Clockwise from left: Lute, Shion, Gaia, Haku, and Ken
A Knight's Devotion is a Romance Game Visual Novel by Voltage, Inc. for iOS and Android devices. A Westernized adaptation has also been released by Voltage Entertainment USA under the title Knight of My Heart.
The game takes place in the fantasy kingdom of Rapier, where the protagonist has grown up as a simple village girl raised by her grandmother. When strange men in black robes attack her village and she is rescued by a group of royal knights, she learns that she is actually the daughter of the king, raised in secret in order to ensure her safety. Now she is of age and the king has collapsed, and these five knights have arrived to take her back to the palace in order to assume her role as princess.
Someone, however, has an interest in making sure that she never makes it there, and with the men in black robes a constant threat along their route to the palace, the protagonist must choose one of the knights to be her personal protector in order to make sure she makes it out of the situation alive.
A Knight's Devotion contains examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly High-Stakes Game: On Gaia's route, he is forced to participate in a card game with a pirate captain. If Gaia wins, the pirates will allow their ship to reprovision and leave port. If he loses, the pirate gets the protagonist. The game is further complicated by the fact that both participants are known for their absolutely godawful luck at games of chance. Gaia wins, but only with a timely assist from his cat.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Knight of My Heart switches around the hair colors of several of the main cast. Dark-haired Ken becomes blond Philippe, and blonds Shion and Okinu become the dark-haired Sir Jacques and Sir Isabelle.
- Affectionate Nickname: The protagonist always calls Ken "Kenny".
- Anachronism Stew: The setting can be taken as vaguely analogous to late 16th or early 17th century Europe with some Japanese flavor here and there, but mostly there's not much effort put into any kind of consistent historical accuracy. Knight of My Heart makes a little more of an effort, adapting the setting to one more directly based on period France.
- Badass Bookworm: Shion.
- Badass Cape: Gaia wears one.
- Badass Crew: The knights.
- Balcony Speech: Most routes end with one to introduce the protagonist to the people as their princess.
- Big Eater: All of the knights pack away a lot of food when given the opportunity. On Gaia's route, it forces the ship they're taking to make an unscheduled stop to resupply after the group goes through all of their provisions on the first night of the voyage.
- Black Cloak: All of the enemy Mooks wear them, complete with face-concealing hoods.
- Bodyguard Crush: Inevitably, with whichever knight the player chooses to be most directly responsible for the protagonist's safety.
- Bow and Sword in Accord: Haku is equally skilled with a bow and a sword, and meets the 'morally flexible' qualifications as well. It's a good thing he fell in love with the Princess, as it's implied that he wouldn't have been bothered by her fate after he betrays her otherwise.
- Bowdlerize: Knight of My Heart mostly duplicates the original version's CGs in a Western art style, but in adapting Haku's route, Voltage USA removed a CG of him and the protagonist together in a hot spring and replaced it with a tamer scene.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Shion is the most intellectual of the knights, but he's also profoundly disinterested in exerting any more effort than he absolutely has to. Left to his own devices, he'd likely spend all of his time reading and sleeping.
- Captain Ersatz: Dragon the horse is transparently based on Maximus from Tangled.
- The Cavalier Years: In as much as the setting has any basis in an actual historical period, it's more or less modeled on this type of setting.
- The Cavalry: Near the end of Gaia's route, just when it looks like the knights will be worn down by the enemy's much greater numbers, help arrives in the form of a pirate fleet headed by Marco, the pirate who took a shine to the protagonist earlier in the route. Given that the ships are armed with cannons, it's also a Gunship Rescue.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Potentially with Ken, for loose values of "childhood" given that he was already in his mid to late teens by the time he moved to her village.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Haku.
- Color-Coded Characters: As seen in the page image, Lute wears red, Ken wears blue, Shion wears green, Haku wears purple, and Gaia wears black and white.
- Cool Horse: Dragon, the White Stallion who appears in Haku's route.
- Commanding Coolness: Gaia's official rank is Knight-Commander.
- Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Gaia's Disappeared Dad actually died pulling a You Shall Not Pass! to save a small village from a surprise attack by enemy forces who planned to use it as a staging point for an invasion of the kingdom of Rapier. The message he sent to the castle was intercepted, and the villagers were blackmailed into silence by McRoy. By the end of Gaia's route they're able to reveal his father's heroism and restore his reputation.
- Declaration of Protection: All five of the knights swear to protect the protagonist, and it inevitably becomes a very personal matter for whichever knight is chosen to be her primary bodyguard. Lute has extra motivation in his route: he was an orphan who was sponsored into the knighthood by the king, and as a result feels that he owes the royal family his life.
- Determinator: All of the knights, but especially Gaia.
- Disappeared Dad: Gaia's father was a renowned Knight-Commander who disappeared under suspicious circumstances during an attack by a neighboring kingdom, leading most people - including Gaia - to believe that he betrayed Rapier to the enemy.
- Dope Slap: Lute occasionally dispenses them when sufficiently provoked, mostly by Haku.
- Dub Name Change: Knight of My Heart renames all of the characters to fit a French theme. Lute becomes Alexandre, Shion becomes Jacques, Haku becomes Henri, Ken becomes Philippe, and Gaia becomes Nicolas.
- Food Fight: During Ken's route, the characters stop in a village just in time to attend its annual "Madeleine Festival," which turns out to involve the villagers throwing madeleines
at one another in large quantities. - Head Pet: The cat which adopts Gaia during his route sometimes perches on top of his head (although more often prefers to ride around inside his shirt).
- Horsing Around: Dragon's antagonistic behavior towards Haku during the latter's route makes for a lot of this.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Gaia, despite his best efforts not to let it show.
- King Incognito: When the protagonist finally meets her father the king, she recognizes him as a peddler who visited her village once a year, a disguise he adopted in order to see her.
- Kiss of Life: On Lute's route, after he and the protagonist make a rough escape off a cliff and into a river and the protagonist nearly drowns. The protagonist is only barely conscious at the time, but Lute, chivalrous type that he is, confirms it later on.
- Knight in Shining Armor: Lute in particular plays the role to the hilt, sans the actual armor. The other knights are less particular about it.
- Lady and Knight: The protagonist falls into the Bright Lady role with her knight of choice, especially on Lute and Gaia's routes.
- Licked by the Dog: Early in Gaia's route, he gets adopted by a friendly stray cat which he tries, entirely unsuccessfully, to shoo away. The cat proceeds to keep undermining Gaia's attempts at stoicism throughout the rest of the route, even perching atop his head at some points to the great amazement of the other knights.
- Martyr Without a Cause: Lute places little to no value on his own life and seems bent on sacrificing himself for the sake of the royal family, a tendency which the protagonist has to convince him to rein in.
- Meaningful Name: The cat that adopts Gaia during his route spends most of the route without a name. Near the end of the route, he finally chooses one: Corona, meaning "crown," as a symbol of Gaia's devotion to the protagonist as his princess.
- The Mole: In Haku's route, the main characters realize that someone is feeding information about their plans to the enemy. It's Haku, who's been forced into it in order to protect his sister.
- Never Gets Drunk:
- Gaia orders beer by the barrel. He is shown to get a bit tipsy on his route after an unspecified amount of drinking, but it's not so much that he's at all impaired.
- Surprisingly enough, the protagonist also has a remarkably high tolerance for alcohol, to the point that she's able to keep up with Gaia. This is particularly impressive given that she's a lot smaller than he is.
- Not So Above It All: Lute does his best to keep Haku, Ken, and Shion in line, but occasionally he can't help but join in the shenanigans, such as in Gaia's route when he scolds them about laughing at the cat perching on Gaia's head only to laugh himself.
- One-Man Army: Any one of the knights is a match for groups of mooks, but once again, Gaia is the standout, to the point that the other four think nothing of waiting with the carriage while he alone accompanies the heroine into what is most likely a trap. Early in his route, he fights off a pack of bandits single-handedly; much later in the route, watching him take on an even larger group of enemies, the protagonist realizes that he wasn't even trying in that early fight.
- Rags to Royalty: The "raised in secret as a commoner" variety.
- Romantic Runner-Up: Haku falls for the protagonist during Lute's path, bringing the two of them into conflict at points when Haku's frustration with Lute's denseness boils over.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Once she begins her life as a princess, the protagonist is very keenly interested in doing whatever she can to improve her kingdom's quality of life and help solve the problems faced by its citizens. Given her humble upbringing, she is not surprisingly entirely willing to pitch in and work to get things done, from personally overseeing the development of an irrigation system to save a village's orchards to personally fundraising for public works projects to going undercover in another village in an effort to find proof that the local count is abusing his people and misusing government money.
- Shipper on Deck: Haku in Gaia's route is very supportive of the protagonist's efforts to get closer to Gaia, and acts as her wingman on several occasions.
- Sinister Minister: Father McRoy in Gaia's route initially tries to pose as a kindly Good Shepherd, but the veneer doesn't last once it's revealed that he's responsible for the death of Gaia's father and for covering up what happened so that the rest of the kingdom believes Gaia's father was a traitor.
- The Stoic: Gaia.
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Stoic Woobie: Gaia is often viewed with mistrust and suspicion by the people of the country he serves because of the events involving his father, the previous Knight Commander, and he has a lot of conflicting feelings about his father's supposed betrayal, but he bears all of it in stoic silence and almost never lets on how much it troubles him.
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- Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Gaia takes pains to remain aloof and stoic, but soon melts in the face of the protagonist's persistence.
- Surprise Incest: Subverted. Halfway through Ken's route, information comes to light that Ken is the king's illegitmate son. It gives him and the protagonist a very uncomfortable time for a few chapters, but ultimately the king clears matters up and confirms that Ken is, as everyone originally thought, the son of one of his knights.
- Taking the Bullet: Lute does it near the end of his route, and nearly dies.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Ken and sweet buns.
- 24-Hour Armor: Justified to some extent - Gaia believes in being prepared for anything and thinks nothing of sacrificing his own comfort to do so, which means staying in his armor and sleeping sitting against a wall with sword in hand rather than making use of an available bed. Later in his route, there are a couple of instances where he actually does shed his armor for a little while.
