The Duchess Doesn’t Love Chapter 20 part2 Discussion

ML's actions are not *entirely* his own will or fault. He definitely carries some of the blame but

Spoiler

He's being forcefed magic potion that erases all good memories of FL and amplifies all bad emotions towards her. Basically, everytime he cheats or treats her badly, he had just been dosed to hate her to the extreme. These same people have been also gaslighting him into thinking FL hates him, cheats on him, is using him, etc.

He decided to be loyal to FL after their first time. It promptly gets forcefully ERASED FROM HIS BRAIN while he was trying to break up with the side piece, then he cheats with the side piece because he doesn't remember any of it. To me, she altered his memories and basically r*ped him. So that's kind of how a ton of his terrible stuff shouldn't have been nearly that bad.

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It wouldn't have felt so disgusting if it didn't give a few short explicit scenes at the very start, but I think it's to emphasize the vast difference in his later relations with FL. Still. Ew.

The writing, plot, characters, etc are all pretty good quality. There's a metric f*ton of angst and misunderstandings, but it's primarily actual plot and not just people being dense for the sake of plot. Though there's a large deal of forced intimacy (as in most people would say noncon), most of the time it's more like 'hesitant at first' or it comes across VERY sus because one of them is super angry or jealous or forcing themselves for the sake of 'duty'... there's technically a small grey area to argue consent, but you'd need a magnifying glass to find it sometimes. But when it's wanted, it's WANTED. I know that doesn't count for much, but yeah.

Both of the two specific unfortunate incidents later on... ML didn't cause those. He's actually heartbroken that FL made choices that lead to that stuff. She was the one who knew and knowingly chose to do the things that caused it. No spoiling, just... you'll understand if you read to those points.

ML is pretty awful, but if you don't notice various details, you'll often assume he's the cause for things... because I mean, he's pretty awful at times. Extremely awful. It's just that he's not AS AWFUL as you'd first think. The first third of the novel? I wanted to set him on fire... with a very slow burning flame to draw out his suffering. The very end? I think he suffered *almost* enough, not as much as I hoped. At least at the end, it's obvious he'll be kissing her feet for the rest of their lives.