Aren't they adorable?!Note
Athanasia de Alger Obelia is known in "The Lovely Princess" as the pitiful, neglected child who is ultimately murdered in cold-blood by her father, when all that she wanted was for her father to notice and love her. Yet instead, she was killed for supposedly poisoning her sister, the lovable Jenette.
Lee Jihye, an orphan, later reincarnates as said princess and in order to prevent her Doomed by Canon fate, decided to butter herself up to become a sweet cheerful daughter to appeal to her cold biological father but as the year goes by, she learns that there are things that are not explored on in the original story.
Originally a Web Serial Novel, Who Made Me A Princess, or alternatively known as Suddenly I Became A Princess, is a story written by Plutus and a manhwa is illustrated by Spoon. The Webnovel is completed and can be found at Kakaopage in Korean here
and the Webtoon can be found at TappyToon in English here and Naver in Korean here with an alternate link to Kakao here and ridibooks here.
The webtoon is officially completed at 125 episodes with side stories and epilogues to come.
On May 2023, a Chinese Donghua adaptation is announced by IQIYI to be in the works though a date has yet to be set.
Contains examples of:
- Acquitted Too Late: In the original story, Claude has Athanasia executed when she is falsely suspected of poisoning Jennette. According to the book, he later learned the truth and wasn't particularly upset, though Jennette grieved for a time.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade: The memory loss arc in the webtoon is a roller coaster of pain for Athanasia. Especially when compared to the original novel where Anastacius isn't involved and Duke Alpheus didn't try to take advantage of Athanasia's absence in a ploy of having Jennette win over Claude.
- Adaptation Expansion: In-universe, the story that unfolds in the current Athanasia's universe actually expanded and elaborated on events from the original story that would explain how things led to the original Athanasia's demise. The webtoon also had a slight deviation from the main webnovel as it expands Anastacius' role in the story.
- Adapted Out:
- Due to the Pragmatic Adaptation of the webcomic, Athanasia never went to Arlanta to study more of magic on her own.
- The webnovel sidestory where Athanasia is sent to the original "The Lovely Princess" world is removed in the webtoon adaptation due to deviating slightly from the original work due to Pragmatic Adaptation.
- Alternate Universe: What our Athanasia's world has become. The final book of the webnovel involves our Athanasia being sent to the original "The Lovely Princess" universe to fix what went wrong.
- The Cameo: Cabel Erenst from the webnovel is a character and lead from the author, Plutus' older work, Beware Of The Brothers.
- Cerebus Syndrome: Lucas leaving to find the world tree near the end of season 1 is where things went to hell for many people involved until he returns shortly around Athanasia's 15th birthday.
- Deus Exit Machina: Lucas is the strongest magician in the setting, is incredibly protective towards Athanasia and has been removing curses and healing her since childhood. So of course, he leaves right before Anthy is cursed and doesn't come back until well after things go to hell.
- Doomed by Canon: Athanasia's fate in the original novel, and what the current Athanasia works so hard to prevent.
- Downer Beginning: The first episode opens with the novel version of Anastasia begging her father to love her, and Claude coldly refusing. She's soon after executed.
- Downer Ending: As the story continues, the implications grow that the original novel was in fact a horrific ending for all involve. Namely:
- Lucas consumes Atty's spirit beast, leaving her incapable of using magic to defend herself.
- Claude ends up executing the daughter of a woman he truly loved and feels nothing when he learns she hadn't done anything wrong.
- Jeanette is a fundamentally cursed existence, unlikely to live long.
- The touching romance of Jeanette and her step brother is undermined by hints that in the original novel he actually loved Athanasia instead.
- While Jeanette's presence is soothing to Claude and helps him get to sleep it's also extremely bad for him in the long run, indicating that he'll also die in not too long.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The story ends with the current Athanasia and Claude finally affirming that they are both father and child, but they have to go through a whole lot of hell to get there.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: In-Universe, this is how "The Lovely Princess" seems to end at a glance. Yes, Claude and Jeanette are happy, but only after Claude had his real daughter executed for a crime she turns out to have not committed and feels no guilt over the matter. Later events make it clear that it is in fact not a happy ending at all and was likely not intended to be.
- Foreshadowing: A whole layer of it that would explain and lead to what caused the original Athanasia's doom.
- The first example is Claude's subtle kindness to our Athanasia and the dreams she gets of Diana, hinting that Claude neglected but still spared Athanasia to start with because he was grieving Diana's death and forced himself to forget everything about her. The same applies to the original novel "The Lovely Princess" as well, the only difference being that the original Athanasia arrived in Claude's life too late to bring his memories of Diana back.
- Lucas talks of how the story of Aethernitas felt like sham and how his favorite character is the Black magician. Lucas is later revealed to be the one and only Black Magician of the tower. Oh, and his talk of wanting to eat Blackie, the holy beast made of Athanasia's mana? The final book in the webnovel contains a side story which reveals that he did just that to replenish his mana in the original universe, leaving the original Athanasia incapable of performing magic.
- Lucas called Jennette a "Chimera". This is a hint to Jennette's true origin as a child created with black magic and how she is actually Claude's niece instead of being his true daughter.
- Fridge Horror: In-Universe: The ending to the original novel wasn't just bad for Athanasia, but for almost everyone involved thanks to the logical consequences of many established events. It's not until the midpoint where the reader realizes that the original novel was actually a Downer Ending in disguise.
- Headbutting Heroes: Athanasia and her father don't really like Duke Alpheus at all, but he's still a loyal and dependable ally and even as he serves his own political interests and acts mildly slimy at all times. This is why it comes as such a shock to Atty when he appears after Claude is incapacitated seemingly serving Claude's 'dead' brother. However, this isn't due to his own will.
- Hidden Depths: Another factor in the current Athanasia's world is revealing what goes on underneath the characters shown in the original novel, "The Lovely Princess".
- High Fantasy: Magic exists in the fantastical and semi-medieval setting the story takes place in.
- Isekai: Part of the premise is that a modern world orphaned woman, Lee Jihye is reincarnated as the tragic princess Athanasia after she read the original novel, "The Lovely Princess" some time before she got reincarnated.
- Meaningful Name: The Royal Family are given names related to eternity usually resulting in this trope
- Athanasia is Greek for "immortal", representing Diana's desire for her daughter to live a long happy life.
- Anastacius is likely related to the Greek word "Anastasius" meaning resurrection, referring to how Anastacius came back from the dead.
- Claude is derived from the Latin word for limping as he is the spare to throne and The Unfavorite of the family.
- Metaphorically True: The current Athanasia has this problem because she only had the original story, "The Lovely Princess", as reference regarding how the characters around her will act. Even as she bonds with others and comes to see Claude as a father, she still has her guard up. Though this does help her to navigate her circumstances since she knows a little of what's going to happen.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: Discussed and played straight in Season 3 of the webtoon. Lucas asked why Athanasia didn't try asking him to help deal with Anastacius and the nobles. However, as Lucas's method of dealing with them involved murdering them, she points out that such method would cause a heavy political issue and paint the royal family in a bad light.
- No Romantic Resolution: The webcomic placed Athanasia's Ship Tease with Lucas and Izekiel at the end of the main webcomic with little confirmation of whether or not Athanasia ends up with one of them.
- Point of Divergence: The current Athanasia pulling strings and working to prevent her Doomed by Canon fate brought many subtle, but big changes that affected how her story ended:
- Meeting a 5 year old Athanasia instead of a 9 year old one is what prompts Claude to finally and slowly accept her as his daughter and release the memory erasing magic he placed on himself to forget about Athanasia's birth mother.
- Claude now genuinely caring for Athanasia drives a wrench in the plans Ijekiel's father had to control the throne. It also set up events that sent Athanasia's magic rampaging which almost killed her, prompting Claude to do what he could to save his daughter... at the cost of the attachment he had for her in the aftermath, and things went a little bit downhill for our Athanasia following that.
- Jennette's aunt, Rosaria, is said to have died from an accident instead when she was still around during the original story, since Athanasia is officially recognized as the princess and Claude's daughter, so Jennette wasn't aware of the fact that she is actually Claude's niece until the Awful Truth is slapped in her face much later.
- Pragmatic Adaptation: The webcomic, in a sense. While it is still faithful to the novel, the story itself has several differences compared to the novel's storyline. Such as making Anastacius an Ascended Extra veering into Big Bad and more drama is involved in Claude's memory loss in season two. The changes were later explained via word of mouth from Korean readers that the original webnovel was once charged with Plagiarism, leading to the changes and deviation that the Webtoon took from the original webnovel.
- Rewatch Bonus: The Foreshadowing in place such as Claude using black magic on himself in his grief and the circumstances of Jennette's birth makes re-reading the series, be it the webtoon or webnovel, much more layered and can explain how those factors ended up causing the Novel Athanasia to be Doomed by Canon.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The final book in the webnovel has a story where our Athanasia is sent to the original timeline of "The Lovely Princess" to fix the timeline, and only then can she return home.
- Shared Universe: "Who Made Me A Princess" is part of the same shared universe as Plutus' previous work, Beware Of The Brothers which takes place in Arlanta. One notable fact is that it shares the same timeline as the reincarnated Athanasia's story as it's mentioned that Athanasia marries at the age of 26, something that isn't possible if it happened in the original timeline where Athanasia is killed.
- Ship Tease: The current Athanasia has some of these with the magician Lucas and Ijekiel, who is the hero from the original story. In the webnovel, she also managed to attract the attention of the original universe Lucas and Izekiel in the final arc.
- Spared By Adaptation: In the webtoon, Anastacius and Jenette are spared from their own canonical fates from the novel with Anastacius living together with Jenette in exile.
- Show Within a Show: "The Lovely Princess" novel is this and becomes the basis for why our protagonist gets reincarnated as Athanasia.
- Table Space: In the webtoon, Anthy and Claude's relationship is perfectly described by the space in the table they sit at. When Anthy first meets Claude, the dining table is large with a huge separation. After they become closer, Anthy has tea with Claude in the flower garden at a small intimate setting. After Claude looses his memory, Anthy is seen sitting at the tea table by herself with Claude conspicuously missing.
- Tell Me About My Mother: Athanasia becomes curious about her mother, but is too afraid to bring her up.
- Thicker Than Water: The whole premise of the story is the transmigrated Athanasia finding her father caring for her more than she thought he would and Athanasia seeing the supposedly cold ruler as her father. It's a bit complicatedExplanation .
- Wizards Live Longer: Powerful magicians have longer lifespans than normal people, which Atty assumes is the reason for her father still looking so young. Since she seems to be roughly in the same ballpark as him ability wise, this presumably also applies to her and Lucas is thousands of years old and seemingly able to control his appearance at will.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Ultimately subverted in the webtoon. Athanasia's goal is to prevent her life from playing out the way it does in the original story, since in the original story Athanasia is wrongfully executed. She does quickly knock the story off its course, but some things seem to happen inevitably anyway. When Athanasia sees Jennette visiting with Claude in a scene she remembers from The Lovely Princess, she wonders if Claude losing his memories and hating her again as a result was just the original story reasserting itself.
