Manga / Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost

Belle: Do you really believe that there's a monster out there that kidnaps pretty girls and makes them marry him?
Laetitia: Yes, I do. He can never make them love him, though. He's far too ugly and feral. He always kills them sooner or later.

Beauty and the Beast of Paradise Lost (Rakuen no Bijo to Yajū) is a terror retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Kaori Yuki. The manga discusses trauma caused by Domestic Abuse and the dictatorship of beauty. The manga began serialization on Kodansha's Palcy website in 2019, with a hiatus in 2020, when Yuki had to be hospitalized because of a serious disease. Fortunately, she recovered throughout 2021, and concluded the manga in October of the same year.

Belle is a spirited, brave girl that insists on going to the forbidden forest, dismissing the rumors about a beast that kidnaps women to steal their faces. Until she and her mother, Laetitia, are found by the monster, who asks the latter if the child is beautiful. Laetitia hurriedly says no and pushes Belle into the river; hours later, her faceless body is found and burned along with the corpses of other victims to keep them from turning into dangerous zombies called “idoles”. Twisted by the tragedy, Belle's father locks her away for the next five years, insisting that she is too ugly to show her face in public. But she suspects her mother may be still alive, because the body found wearing her clothes didn’t have her rose-shaped birthmark. So, when she hears rumors outside about the return of the beast, she slips out of the house. When her father tries to get her back, he is killed by the beast, who carries Belle away without answering her questions… and then is killed, too. By a second beast!

Suspecting that the newcomer must be the monster who kidnapped her mother, Belle threatens him with her father's axe, demanding answers, only to be knocked-out and left to die. Much for her surprise, she wakes up in a castle full of strange creatures. Not having anyone else to turn, she gets a job as Beast's seamstress, as she tries to figure out what really happened to her mother. However, she is barely scratching the surface, for the castle alone is full of strange secrets... like a beautiful sleeping woman who is also called Belle.

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This manga contains examples of:

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• Abhorrent Admirer: La Medium harbored an obsessive crush on prince Cyril (future Beast), back when she was the "saint" of Issus, although she was old enough to be his grandmother... or great-grandmother. Yeah.
• Aborted Arc: The attempted poisoning never is mentioned again after chapter 7.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Evance could do a seminar about psychological abuse. When Belle was a kid, he bought her a beautiful bonnet as an excuse to shame her violet hair. After Laetitia’s “death”, he convinced Belle that she was too ugly to be seen by other people, forced her to slave away as a seamstress and drank all the money she earned. When she finally breaks out, he runs after her with an axe, revealing cruelly that he never believed she was his daughter. He didn’t want Belle to be happy again because his own happiness had gone away with his wife, so he wanted her to rot inside the house long after he was gone. It’s impossible to be sad when the fake beast stabs him with a claw.
  • According to Giselle, both she and her big brother, Cyril, were regularly beaten by their parents.
• The Ageless: Beast, Giselle and the staff have remained alive for 200 years because of the curse. La Medium, on the other hand, has to change bodies and faces to remain young.
• Adaptation Expansion: In Gabrielle de Villeneuve's original story, the prince was turned into a beast by an evil but nameless fairy after he refused her love. In Kaori Yuki's version, she is a witch with a Dark and Troubled Past who is still obsessed on the prince 200 years after she cursed him and that has no qualms into destroying other people's lives to fulfill her goals.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Averted. Belle falls for Beast because she learns to see the good camouflaged in his actions, but still resents his manners.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Belle is shunned by most of the castle denizens for being an outsider, a human and a peasant. Although she is officially the seamstress, the cat maidens make her cleaning the garden and the castle, partly by order of Madame Giselle, to press Belle into leaving. Lucas is, initially, the only one to treat her with open kindness, going as far as apologizing for Beast’s boorish ways, but he also insists that she should leave the castle, partly out of jealousy. Belle eventually makes friends, but with people she 'd never would expect to.
• And I Must Scream:
  • The women whose faces are stolen by La Medium die and become mindless, mute zombies called “idoles” that try to steal the faces of the living and grow mouths on their bodies. Isolde is the only one that has kept her sanity. The souls of the idoles are sent to another dimension called Samhain, where they are eventually devoured by the void. According to Isolde, when a woman has her face stolen, she loses her identity and memory; Isolde herself only kept her mind because she is from the Hidden People, but is amnesiac, too (her name was given by the Doctor). Belle remains alive after having her face stolen because she is from the Hidden People through her mother, and also because Beast's rosary helps her to retain her memory.
  • La Medium is currently using not only Laetitia’s face, but her entire body. The first time she sees Belle, a tear runs down her face, surprising La Medium and hinting that Laetitia’s soul must be still inside and watching. La Medium suppresses that emotion quickly and retakes total control of Laetitia's body.
• Animal Motifs: The butterflies are a recurring element in the manga. Kid Belle wears a cloak with butterfly motifs. When Beast mentions the idoles to dissuade the girl from searching her mother, both the living corpses and Belle appear surrounded by butterflies. Same butterflies show up again when she has her face stolen and her soul is transported to Samhain. In La Medium’s flashback, it’s shown that she attracted Cyril to her cell when he was a child by conjuring to him a beautiful butterfly, before showing him as a young adult secretly destroying another one as he lies that he finds La Medium attractive.
• Apologizes a Lot: Belle has this tendency along with Extreme Doormat in embarassing moments, because of the emotional abuse inflicted by her father.
• Appearance Angst: Belle’s hair is violet, which caused her a lot of distress when she was a kid, from the villagers' scorn to her father’s bodyshaming. Once, she saw a man putting some flowers on his girlfriend's hair, but the local boys teased her that nobody would want to do that to her. Belle decided then to pick some red roses, because their color was the only one that would match her hair, but they grew only in the woods, so she insisted for her mother to take her there. Sadly, the result was that she spent the next five years hearing over and over that her appearance offended the people and believing that her mother wouldn't have been abducted if she was "beautiful enough".
• Arranged Marriage: The king of Issus arranged the marriage between his son Cyril and princess Belle, the sixth daughter of the rulers of a neighbouring kingdom. He went back on this because he thought he could get something better through his son, but the uncommitment caused a war. At this point, the princess was so head-over-heels about Cyril that she set fire on her parents' castle, killing them, so the royalty of Issus had no choice but getting her back.
• Aristocrats Are Evil:
  • Almost all royalty members are evil. Cyril and Giselle’s parents were tyrants that saw their children only as political tools. The king kept La Medium imprisoned for years and blindfolded magically, so she would believe she was blind. Besides, he took advantage of her lust for his son, keeping her happy with the fake promise that she would marry Cyril someday. The royalty also made the people of Issus starve, so it's not hard to figure out why Cyril wanted his parents dead.
  • Downplayed with prince Cyril. He freed La Medium to kill his parents, so he could be crowned as the new king. To have her help, he confirmed his father's lies that La Medium was beautiful and that he would marry her although it was obvious that she would learn eventually that he was already engaged to Princess Belle. So, he had it coming. On the other hand, he spent two centuries burdened by guilt after she turned his subjects into crystal statues and deformed his loved ones, so he was punished beyond what he deserved. Giselle is much more a jerk than him and was pretty awful to Belle, but afterwards she has a Heel–Face Turn for her brother's sake.
  • Princess Belle not only was happy of having her kingdom destroyed by the war but she took advantage of it to burn her parents' castle. She saved Cyril's life, but her hands were burned, and she uses her scars (among other ammunition) to guilt trip him.
  • Played straight with the current queen, the king and Madame Yvonne, his mistress. The latter had the queen's face horribly burned, and the king apparently knew that. In spite of wanting her husbands love, the queen coerces Raphael into being by her lover and plans to kill La Medium, so people will never know that their queen has dealt with magic.She could have contented herself with the beautiful face she bought from the witch, but can't resist the latter's suggestion of disfiguring her rival. As a result, the queen's new face is destroyed and she is arrested on the charge of having tried to kill Madame Yvonne. That's exactly what the king needs to annulate his marriage and make his mistress the new queen, although that doesn't keep him from making a pass on a disgusted La Medium. Or Yvonne from hooking up with Raphael.
• Badass Cape: Beast is rarely seen without one. And he is VERY badass!
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Deconstructed. The entire manga not only has beautiful characters with rotten souls but makes a harsh criticism of people’s obsession with beauty and youth. La Medium became rich by changing the faces of nobles, including the queen, who wants desperately recover her husband’s love, after his mistress disfigured her face. Justified, because back then women rarely had some money of their own and were forced to depend on their husbands and lovers completely. And beauty was seen as fundamental to keep men’s interest (In spite of feminist achievements, this kind of mentality still exists, unfortunately).
• Beast and Beauty: Cyril and Belle, of course, although she thinks that the Beauty is her royal namesake.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted or zigzagged. The queen has her face destroyed twice. La Medium/Laetitia has her face burned by Belle and the rosary, though her scar is not visible. Princess Belle keeps her delicatedd face intact but has to hide her burned hands with gloves. Isolde has her face stolen and so has Belle, although the latter eventually gets her face back. And, of, course, there’s Cyril, whom besides having his face and body changed by the curse, gained a few facial scars.
• Bedsheet Ladder: Belle makes one to escape from the window of her room in the attic, because her father kept the doors and the other windows shut with chains and locks.
• Betty and Veronica: Belle (the protagonist), who is naive and scarred but also honest and loyal to her saviour and Princess Belle, a Proud Beauty and a spoiled, self-centered, manipulative bitch.
• Big Bad: La Medium.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Beast is introduced stabbing the fake with his hand in the exact moment the monster is taking Belle to its carriage. He makes another entrance afterwards,opening a hole on the castle's walls with a giant hammer to save Belle from La Vouivre.
  • Much later, Giselle saves Belle from everyone's anger when she is suspected of having stuck a pin on princess Belle's wedding dress out of jealousy (actually, the princess herself did that). She and Isolde drag Belle to the garden,where the bird tells them how vicious and manipulative the princess is, but that Cyril can't say no to her because he thinks it is his fault she became "a witch". Afterwards, Giselle lies to everyone that she wanted to interrupt the wedding for fun, so she asked Belle to pretend she was in love with Cyril and for Isolde to put the pin on the dress. Beast doesn’t believe it, but postpones the wedding anyway.
• Birds of a Feather: Despite not seeing eye-to-eye most of time, Belle and Beast bond because both are trying to make it up for their mistakes and have strong tempers that their hard knocked lives couldn't tame completely. Beast gets to admit he identifies himself to her because, before the curse, he was pressed to be what people expected from him, like she is. Also, he is emotionally chained to his people by regret just like Belle was to her father, although he doesn't seem to realize it... or maybe he does
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Mixed with Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Giselle first seems the friendly sidekick bird made popular by Disney films, offering to help Belle to escape from the “terrible beast” before he eats her, but locks her up in a basement full of idoles and then almost makes her fall to her death. In both situations, she is saved by said Beast whom calls Belle out for relying so much in appearances. Afterwards, Giselle tries again by luring her into seeing the other Belle and convincing the girl that Beast was just being “good” to her because she had the same name as his comatose fiancée. When Belle still refuses to leave, Giselle threatens to hurt her, but Beast and Lucas catch her red-winged. Much later, it is revealed that Giselle has became too comfortable with their cursed life (despite hating her new appearance) and didn’t want a stranger, especially a commoner, disrupting it. Also, she doesn't want Lucas' heart broken again, like it happened when Cyril was betrothed to the other Belle. But, after princess Belle wakes up unexpectadly, Giselle sees the latter manipulating Cyril again and realizes that not only this situation would hurt Lucas a lot more but that her brother could be happy with the peasant Belle, whom, despite her flaws, is a good person.
  • Princess Belle is a lot worse.  From her first appariton to the moment she wakes from her coma, anyone could think she was the Princess Classic, with good heart in the kit; but soon it becomes evident (for the readers, at least) that she is a Devil in Plain Sight that uses her sweet smile and falsely kind words to keep everyone wrapped around her finger. As soon as she meets Belle, she begs for her to become her friend and personal assistant, in spite of Beast’s resistance. Initially, Belle is delighted in meeting someone so nice, until the princess starts rubbing on her face that everything, including the rosary that saved Belle's life, is hers. She also insists for Cyril to announce their engagement and has Belle sewing her wedding dress. The poor girl is an emotional wreck at this point, and the princess takes advantage of this to sneak offfscreen a pin in her wedding dress and hurt herself with it, making everyone think that Belle was careless. To add insult to injury, she says aloud that it is just normal for Belle to be distracted because she is in love with Cyril, too. Of course, that makes everyone suspect that Belle hurt the princess out of spite.
• Blaming the Victim: After saving Belle from La Vouivre, Beast tells her to not be mesmerized by the demon the next time. Subverted when he calms down and changes his tone, asking her to run after him if she'll see the demonic dragon again.
• Bodyguard Crush: Implied with Beast. As much as he says he doesn't care about Belle or complains about how much she gets in trouble, he keeps saving her life since they first met. When they escape from the nobles in the masquerade, he admits she is the only one he likes to carry in his arms.
• Broken Bird:
  • Belle, for obvious reasons.
  • Beast, whom hides his despair and self-hatred behind his careless behaviour.
  • Giselle, no pun intended. The physical and emotional abuse inflicted by her parents and then the effects of the curse made her cold, pragmatic and emotionally distant of everyone, except Lucas. The shell cracks, however, when Cyril gets in danger or someone looks at her cage-head. She gets a little better after she makes friends with Belle and Isolde.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Belle, she goes through so much crap that brings to mind the protagonists from old shoujo mangas like Candy♡Candy.
• Byronic Hero: Beast.
• Changeling Tale: People in the village believed that Belle was a changeling because of her uncommon violet hair.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The "sigils" - the rose-shaped birthmarks that Laetitia, Belle and Isolde have on their bodies, are a characteristic from the Hidden People. Belle realizes her mother may still be alive because the body found wearing her clothes doesn’t have Laetitia’s birtmark on her arm. The sigils also keep Isolde and Belle alive after their faces are stolen; according to Isolde, they grant the protection of the nature spirits
  • The scar Evance got in his arm when he saved kid Belle from falling in a cliff, which he called his “badge of honor”, was one of the reasons why Belle tolerated his abuse, because she saw it as a proof that he loved her. When the fake possessed Evance’s body, he ripped off his arm to grow a hand with claws - and the scar with it. That made her realize that the man that came to get her back wasn’t her father.
  • The rosary Beast wears around his neck breaks without him noticing it and is found by Belle after the incident with La Vouivre. She fixes it and takes it with her to give him back later, but it becomes the only thing anchoring Belle to the living world when her face is stolen. It makes her remember her name and about the Beast; also, when La Medium tries to stop him from save her, Belle burns the witch’s face with it. Much later, princess Belle sees her carrying it and asks it back to Cyril, since she gave it to him when they were engaged – soon after she “saved” him from drowning. She humiliates Belle by “asking” her to put the rosary around her neck, but that backfires later, when she tries to keep Beast from traveling. He notices that princess Belle is no longer wearing the rosary and remembers that her allergy keeps her from wearing any jewelry aside pearls… which means she lied when she said the rosary was hers, so she couldn’t be the girl carrying it that he met in the woods when he was a kid. After the ball incident, he gives the rosary to Belle, saying it is “hers only”.
• Chick Magnet: Beast. In spite of his cursed form and behavior, La Medium and princess Belle (after she woke up) are still obsessed with him. Not only girls: Lucas, a transman, became Cyril's chamberlain to stay close to his beloved. And Belle, of course, but she only met him after he was already the Beast and fell in love only after she saw the good in him, without being influenced by the memory of the gentle, handsome young man he once was. Surprisingly, the demon-dragon La Vouivre fits, too, though she's not exactly "in love" with Cyril. The doctor reveals that her species eats men to reproduce because they have no males, and teases Beast saying that he “can’t beat ladies off with a stick.”
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: When Belle and Beast first meet, she threatens him with an axe and accuses him of having kidnapped her mother, although he had just saved from the fake beast (she probably wasn't thinking clearly, after having been threatened by her own father, carried by the fake to a carriage full of dead women and finding out that there was a second beast). Angrily, Beast destroys the axe with a vine, saying he doesn't care if she lives or dies; the metal pieces fall on her head and she passes out thinking she'll be devoured by the wolves. However, in the next day, Belle wakes up in his castle, so he obviously changed his mind.
• Damsel in Distress: Belle, chronically.
• Deadpan Snarker: Giselle can be pretty sarcastic, to not say callous, but is overpassed by the Doctor. Belle and La Medium have their sharp-tongued moments, too. Beast.... well, he is a snarking machine for very painful reasons
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • La Medium met Cyril when he was still a child by conjuring a shining butterfly to lure him to her cell (outside the bars, fortunately). Instead of forbidding any interaction between them, the king encouraged it by lying that he would eventually give his son to her, as long as she behaved. Before releasing La Medium in the flashback, teenager Cyril allows her to touch his face but is visibly disgusted and smashes a butterfly in his hand as a reminder of their first encounter and a symbol of his lost innocence. All that brings to mind a kid sexually abused with the complicity of his family.
  • The scene where the Doctor shoos Dennis from Isolde's cell and tosses away the flower that he was trying to give her brings to mind an overprotective father separating his daughter from an undesirable suitor.
• Don't Look At Me:
  • Belle hides her face behind her hair because she thinks she is ugly, much for other people's confusion.
  • Giselle hates to leave her room in her complete body because she doesn’t want anyone to look at her faceless head, especially Lucas.
• Dysfunction Junction: Practically everyone has issues, caused by trauma or societal pressures.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Evance stops working to become an alcoholic, after his wife is gone.

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• Easily Forgiven:
  • Although Belle is quick to talk back to Beast's insults, she shows no grudge for having been magically tossed against a wall when he caught her entering the rose courtyard. True that he didn't see who was trespassing; all the staff knew the place was off-limits, so it would be easy to suppose it was La Medium or one of her minions. Besides, he took Belle's side against Giselle afterwards (still, the girl was lucky to not had been seriously hurt. The wall wasn't that lucky).
  • Discussed with Isolde. She seems to not resent the way everyone treated her before the end of the Faceless Arc, when they learned she had a mind and could speak. Even towards Beast, who called her a "thing", told the Doctor to keep her confined and sacrificed Denis, the only one to treat her with genuine kindness. On other hand, if the prince hadn't her locked up, probably some of the servants would have killed Isolde because of their fear of idoles. Besides, during her encounter with Belle on Samhain, Isolde tells her she feels on Beast a great pain, because he takes for himself the suffering of others. About Denis, he was the only way Beast had to reach Belle in Samhain because of his accidental connection to La Medium; the poor teddy bear was doomed, anyway. And after everyone finally learns she is sentient and not dangerous, Beast allows her to walk freely around the castle.
  • Downplayed with Giselle. After she saves Belle from the princess' trap, the former reminds that the bird tried to kill her. Giselle waves it off with a huffy "you shouldn't hold a grudge" However, when they say goodbye before the trip, they are in such good terms that Giselle even sheds a tear.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
  • Zigzagged with Cyril. Belle is the only one in the castle who calls him "Beast", or "Mounsieur Beast" because he asked her so. Everybody else either calls him by his name or treats him like Highness or Sir. Naturally, out of the castle people calls him the Beast because they see him as a monster.
  • La Medium was called like this by the people of Issus, but even she doesn't know her real name.
• Everyone Can See It: Excepting most part of the staff, who (fortunately) believe that their prince loves only princess Belle, everyone else sees clearly that Belle and Beast love each other, though both don’t realize how mutual their feelings are.
• Eye Scream: Beast gave one of his eyes to La Vouivre in exchanging of magic powers. He received a replacement, with a scar in the process.
• False Soulmate: Beast used to believe that the princess was "his Belle", the mysterious girl he once met in the forest when they were children, and who afterwards saved him from drowning. He recognized her because of her rosary. However, princess Belle happened to find him unconscious at the river bank with the rosary by his side, and took it along with the credits. He starts realizing the truth when she stops wearing the rosary because she is allergic to any jewels that are not pearls, but he feels he must honor his commitment to the princess because she has no where to go, since his father devastated her kingdom and Beast blames himself for that.
• Faux Affably Evil: Since La Medium has to deal with vain aristocrats most of time, she is almost always talking politely and with a large smile, but she is very sadistic and has no qualms into abusing or killing her servants if that helps in her plans
• Fire-Forged Friends: Belle and Isolde become friends after the former’s soul is transported to Samhain.
• Flower Motifs: Even for a Beauty and the Beast story, the rose motif is used to exhaustion. Even the fragments of princess Belle’s heart and the Hidden People’s sigil are shaped like roses.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the beginning of the manga, Laetitia tries to dissuade Belle that her father will be angry if he finds out that they went to the woods, with the little girl replying that he’d never do anything in front of her mother. Then she complains that her father hates the color of her hair. Poor, poor child.
  • During La Medium’s flashback, princess Belle shows up while Cyril is orchestrating his coupe d’etat to rebuke him that they were supposed to be marrying that day and then calls La Medium a “disfigured woman”. That establishes her fundamental selfishness and cruelty, but still, it could have been taken as the speech of a spoiled kid who doesn't know better and the whole thing is told from La Medium’s point of view. Yet, as soon as the princess meets Belle, she bluntly asks if only her hair was cursed. And, when she asks Belle to be her friend, Beast tells his fiancée to leave the other girl alone, hinting that he knew she would pick on her... even though he believed later in the stupid pin trap.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Except for princess Belle, the curse changed the appearance of everyone in the castle. Cyril's face was turned into a dark, flat, noseless mask with a Glasgow Grin and long, horn-like ears that earned him the nickname of Beast. He says he doesn't care.
  • Giselle received the lion's share, with her head turned into a cage with a talking bird (her mind) inside. Although she refuses to leave her room with her entire body until the curse is broken, she uses her bird form to fly around and stay updated on the castle’s rumors.
  • Almost all the servants were transformed into anthropomorphic animals. Downplayed with Lucas, who has ram horns, but keeps his human face. Denis, the gardener, became a teddy bear, probably because of his gentle nature.
  • The head of Xavier, the butler, was turned into a clock. As a consequence, he’s mute and communicates his orders with gestures to Lucas, who takes his place as the head of the household.
  • In a sketch between chapters, the cat maids comment they used to raise cats before they worked in the castle, so that's probably why they were turned into felines. Which means that the curse transforms people according to their activities or personalities; the butler was turned into a clock because he was obsessed with timings and schedules, the gamekeepers are hound dogs, etc. Giselle became a literal Caged Bird Metaphor because even before the curse she was already a shut-in due to her royal position and for not wanting to see Lucas pining for Cyril.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Better saying smashed and mixed with other fairy tales.
• Grass is Greener: It's implied that most of the cursed denizens in the castle resent Belle's presence because she is a human, thus a reminder of what they have lost. Giselle even voices that verbally, unaware of the things Belle went through in her previous life:
  Giselle: You have the gall to call yourself ugly! What's wrong with you?! Your violet hair? Well, at least you have hair! And a face, for all that! How dare you to speak of yourself at a monstrosity like me?!
• Green Thumb: Beast can grown thorny vines of briar roses, which he uses as whips or lassos. It's part of the magic power he gained through a Deal with the Devil.
• Grimmification: Well, it's a Kaori Yuki manga.
• Hard Truth Aesop:
  • Some people will take advantage of your remorse to enslave you. It’s your duty to make it up for you mistakes – when that is possible - but not for the atrocities commited by someone else, and you must not let the regret rule your life.
  • Parents lie. Some do that for your good, but others do it for selfish reasons.
  • Your self-image has nothing to do with your true self or the way other people see you. At least twice Beast said he found Belle beautiful, especially her eyes, and La Medium wants her face and body. Also, nobody seems particularly disturbed by Giselle’s cage-head; Beast and Lucas are happy when she finally abandons the confines of her room.
  • Changes happen in life, fearful as they are, but they aren’t always bad. You’ll not be spared by shutting yourself away and you can’t keep someone you love from hurting, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything for them, as Giselle learned.
  • You can’t force someone to love you. Harming their loving ones, killing innocent people or trying to destroy the world won’t change that!
• Head Crushing: While Laetitia and Belle are walking into the woods, a woman comes running towards them and asking for help, with the fake beast on her heels. He captures her but, when he sees Laetitia, he realizes she is more beautiful than his prey and crushes the other woman’s head with a hand.
• Hellish Horse: The demon that steals women's faces travels in a carriage of bones pulled by skeleton horses.
• Henpecked Husband: Beast acts like one when princess Belle is around.
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Beast. He desperately hunts the demons that steal women's faces for La Medium because their source of life are the shards of princess Belle's crystallized heart; however, as he is seen at the crime scenes (and La Medium purposely makes her minions look like him), he is charged with all the murders.
• Hidden Depths:
  • In addition to being a competent seamstress, Belle also has a good hand for jewelry. She fixes a broken handcuff for Beast as a thank you - gift for saving her(which inspires him to offer her a job as an excuse for her permanence in the castle) and, later, fixes his rosary. She also knows how to induce vomit because she read a lot during her confinement.
  • Despite his grudge, Evance built a bathtub and a sink in Belle's room. When she tells that to Giselle in a sketch the bird asks why didn't he get a job if he was able to make such things.
  • The Doctor seems to have some notions about magic, having made for Beast a magical binding so the prince wouldn't destroy things accidentaly (or kill someone) whenever he lost his temper.
• Hypocrite: At the first chapters, Beast criticizes Belle harshly because of the lingering effects of her trauma and for defending her father, saying she “must like being a prisoner”, although he is basically enslaved to his people through his Guilt Complex. His tone changes gradually after their trip to Issus, with him saying he feels sorry for her and trying to help Belle to overcome her mental issues.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Beast feels the presence of La Vouivre like a chest pain because of their contract.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: After Beast's cover is blown during the ball, he can't use magic because he is too far from the castle, so he takes off the magic bind that held his physical powers back (making Belle blush, because she is in his arms and he had to open his shirt). That liberates a wave of energy so strong that pushes the soldiers back, before he takes Belle away by jumping from a high place to another like a flea.
• Incest Subtext: Even when Belle was a kid, Evance’s behavior towards her was very ambiguous. He made her cover her hair with hoods and hats because its color reminded him that she (probably) wasn’t his daughter, but saved her from falling from a cliff. After his wife’s disappearance, he isolates Belle from the rest of the world insisting that “he is the only one able to love her”; abusive husbands/boyfriends frequently say that to keep their victims from realizing their treatment of them is wrong and getting help. And, when the demon possess Evance’s corpse, he first calls for Belle, rambling “No matter where you go or how much time passes, you will always be mine.” before the demon’s mind takes over and asks confusely who Belle is. Much later, Beast remarks that Evance lied to Belle about her appearance to “keep her all to himself”. Belle is too innocent to realize but she left her "papa" right on time, before things went a lot worse.
• Insecure Love Interest:
  • Against her will, Belle falls in love with Beast as she realizes the lengths he goes to free his people from the curse. Still, she believes that he only cares about her because she has the same name as his fiancée. Nice going, Giselle!
  • Near the end, Beast reveals he loves Belle, too, but he feels responsible for all the terrible things that happened to her, since she would still be living with her family if he hadn't freed La Medium.
• Interrupted Declaration of Love : After telling Belle he saved her life because he identifies himself with her, he helds a hand to touch her as he say “Also, I think that you are my…” when a big commotion interrupts him. Princess Belle, his fiancée, has woken up unexpectadly.
• It's All About Me:
  • During his meeting with La Medium in Issus, Beast says she can do to him whatever she wants, as long as she lifts the curse from his people. La Medium’s answer? She decides to become the most beautiful woman in the world (by killing ALL the other attractive women), so he won’t reject her anymore.
  • When Beast announces his decision of going to the capital to face La Medium, princess Belle won’t let him go, not caring if he’s doing that to break the curse to end the suffering of the castle denizens. Worse, when they suspect that she lied about not being able to walk, she rants that SHE is the victim of the curse because it stopped her from marrying Cyril, then she exhibits her burned hands to remind him that she set fire on her parent’s castle for him! It doesn’t work this time, and she has to see Belle going with him to the capital.
• I Work Alone: Beast insists into picking up the shards and confront La Medium by himself, alleging that others would just stand in his way. Of course, he doesn't want anyone else to get hurt because of him. Belle won't buy any of this and insists into going to Issus with him. She gets in trouble out of naivety, but she also proofs she can stand of her own and helps Beast to snap out of his Heroic BSoD, earning his respect.
• Jerkass Façade: Beast is arrogant, cynical and boorish, especially to Belle; however, he is also the only one to genuinely care about her, before Isolde steps in. As the story progresses, it becomes clear he tries to drive people away, so they'll not be punished again for loving him. In Belle’s first day in the castle, he doesn’t allow her to eat anything from the table and disgusts her with his Jabba Table Manners, but falls in the next moment victim of poison. She learns that someone was poisoning his food, in the hope of breaking the curse by killing the Beast (he takes that very naturally), and realizes he didn’t let her eat for that reason. In another moment, he drops his cape on Belle and tells her to fix it; she doesn't find any loosen stitches on the cloth, so she suspects that Beast noticed she was wet and shivering. He starts being openly nicer to her after the faceless arc, though still a little rude.
• The Lost Lenore:
  • Laetitia. Her apparent death destroyed Evance's sanity.
  • Princess Belle can be interpreted as such, although she is not dead. La Medium put her in coma, crystallized her heart and shattered it in a million of shards, using them to power up her minions. Beast hunts them to retrieve the shards and restore the princess' heart, which also keeps her body from crystallizing. And he’s being doing this for 200 years!
• Love Makes You Evil:
  • Evance punished Belle during five years for Laetitia's disappearance, even knowing that his wife wouldn't want that.
  • La Medium used to be the "saint" that protected Issus (though their subjects lived poorly, but that was the kings' fault) with her magic. She lived imprisoned, but was okay with that because she believed that the prince Cyril would marry her someday. When he finally freed her and she found out he was going to marry another woman, La Medium snapped out and cursed not only the prince, but everyone who loved him. Since then, she started to use her powers for her own pleasure and to collect beautiful women’s faces to wear as masks, remaining eternally lovely and gracious at the cost of their lives.
  • Princess Belle combines this with Privilege Makes You Evil. She betrayed her family and her own kingdom just to have Cyril and she never lets him forget that. Not to mention the Humiliation Conga she makes Belle go through out of petty jealousy.
• Major Injury Underreaction: When Belle finally returns to the living world after the Faceless Arc, she freaks out because one of Beast's hands was charred to the bone while he rescued her. He insists that his hand is okay(although he allows Xavier to bandage it) and the most important thing is that she is alive. Justified, because the curse gave him immortality, which comes the hability of regenerating body damage. A few moments later, he is talking to Belle again and his hand is perfectly healthy, without even a scar.
• Masquerade Ball: The king gives one to announce his engagement with the Countess of Villeneuve. Beast takes the opportunity to infiltrate in the palace along with the Doctor and Belle, but things don't go as planned.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the original fairy tale and most of its subsequent versions, Beauty’s father sets the plot in motion when he picks up a rose from Beast’s garden. In the Russian retelling The Scarlet Flower, it is a magic red flower. In Paradise Lost, Evance has Adaptational Villainy and it’s Belle that starts the story by picking up red wild roses.
  • Belle’s Internalized Categorism seems a dark Flanderization of Beauty’s issue in Robin McKinley's romance Beauty
  • Yvonne, the king's mistress, has the title of Countess of Villeneuve.

N-Y

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If the Doctor hadn't talked to Duke Albert, he wouldn't have been recognized and maybe Beast's cover wouln't have been blown, or at least, not before they had the chance to find out where La Medium was hiding. Beast also goofed when he called the Vengeful Guy (see No Name Given) "ankle biter", same insult he used previously to the army when they tried to shoot Belle along with him.
• No Name Given: The young soldier deadset on killing the Beast to avenge his family and village (slaughtered by La Medium’s minions) never is called by his name. He even lampshades this in a sketch between chapters.
• Not of This Earth: La Medium, Isolde and Laetitia are from an outworld race called the Hidden People, which explains the witch’s powers and Belle’s unusual hair color – La Medium heard once that the women of their people have hair colored like flowers. They can be recognized through their rose-shaped sigil, which protects them (more or less) from evil. Unlike human women, the ones from the other world last more, making possible for La Medium use Laetitia’s body for years. She wants to get Belle as a replacement when her mother becomes too old.
• Obfuscating Disability: Princess Belle uses a wheelchair, pretending she can't walk because of the long time she spent into a coma, so she'll be pitied by her fiancée and the staff. The ruse is revealed when Beast prepares to go to the capital, and the princess stands upstairs, leaning on the railing and begging for him not to go. Everybody is shocked because she was able to walk up a flight of stairs ins spite of having left her wheelchair in her bedroom, but she shamelessly lies she "crawled all her way to that spot."
• Ominous Floating Castle: A rare heroic example. Beast’s castle floats away, as he searches for the crystal fragments; also, it helps them (theoretically) to not be found by La Medium.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: The favorite weapon of most female characters, since in their world women are expected to be sweet and polite. Princess Belle, in particular, loves using it:
  PB: Perhaps you still haven’t gotten over that little scene earlier?
  Belle: (awkwardly) No… Really… that was all sorted out.
  PB: Well, I haven’t gotten over it myself. I never had my authority undermined in front of so many people like that. I’m afraid that Giselle and I aren’t going to get along. But don’t worry, I’m certainly not angry. So you don’t have to deny how you feel. Every girl has the right to dream.
• Plague Doctor: The only human inhabitant of the castle before Belle came. He makes “experiments” on the idols at the basement, with Isolde as his assistant.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The story happens in an alternate world like 18th-century France, so all the nobles and rich women wear elaborated dresses. Princess Belle's are particularly interesting because they look simpler, but have roses stuck all over it. After the curse, Giselle, or rather, her body started wearing black, doll-like dresses with white frills in an Elegant Gothic Lolita fashion.
• Possessing a Dead Body: The demon killed by Beast in the first chapter possesses Evance’s corpse to continue his mission.
• Pragmatic Villainy: After a humiliating defeat by Beast and Belle's hands, La Medium gives back all the shards she still had of princess Belle's heart, so the latter would wake up and stand between the two. Also, that makes Beast's efforts to gather the crystal pieces all those years were for nothing.
• Propping Up Their Patsy: Princess Belle sticks a pin in the dress she had Belle (the protagonist) sewn for her marriage to the Beast. When she wears the dress, she hurts herself with the pin and screams in pain, making everyone rebuke Belle by her carelessness. Then the princess "defends" her, saying in front of her fiancée that it wasn't Belle's fault to be distracted, because she loved Beast, too! Of course, that makes everyone think that Belle hurt the princess on purpose. Fortunately, Giselle lies that she wanted to mess up with the marriage, so she told Belle to pretend she was in love with him and had Isolde sticking the pin.
• Race Against the Clock: According to the Magically-Binding Contract Beast did to La Vouivre for some magic he would be able to control, he must defeat La Medium and break the curse until the clock tower of his castle strikes midnight, or the entirecastle will be engulfed by a void and La Vouivre will devour Beast’s soul and body.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Despite his flaws, Beast is that mostly. He won’t admit any harm done to his guests and threatens to punish his own sister if she messes up with Belle again. He has Isolde confined, initially for not trusting her but also to keep the staff calm, or otherwise they would cause a riot to lynch not only her, but the rest of the idoles and probably the Doctor. Although he disapproves the Doctor’s experimens with idoles, he acknowledges his habilities. Too bad that princess Belle’s authority undermines his because all the staff idolize her. She has them barring the Doctor and Isolde from coming to her wedding with Beast, though the Doctor is his closest friend. Cyril, by his turn, is impotent to help Belle when the servants want to get on her for supposedly hurting their beloved princess, partly because he, too, suspects Belle really stuck the pin, but mainly because if he would defend her in that exact moment his jealous fiancée would be sure he had feelings for Belle and that would just make everything worse. When he decides going to the capital, he leaves Giselle and Lucas in charge, knowing they wouldd manage it; also, since the princess’ lies were exposed, she may have lost the staff’s sympathy, at least partly.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Belle gives a good one to no one less than La Medium:
  Belle: Now I see. You really ARE ugly. But the problem isn’t your looks… it’s your heartlessness! You’re not different from that void of idoles. You’re empty!
• Redemption Equals Death: Evance gets his consciousness back in his last moments to stop the demon who possessed him from attacking Belle and shields her from the king’s army shoots. That doesn’t make it up for the horrific way he treated her, but makes Belle realize that, in spite of saying otherwise, her father wanted her to live.
• The Reveal:
  • Beast told Belle that La Medium was the respected spiritual mentor of his reign and that he saw her as his “mother figure”. Actually, she was locked away for decades, with only spiders as her regular companions and he hated her because of La Medium's harassment.
  • Princess Belle is actually a sociopathic Alpha Bitch that abuses of Cyril emotionally. Giselle never liked her, but didn’t want her replaced by Belle because the latter was a stranger and a peasant.
  • Lucas was biologically a girl and Cyril's childhood friend. They used to practice fencing (according to Cyril, she/he was better than him), but people judged Lucas for her unladylike behaviour. Following Cyril's advice, he decided to be "faithful" to his true self, cut his hair and assumed his new identity as a man, scandalizing the court.
  • Beast met the Doctor when the latter lived as a commoner in a village slaughtered by La Medium's minions. During the masquerade, he calls a duke "Albert", and the latter reacts with shock. Moments later, the doctor comes running to warn Beast and Belle they have to go because the locals recognized him as "Lord Maurin", who was persecuted by the king for having been excommunicated years ago.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Evance is so twisted with grudge that he refuses to hear Belle's arguments that Laetitia might be still alive and threatens to kill her with an axe if she'll not go back to her room.
  • It would have been enough revenge for the queen to exhibit his new, beautiful face to her rival but no, she wanted her destroyed, too.
  • It's La Medium , however, who takes the cake. After leaving Issus, she had everything: riches, position and respect of the society. She also took revenge on the people who imprisoned and used her, far much more than they deserved, not to mention the innocents who didn't know what the royals did to her or couldn't do anything to help. The young man who broke her heart is disfigured, framed for HER crimes and burdened by the suffering of the people he cares about, for centuries, but she still wants to have him or destroy him
• Running Gag: Beast's ears are frequently taken by horns, which pisses him off, or stand in the way whenever he has to wear disguises.
• Sentimental Sacrifice: Well, actually more than sentimental. Beast gets so desperate when Belle turns into an idole that he's willing to use a few fragments of princess Belle's heart to get her back.
• Shoo the Dog:
  • When the demon/fake beast asks Laetitia if Belle is beautiful, the woman says no and pushes her daughter into the river. The saddest part is that Laetitia was just telling Belle how much she found her lovely. Hearing her mother deny her own words not only destroyed Belle's self-esteem but also made her believe that her mother was taken in her place because she wasn't beautiful enough. By other turn, Laetitia's Heroic Sacrifice saved Belle from a Fate Worse than Death.
  • After the ball, Beast reveals the main reason he brought Belle with him was because he wanted to leave her in the human world, so she would have a normal life. He seems to have forgotten she has nowhere to go and that the army may capture her because of her association with him; by other turn, he has already realized he can't protect Belle from La Medium and princess Belle.
• Shout-Out:
  • The first chapter references Little Red Riding Hood. Not only Belle wears a cape with hood, but she goes to the forest against her parents' wishes.
  • Princess Belle’s magical coma references Sleeping Beauty.
  • A man forced to wear a permanent grin? Sounds very, very familiar.
  • The floating castle is a probable reference to some specific fairy tales or to ‘’Castle in the Sky’’.
  • Speaking of Studios Ghibli: a girl who has lost her parents and is saved by a mysterious guy who encourages her to get a job among magic creatures that try to turn her away because she is human ressembles the plot of Spirited Away, but that must be unintentional.
  • La Medium's fixed idea of becoming the most beautiful woman in the world brings the Evil Queen to mind. Also, the Queen tries to kill Snow White with a poisoned comb, and La Medium is about to use one to destroy Belle's beauty, before noticing she has the rose sigil.
  • When Cyril was a kid, he was saved from drowning by someone who left him on the shore, to be found by princess Belle, who took the credits and got engaged to him. Just like in The Little Mermaid.
  • Beast's thorny briar whips are a lot like Elias Ainsworth's.
  • Giselle and Xavier’s cursed forms seem a nod to Surrealism, especially René Magritte and Salvador Dalí ‘s paintings.
  • The court painter forced to become the queen’s lover is called Raphael.
  • Samhain, the dimension of the idols, is the name of an ancient Celtic festival that originated Halloween.
  • Beast’s personality and his Character Development ressemble Inuyasha's a lot. Both are target of gag ears and can't let go an old love out of guilt; said loves are brought back by self-serving witches, too. La Medium, by her turn, is much like Naraku: she uses fragments of a magical stone to create servants which she abuses; she lives off other people’s body parts, toys with her enemies’ feelings and has a sickening obsession about someone who doesn’t love her.
  • The scene where Beast has a tantrum because Belle entered the courtyard seems a nod to the West Wing incident from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
• Signature Headgear: Giselle's bird form always wears a large black bow adorned with frills. La Medium is rarely seen without her own frilled hat.
• Significant Name Overlap: The Beast's fiancée is named Princess Belle, just like the protagonist. This gives Belle the heroine a lot of insecurities, as she believes that the Beast is only kind to her because she has the same name as the woman he really loved.
• Socially Unacceptable Collection: La Medium has an extensive collection of beautiful faces she removes magically from the young women kidnapped by her minions. She became rich by selling some for noble women who want to change their looks, but she collects them especially for fun. The queen is horrified when she first sees the walls full of faces.
• Spiders Are Scary: La Medium's favorite servants are spiders. She filled Denis with them, back when she was still the saint, using them later to see what happens in Beast's castle. Also, she takes advantage of Denis' friendship with Isolde to possess her through a spider slipped on the idole and tell him to meet her in Issus, where she receives him riding... a giant spider.
• Stepford Snarker: Beast's Dark and Troubled Past, along with his remorse, transformed him into this, except when he is around his fiancée. None of those close to him - Lucas, Giselle, Doctor and, eventually, Belle - is fooled.
  Lieutenant Antoine: I am Antoine, Lieutenant of this Beast-hunting brigade. And you, Sir, are without a doubt the storied beast! The size of an ox, with black horns and fangs as sharp as a wolf's. A monster terrible enough to send chills down the spine of a grown man... Prepare to face divine, ironclad justice!
  Beast: Say, old man, how would you like if I judged YOU based on your looks? Or am I right to assume you're just a mustachioed, out-of-shape clark playing soldier who can't actually fight a damn?
  Lieutenant Antoine: Why, you!! You stooped to insults, I see!
  Beast: You started it! Do these look like horns to you? They're my ears, asshole!
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!:
  • Before luring Belle to go to the rose courtyard, Giselle asks her "Call me just Giselle", to convince the girl they are friends. After Belle sees the princess "sleeping" there and is expelled by a furious Beast, she confronts Giselle, who disdainfully corrects her: "That's Madame Giselle for you!"
  • Deconstructed by Beast, who hears the entire argument. After Lucas picks Giselle with a butterfly net to keep her from attacking Belle, the girl tries to explain, calling him "Sire". He cuts her off, telling her to not call him like this because "it feels wrong".
    Beast: Just call me "The Beast". That's how you've always known me as, right? Unlike a certain dumb bird, I don't need you to puff my ego with some fancy title.
    (Everyone stares at him in shock. Giselle's horrified look, especially, is pretty satisfying.)
• Tomboy: When Belle was a kid, she loved climbing up trees and picking up fights with boys.
• Too Dumb to Live: Belle sees the fake beast kill her father WITH A FINGER and, instead of running, she asks him what he did to her mother. Then Beast shows up and defeats the fake by impalling him with a hand. Despite having seen what he is able to do, Belle thinks him that an axe will be enough to "convincing" him into giving her mother back.
• Trauma Button: Princess Belle is frightened by the sound of wings flapping. Much later, Giselle tells Belle and Isolde that the princess caused a terrible war that decimated the population of her country, and the ground was black with the crows on the corpses. Obviously, the princess' terror is caused by guilt.
• Treacherous Spirit Chase:
  • Belle sees her father, whom she saw die the day before, and happily runs to him, ignoring the Beast telling her it must be an imposter. Fortunately, she notices he is missing a scar on his arm and knocks him down. It turns out La Medium's demon possessed the corpse of her father and tore his scarred arm off to grow one with claws.
  • Belle ends up captured because La Medium is possessing her mother, but she escapes on her own.
• Troubled, but Cute: Even with his noseless face Cyril/Beast is quite sexy.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Beast expulses Belle from the castle after she helps him to vomit the poisoned food. True that wouldn't kill him, and he must have thought it would be better for her to not get involved but still, it was unnecessary and hurtful to drop her downstairs. He quickly changes his mind when Belle's father (possessed by the soul of the fake that Beast had killed hours ago) shows up with the royal army.
• Unrequited Love: Giselle loves Lucas, who, by his turn, loves Cyril.
• Villain with Good Publicity: La Medium. Thanks to her manipulations, she falls in the king’s good graces. Funny enough, her clients don't connect her collection of faces to the poor women who were murdered. Or do not care,as long as that benefits them.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Beast and the Doctor.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: When Beast is poisoned, Belle saves him by tucking a finger in his throat, but all we see is she telling him to open his mouth with a very creepy look. The next panel displays a view of the castle with the sounds of his vomiting very aloud, along with a string of curses.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • After knocking Belle up in their first encounter, Beast could have abandoned her to be devoured by the wolves; instead, he took her to his castle and put Lucas in charge of her.
  • Anybody else would have abandoned Belle or killed her on the spot after La Medium took her face, because she would become an idol, but Beast brought her to his castle and argued fiercely with the Doctor to keep him from dissecating her. He also sacrifices pieces of the heart of his precious fiancée to save Belle's life.
• Why Did You Make Me Hit You?:
  • La Medium insists that Cyril made her turn the people of Issus into crystal statues and curse his loved ones. And she says that with a sadistic smile on her lips as she makes her spider destroy the statues while Beast can just sit with a Thousand-Yard Stare. Belle promptly calls her out on that.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • Despite bullying Belle into cleaning the castle, the cat maids are shocked at her low self-esteem, reminding her that she saved Beast from poisoning.
  • When La Medium humiliates Beast by listing all his flaws and wrongdoings to Belle, the girl cuts her off with a Shut Up, Hannibal!, stating that yes, he could be mean and scary, but deep down he was gentle and kind, and La Medium would know that if she truly loved him.
  • Beast gives Belle one during the ball, after he finally realizes she's still haven't overcome her trauma because her parents' words are ingrained in her mind. He tells her that she put a curse on herself: obviously, Belle's mother lied to save her life, her father took advantage of that lie to keep her all to himself and she had been imprisoned ever since.
    Beast: But you still have time. Don't let yourself wilt, still afflicted by your own curse. It would be too sad. I know you feel guilty that you couldn't save your mother. But it's time to forgive yourself. You've suffered too much.
• You Are Not Alone: After saving Belle, Giselle comforts her, saying that she understood what she was going through because she loved someone taken, too.
• You Can't Go Home Again: After the royal army's attack, Belle no longer can go back to her village, at risk of being tortured or killed for her involvement with the Beast (even if she returned, she would have to live all alone in the same house she was imprisoned for years), which motivates him to employ her as his seamstress. Neither his sister or servants are happy with that.

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