This manga suffers from a really bad case of "should have ended a long time ago". The first 20 to 40 chapters of this manga are really solid. Top tier shoujo romance, with good characters, interesting interactions, light and compelling story. That doesn't last long though, things get rough, and they get rough fast and they don't get better.
The first bit of the manga, about up to where the anime ends, is the only real enjoyable and worthwhile part of the series. The drama isn't too overblown, the characters are largely enjoyable and complement each other quite well, and the story doesn't have any real flaws. It was really quite good enough for me to consider it one of my "favourites" and a gold standard for shoujo romance. After that little honeymoon phase the story takes a repetitive turn wherein the characters continuously degrade and the general plot stagnates.
Chapters (roughly) 40-110 can be summarized in one phrase: "Your princess is in another castle". The plot from this point forwards is basically Nike gets kidnapped, gets a little Stockholm syndrome, NTR bait, Livius rescues her useless ass, and she defends the people who kidnapped her because "they had a good reason". The problem is over, and everyone lives happy every after*... until Nike gets kidnapped again. This same plotline happens literally three times, and is literally the same exact shit, with just a new skin / villain. This gets real old, real fast, and does little to develop the characters, or the plot (which comes in real hard, last minute, and not in a good way).
This hurts Nike as a character and the general story because we don't see her relationship with Livius develop (which is the literally supposed to be the focus of the series). Nike prior to Livius was carefree, naive but strongwilled, took her blows in stride and knew what she wanted. Afterwards, we begin to resent her as a character because she defends villains very clearly in the wrong and does so by directly opposing Livius who is in the right, both as a King and a husband, seeking retribution / punishment. We also see some half-assed NTR bait where the captors fall in love with her because she's so nice and she does little to rebuke it or even notice it, and when Nike and Livius do meet up after all this, they make each other worse people, and worse monarchs, either through their nonsense fights, or general character regression. Nike somehow continues to become more, and more naive as this repeated kidnap nonsense occurs, the direct opposite of what you would think should happen. She also ends up combative with only Livius too, almost as if he is the villain who kidnapped her or is in the wrong for wanting to retaliate, as a King should. At least if he wants to keep his head. Nike goes through no meaningful character development until the end of the manga, which has to asspull it.
Livius becomes an awful king and weak person. Livius prior to Nike was a cold, callous, and maybe even a cruel king, but an effective one, who largely improved the lives of his citizens, and the country, as well as the surrounding areas / countries. As a person, he was a checked out, distrustful, but moral, intelligent, and logical. After Nike, the prodigious king becomes an idiotic emotional child. He loses his conviction, his ability to rule, his logical nature, and becomes a weak, whipped, angry child who has nothing to offer as a spouse or as a king. He is worse off from having met Nike (until the end which obviously has to asspull progression), he trades his old personality flaws, which he managed to capitalize on, and trades them for new ones he cannot capitalize one that have essentially no merit, that never could have built the country he has.
The side characters, villains, and other characters honestly aren't worth mentioning, they're very one note, and none of them have any real serious development / regression, at least when compared to the two main characters. The villains are pretty pathetic, either in their justifications for whatever their plot relevant actions are, or general personalities which seem to revolve around Livius or Nike, or both of them, in some ridiculous manner. The side characters are really overshadowed by the leads which do not really allow them develop or take any meaningful spotlight. Some of them are pretty interesting / funny, others are generic and whatever. None of them can either save or ruin things however, as the latter has been thoroughly handled by Nike and Livius.
The story and the new villains / characters (for the duration of the kidnap nonsense), often appear and try to guilt Livius and paint him as an awful person for making mistakes, or awful (but justifiable or at least understandable) choices, as a ruler might have to. This often ends up, at least to me, feeling ridiculous, doubly so when we largely view the story through the lens of Livius, and we see the context surrounding these misdeeds, and we remember Livius was a literal child throughout the duration of these events. Sure their motivations are understandable, but even when looking at the story through their eyes, it's really hard to like or sympathize with them, at least from a logical point of view.
After making it through this nonsense we end up in quite possibly the worst boat a fantasy manga / story can end up in, and we ride it all the way until the end of the manga. We end up with a "future past" story-line wherein the setting of the manga actually ends up the results of a now dead hyper advanced civilization, a la Horizon Zero Dawn, except we get literally no indication of this, until it happens over 100 chapters in. This revelation is jarring, out of character (for the manga), and completely unnecessary. It adds little to the overall story, if anything it detracts, and is not even close to the best direction the manga could have gone. It's even more irritating when a "end of the world" sort of apocalypse conspiracy plot line joins in, which is even more jarring and even more out of no where. The only benefits of this is that the manga is ending and we get some half-assed character development. The story is at this point, for all intents and purposes, completely dead, a shell of it's former self, and has all but abandoned its previous romantic / adventure SoL focuses for which it gained a name from and which was the primary redeeming feature of the manga.
The manga ends off exactly how you might expect, with the power of friendship and love, and a little bit of self sacrifice saving the day, before all consequences and sacrifices are wiped away after a timeskip, where everything ends happily ever after. Except no one gives a damn at this point, no one cares about the characters, the story, the manga, at all, anymore. You just end up at an empty, disappointing ending, that honestly, you've probably checked out for the majority of, for a manga you no longer care about, wondering about how good the story could have been if it had gone down a different route.
Seriously, don't read the manga, 20 chapters of greatness is not worth 120 chapter of dreadfulness. Just watch the anime and use your imagination to create a story of where things could have gone, because I guarantee it will be better than what actually happened in the manga.
