Destroy the world? Why not? But first, I need to deal with this rotten empire that stole my life, my joy, and my childhood, THEN I can get even with that lying inept self-proclaimed god!
Rose Princess Hellrage (Engoku no Bara-hime) is a Light Novel series written by Suzume Kirisaki and illustrated by Cinkai. Originally a Web Serial Novel on the website Shousetsuka ni Narou, it was picked up for publication under Kadokawa's Dragon Novels label in 2019.
In the small country of Ciel-Terra, a young girl is celebrating her 10th birthday with her mother in a backward village, preparing to eat a dinner of roast pheasant, a rare treat. Suddenly the door to her home is kicked open by heavily armored knights who kick the dinner table and the meal to the ground and then glare at both women coldly. After being taken into custody, the now 10-year-old and her mother are put through unspeakable torture, en route to the royal capital, when the little girl also learns she's the daughter of the former king who was murdered by his brother in a violent coup, and the knights are under orders to finish the job of purging the old king's bloodline.
After being beheaded, René's memories of having been the male salaryman Satou Chijiro and having met with the Great God who promised him the iseakai experience when he died of overwork in his office.
The god of evil appears moments afterwards and recruits her, promising her the chance for vengeance, and unlike the Great God, actually delivers on the promise of "cheat" powers and abilities.
Thus René, in the name of revenge, rose as the strongest and most fearsome undead. Named Monster: Rose Princess of Hellrage. And eventually, she will end the world...
Associated Tropes:
- Aerith and Bob: While the people have a Melting-Pot Nomenclature, the major countries are the Ciel Terra Kingdom, The Nocturne Kingdom, The Dietrich Theocracy, The Kevis Empire, The Karaya Republic, and the Jizhershil Federation.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: The god of creation who originally whisked Nagajiro Satou's soul into this new world and his antithesis, the God of Evil are locked in a perpetual stalemate, the winner deciding the fate of this new world. Their influence depends greatly on whoever is winning. If the "good" god gains a major victory, the evil god can grant her follower(s) a major power boost and vice versa. When recruiting Satou, the creation god neglects to mention this, only promising his divine blessing which he did technically deliver, but since his "side" is in the dominant position, this blessing was very weak. As such, the reincarnated vessel, René, was completely helpless when her country's Knight Templar knight order hunted her down, tortured her, and then executed her, leaving her very, very easy to recruit by the god of evil and wanting righteous vengeance.
- The Coup: The reason René and her mother had their home broken into as they were having dinner and were then put through hell is that René's father is a king who was murdered by his own younger brother, purely to take the throne, and the usurper's fanatical supporters hunted down the former king's wife and child, to torture and interrogate, for their own self-righteous "justice," any possible intel they can get, and for their sick thrills.
- Crapsack World: In this new world, or at least the country of Ciel Terra, executions are seen as a form of entertainment. Things only get worse from there. Small wonder René wants to destroy the world.
- Deconstruction: Of the Isekai genre. Satou dies from overwork in his office and finds himself face to face with the god of another world in the afterlife, looking for his aid. Satou asks lots of questions and weighs his options carefully before agreeing to be the god's champion, but what the god told him, though technically accurate, does not match what he was promised, and his memories of being a reincarnator only awaken after René, the girl Satou was reincarnated into, was beheaded and is about to die, head literally at the feet of the God of Evil, who provides a Deal with the Devil so René can get vengeance on those who wronged her, including that god who got her with a nice Bait-and-Switch.
- Evil Versus Evil: In the early chapters, René revives as an undead, wanting nothing but vengeance, but the people she's up against are self-righteous cold-blooded murderers, criminal syndicates, and vain-glorious adventurers who would happily cut down a child if it will fatten their wallets, and at the top, a narcissistic king who murdered his own brother to seize the crown and "reluctantly" sent the country's strongest knight order to murder the man's widow and young child, after putting them through hell with all forms of torture and deprivation.
- Gender Bender: For reasons that have yet to be explained, the god of creation decided to reincarnate the male salary man who died from overwork, in his office, into a female child.
- God and Satan Are Both Jerks: The Greater God is an extremely deceptive sot who uses liberal amounts of Loophole Abuse and Exact Words to get away with making grand promises and failing to deliver while the God of Evil is a Card-Carrying Villain who usually takes it as high praise when people blame her for all the suffering they go through.
- Humans Are Bastards: Holy moly does this apply. King Hilbert II "reluctantly" giving the order for Knight Captain Lawrence to go grab René and her mother to torture, drag to the capital, and execute is the most benevolent of the atrocity committed by the humans in the story. Nobles abuse their power flagrantly, innocent people are put through sham trials and executed to a public spectacle, allied kingdoms betray each other all the time over petty stuff, and all of the atrocities committed by the main character, including using little girls as back-up bodies? BENEVOLENT by comparison.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Yes, centuries ago, the "demon" races had humanity contained to a tiny piece of land, on the brink of extinction, until the Great God of Creation blessed a champion to reverse the situation, but in the present, there is no crime the humans, as a whole, will overlook for their own gain, while the "demon" races shown to date are Proud Warrior Race Guys that operate on the basis of Strength Equals Worthiness.
- Meaningless Villain Victory: Yes, the usurper managed to seize the throne, congratulations. He even puffs himself up, literally, at the praise of his top supporter and strongest warrior, Knight Captain Lawrence. Shortly afterward, he realizes that his rule is now a mine-field, thanks to the very methods by which he acquired it.
- He gained enough political and military clout to launch a coup by making a bunch of promises to xenophobic fanatics who want to drive out all "foreign" influence, especially the country's top trading partner, the Federation. This results in the destruction of the friendly relations the two countries have had over generations, and because the crown is now supporting these isolationists, the country is on the brink of civil war, with the anti-feds and the rest of the population, which has friends and relatives among the Federation intractably at odds with one another.
- Even though he broke off trade relations with The Federation, to keep his supporters momentarily content, there are still many merchants from there in his country and if he pushes too hard to expel them, he could trigger a war. A war his country would lose, handily. On the other hand, if he doesn't push hard enough, his supporters will turn on him. Their leader being Lawrence, whom he knows will turn on him happily, and he'd never see it coming, since Lawrence has already demonstrated that he's very, very good at faking allegiance. Because that's what he did with the previous king, allowing the usurper to win the coup.
- He can't call upon the other nearby nations for aid for two reasons. 1.) If he borrows their strength, they will seek access, if not control, over his country's mines and ores in return, which is what drove his supporters into a rage against the former king. 2.) Even if the other nations agree to help, his country's going to be the battle-field and would get crushed like a kernel of wheat on the mill between The Federation and the other major powers.
- To gain the finances to outfit his troops and pay the appropriate bribes to bring as many nobles as he can to his "cause," he shook hands with a notorious criminal group, Night Python, with a base across the border in another country which will piss off his xenophobic supporters, especially Lawrence, if they hear of it, and Lawrence's view of "justice" means he will hunt down not just the criminal responsible, but that criminal's entire immediate family, as he demonstrated by going after René.
- And because he "was forced" to give the order for Knight Lawrence to hunt down and execute René and her mother, due to the fact that he used René's silver hair and eyes as proof of his brother's "corruption" by pointing to some dubious prophecy that a child with silver hair and eyes will end the country, René came back as an undead that wants murderous vengeance against him and his supporters, can not be soothed or swayed, and took an entire army of his elites to stop, and even then, she was just getting accustomed to her new powers and abilities and simply lashed out in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge without any plan, preparation, or back-up, but she escaped and is now planning, plotting, scheming, and gathering allies, preparing to come back stronger and with strategies and tactics to leverage her strengths to the fullest.
- To top everything off, The Church, a multi-national organization that considers undead its natural enemy, actively sympathizes with René, because of the cruel and unjust way the poor girl was executed, and constantly decries the new king, refusing to deal with René unless they absolutely have to, so the new king gives orders to censure them, which only makes them even more bitter towards him.
- Melting-Pot Nomenclature: Just in the core family of the main character alone, we've got Albert (father), Rosalie (mother) and René as the main character. For a better example, we've also got the family of Earl Keely. The father is Oswald, the youngest daughter is Catherine, and the rest of the siblings have all sorts of names including Steve.
- Moral Myopia: Although René is a self-proclaimed villain protagonist, the antagonists of the story have, and continue to, engage in horrific acts against her and the few people she's fond of, but when she retaliates, by their very own standards of conduct, they have the gall to cry foul and call her evil, while being all self-righteous and claiming their acts are the "will of god." Even those who are sympathetic to her delude themselves that she's just a mindless undead consumed by irrational hate, and destroying her will grant her peace.
- Order Versus Chaos: The God of Creation is a petty tyrant who sees absolutely nothing wrong with mind controlling his faithful while the self-proclaimed God of Evil "creates" new races by twisting the races created by the former and then just sitting back and presumably munching pop-corn as the chaos ensues, and there is always chaos as the former simply will not tolerate peaceful co-existence.
- Real Politik: Deconstructed. The vast majority of the antagonists do terrible things to keep their base happy and their hold on power, starting with King Hilbert II, who issued the order for René and her mother to be dragged back to the capital and executed, just so he can keep his pet Starscream happy, along with the "Anti-federation" faction the guy leads. Every single time this happens, starting with René herself, the rightful grudges of the victims turns around and bites them as it not only gives her the moral high ground, but the victims' grudges either directly or indirectly make her that much stronger.
- Reincarnate in Another World: René used to be a male salaryman in Japan that died from overwork in his office and was approached by the Greater God with the promise of reincarnating in another world.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: In the Ciel-Terra empire, there's an old wive's tale that a child born with silver hair and eyes is "cursed" and is destined to end the country. The country's new king uses this prophecy, among other things, to turn public opinion against his brother, the former king, so as to succeed in the coup. His fanatical supporters didn't think the former king's widow and child being exiled to a border town was enough punishment, so they pressure the new king for the order to go hunt the two innocent women down, and when they're given the order, waste no time in giving the women hell and executing them, and then throw a party at their desecrated corpses, cue the silver-haired child rising up as a powerful undead and carving a bloody path of vengeance, only momentarily stopped by an army of the king's own elites, and even then, she was only stopped because she hadn't fully come into her powers yet and was too angry to think straight...
- Token Good Teammate: Among the six major countries, the Federation is the only one René doesn't have a grudge with and doesn't have any confirmed on-screen crimes or villainy. A coup was launched in her home country based on rumors that the Federation was using its influence to make unfair deals on ore prices and abusing the miners, but these rumors are so far unfounded, and there's quite a bit of evidence that they're untrue. The other five countries are shown to be rife with corruption, and all sorts of atrocity, including unethical, dangerous, and extremely painful human experimentation.
- World of Jerkass: Good and kind people tend not to live too long in this story. The story opens with René Ciel-Terra and her mother getting dragged out of their home by heavily armored knights, enduring untold abuse, deprivation, and torture, and upon their execution, without trial, the knights involved throw a party with many a New Era Speech thrown in, right atop the women's defiled corpses, and this is only the tip of the iceburg for human depravity. When the title character takes a Deal with the Devil to arise again as a powerful undead, seeking nothing but vengeance, she's sympathetic because she's benevolent by comparison, even after engaging in quite a few crimes herself.
