those she is indifferent to.[19] Because she's strongly averse towards suffering and shows concern to others regardless of social status, she has a reputation for being compassionate and is often scolded for being “too soft.”[20]
In addition, Rozemyne has a soft spot for younger siblings, like Kamil and Charlotte. She tries her hardest to look good in front of them, enjoys their praise and admiration, and is extremely protective towards them. She is also caring and compassionate towards younger children in general, including temple orphans and even those from opposing factions, like Letizia and Former Veronica Faction orphans.
In private, Rozemyne still shows Myne’s carefree and lively personality. Although she learns how to conceal her emotions and act gracefully in the manner expected of a noble of her status, her candid nature occasionally still shines through. She has been reprimanded on several occasions for speaking too openly to high-status nobles,[21] and she is aware that she is not very socially adept.
Deeply influenced by her experience as an apprentice merchant, Rozemyne prefers to be independent and self-sufficient. She believes that even nobles should not be above earning their own money,[22] and she insists on personally covering all her expenses. She also believes in providing fair compensation for anything of value, including products, services, and knowledge. Karstedt reflects that while she looks like a child, she has “the rational mind of an adult.”[14] She has proven to be exceedingly competent when required and capable of learning quickly.
Despite her mature outlook, she often rushes headlong into new situations without thinking, which can cause a wide range of unpredictable outcomes. She tends to lose her temper and her sense of perspective when her books or her loved ones are at stake.
History
Rozemyne is a false persona devised by Sylvester, Ferdinand, and Karstedt to allow her to become a noble for her own protection. Using a magic contract, Sylvester changed Myne’s name and forced her lower city family to swear to treat her as a stranger. Her old identity, Myne, is legally dead.
Originally, Sylvester suggested that Rozemyne be baptized as the daughter of Karstedt's late third wife, Rozemary, who like Rozemyne had an unusually high amount of mana. According to this story, Rozemyne was hidden in the Ehrenfest Temple in secret to protect her from the power struggle between Karstedt's first two wives and his third wife after Rozemary’s death.
However, Elvira immediately saw through this story. She pointed out that introducing Rozemyne as Rozemary’s daughter would reignite the familial conflict. Instead, she agreed to baptize Rozemyne as her own true daughter as a favor to Ferdinand.[23] In private, Cornelius is told the original cover story, that Rozemyne is Rozemary’s daughter.[24]
Rozemyne’s prior absence from the nobility was excused by the fact that nobles don't typically announce their children until their baptism. She was re-baptized the next summer and formally announced to the nobility, then immediately adopted by Sylvester as the daughter of the archduke.
To justify the baptism, Rozemyne’s official age is one year younger than Myne’s. This also helped to explain her small size, since the slow growth caused by the Devouring makes her look at least two years younger than girls her age.
Story
See Story Tab
Relationships
See Relationships
Retainers
Rozemyne continues to employ her existing attendants from her time as an apprentice shrine maiden, as well as her guard knight Damuel. She also gains additional guards and retainers to her service, as expected for a noble of her status.
Abilities and Skills
Magical
- Blessings: Rozemyne has shown great proficiency with a variety of blessings, and can invoke multiple gods at once. She occasionally gives blessings unintentionally by praying and by singing religious songs. She successfully improvised a blessing that did not follow the exact wording of an established prayer.
- Enhancement Magic: In order to compensate for her muscle atrophy resulted from prolonged hibernation in Jureve, Rozemyne learned enhancement magic with the help of Ferdinand's magic tools. By practicing with Bonifatius, she eventually became proficient enough to selectively enhance part of her body.
- Highbeast: Rozemyne's highbeast Lessy is designed to be drivable. She can increase or decrease its size at will, allowing her to carry several passengers and their luggage together when necessary. She's also protected from most external harm when she is inside. It is modeled after a Red Panda, but also bears a resemblance to the foul-smelling and vicious grun.
- Mana Affinities: Rozemyne possesses all seven elemental affinities, a rare occurrence normally found only in royalty and in archduke candidates of greater duchies.
- Divine Protections: Rozemyne obtained divine protections from 43 deities, including all 7 primary gods, which lowers her mana consumption for spells and brewing to about 40% of what it was before the ritual. To avoid standing out too much, however, she keeps this a secret. Two of the subordinate gods she has protections from are Chaosfliehe and Verbergen.[4]
- Officially, Ehrenfest declared that she obtained 21 divine protections.[25] While her family and a few trusted individuals are aware that this number is a lie and that she has considerably more divine protections than this, only the princes Sigiswald and Anastasius are privy to the exact number.[3]
- Mana Capacity: Rozemyne has an extremely high mana capacity, even by archduke candidate standards. At the young age of 7, she has already surpassed every other noble in Ehrenfest - including the Aub - except for Ferdinand. None of her peers came close when she enrolled in the Royal Academy.
- Magecraft: Due to her own extensive reading and brewing practices under Ferdinand's strict guidance, Rozemyne's knowledge and skills in magic circles and potion brewing far exceed her peers. Her cooking experiences as a commoner also gives her a significant advantage in ingredients preparation, especially when compared against fellow nobles that never did any manual labor in their life thus far.[26]
- Divine Instrument Manifestation: Rozemyne is able to morph her schtappe into all the Divine Instruments of the primary seven gods and Verfuhremeer's Staff.
- Multiple Schtappe Manifestation: Rozemyne is able to manifest multiple copies of her schtappe at once and even sustain two schtappe morphed into Divine Instruments at the same time.[27]
Non-Magical
- Embroidery: Despite her dislike of it, Rozemyne is actually decently skilled in embroidery for someone her age.[28]
- Language: Rozemyne is very skilled in anything to do with language. She is able to easily read several ancient dialects that even other high-ranking nobles can barely decipher. She's also very good at taking complicated texts and abridging them into simpler language suited for a specific target audience. An example of this is her series of children's bibles.
- Math: Thanks to her studies as Urano, Rozemyne is very good at math. Her method of doing written arithmetic makes her unique in Ehrenfest, where most people use an abacus. She can also calculate large numbers in her head well enough to put even some merchants to shame.
- Music: Due to Ferdinand's and Rosina's extensive training, Rozemyne's skill in playing harspiel is way above her peers. She has a good ear for music and near-perfect pitch, allowing her to recreate many of the songs she heard as Urano.
- Negotiation: Thanks to her experience as an apprentice merchant, Rozemyne is a very skilled negotiator, capable of getting terms in her favor even when negotiating against people with higher authority. She's also good in motivating people to act in her bidding.
- Social Perception: Rozemyne is very perceptive in people's moods and true desires during social interactions, allowing her to win people over. However, she often acts on impulse without proper consideration of the surroundings and the consequences of her action, which frequently ends up causing troubles on an unprecedented scale.[29]
- Tactics: While not being a combatant herself, Rozemyne is capable of coming up with unconventional battle tactics on the fly to win against overwhelming odds, as shown during the treasure-stealing ditter match with Dunkelfelger.[30]
- Teaching: In both the temple orphanage and the children's playroom in the Archduke's Castle, Rozemyne demonstrated great skill in teaching others and organizing study schedules. She is also a fast learner, able to keep up with Ferdinand’s demanding expectations.
Trivia
- When suggesting ideas for her new name as a noble, she suggests "MyneTwo"(マインツー), "NewMyne"(ニューマイン) and "RedMyne"(レッドマイン).
- Rozemyne is a portmanteau of Rozemary and Myne, designed to be long enough for a noble’s name, not too similar to Myne, but close enough that any accidental slips can be easily explained away.
- Urano's father died young, and she grew up mostly without a father figure in life, but Rozemyne has multiple father figures watching over her, namely Gunther, Benno, Ferdinand, Karstedt, and Sylvester.
- Each Rozemyne's guardians have their own unique ways of "punishing" Rozemyne when they're exasperated with her antics:
- Benno: drill her head with his fist
- Ferdinand: pinch her cheeks
- The first time Rozemyne was confronted with a noble's toilet and the slime within it, she ended up screaming in fear. For quite some time after, she refused to visit the toilet alone at night.[31]
- Rozemyne is actually nearly a year older than Wilfried. However, due to her fake baptism, he is considered her “older brother” by a season.
- Age is a complicated subject for Rozemyne, who has four different ages depending on the criteria:
- Her chronological age as Myne, counted since she was born in Gunther's family.
- Her official age as Rozemyne, which is one year younger than her chronological age.
- Her biological age as Rozemyne, which is technically two years lower than her chronological age and one year lower than her official noble age, due to spending two years in a Jureve, which completely halted her growth. After her growth spurt under Anwach's power, her body matches her chronological age.
- Her mental age, which includes her 22 years as Urano, her five years as the original Myne, and all the years following that, except for the two years spent unconscious in her jureve.
- Rozemyne was only able to beat Ferdinand in Reversi the first time they played and has only lost to him ever since. Though this is exactly what she anticipated would happen, which is why she went all-out on him despite him being a beginner.
- She is the 3rd most popular light novel female character from 2020.
- She enjoys that the atmosphere at the Royal Academy is a more relaxed, allowing her to act more like family with Cornelius, without any adults scolding them right away.[32]
- Rozemyne's favorite tea is teegabt and ergey at a ratio of 2:1 with plenty of grauvache milk.[33]
- Rozemyne's preferred massage oil after baths changes with her mood.[33]
- Despite having enough language proficiency to decipher ancient texts, Rozemyne struggles to understand the euphemisms used in noble love stories. She likens those to Indian Movies where crowds will rush in and start dancing all of a sudden, finds them interesting in the beginning but soon just skips them when reading, making it more difficult for her to understand them.
- Since Yurgenschmidt doesn't have the concept of deformed, cute, or abstract style drawing, Rozemyne's drawings are mostly viewed as horrendous. This is often exaggerated and parodied in the bonus manga.
- This also extends to her highbeast Lessy, which is universally frowned upon as a "ridiculous grun" despite originally intended to be cute, though there are a few (mainly female) nobles who do appreciate Lessy's cuteness, like Brigitte.
- Though this is purely a matter of style, since the one time when she drew a picture of the king and queen of the gods without any styling, it earned astonished praise from Wilma.
- Rozemyne shares the same great-grandfather (Previous Count Leisegang) with her retainers Cornelius, Hartmut, Leonore, Traugott, and Brunhilde.
- Rozemyne won the 4th position in the 2023 rankings of female protagonists by Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi![34]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 11. Chapter 1: The Pale-faced Royal Family
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Fanbook 2. Q&A with Miya Kazuki
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 2. Chapter 1: The Royal Family and the Library
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 4. Chapter 11: Reobtaining Divine Protections
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 12. Chapter 18: The Inauguration Ceremony
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 2 Volume 4. Chapter 14: The New Me
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 11. Chapter 9: The Blessings’ Influence
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 9. Florencia — At the Ivory Tower
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 12. Chapter 6: The Engagement Ceremony
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 6. Chapter 2: The Canceled Engagement and a Choice for the Future
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 4. Prologue
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 6. Chapter 4: At Karstedt’s Estate
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 6. Epilogue
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 1. Prologue.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Fanbook 2. Character Design Sheets
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 1. Chapter 3: A Noble’s Baptism Ceremony.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 7. Chapter 8: I’m Back
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 7. Chapter 11: Anxiety and the Measuring
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 1. Prologue
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 2. Chapter 1: Meeting for the Tea Party.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 2. Chapter 14: Reporting to the Prince.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 1. Chapter 13: Mana Compression and Creating a Highbeast.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 1 Volume 1. Prologue.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 3 Volume 1. Being My Little Sister’s Knight.
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 2. The Saint's Ritual
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 4 Volume 6. Chapter 7: Brewing and Recovery Potions
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 5 Volume 2. Chapter 7: The Royal Academy’s Dedication Ritual
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 4 Volume 4. Chapter 14: Left at Home
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 4 Volume 7. Chapter 1: Post-Return Discussion
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 4 Volume 2. Chapter 9: Treasure-Stealing Ditter
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 3 Volume 1. Chapter 2: Preparing for the Baptism Ceremony
- ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm Light Novel. Part 4 Volume 2. Chapter 13: A Tea Party with Eglantine
- ↑ 33.0 33.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Fanbook 2. Story 7: Starting Life as a Retainer
- ↑ "Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! Reveals 2023 Series Ranking". MyAnimeList. November 30, 2022.