The Archduke’s Adopted Saint Volume 1 K-Comics Review – Review

By this point in pop culture, we’ve all read about or watched time loops. The usual method for handling them (with, of course, some exceptions) is that the looping party eventually uses their knowledge to break the cycle or just becomes inured to their situation and makes the best of it. Not so Dinah, heroine of Hwang Bino’s adaptation of Songiba’s The Archduke’s Adopted Saint. Dinah has spent lifetimes being tormented by the church that took her off the streets, reviled for being an orphan and abused by fellow saint candidate Lavienne, and none of this is relegated to “oh, well, that’s just my life.” Dinah is genuinely traumatized, and that’s what drives her story.

It’s a good thing that the book opens with a “chapter 0” that shows readers that things will, in fact, get better, because Dinah’s life is pretty bleak. Just before she successfully commits suicide to end the loop before the main story starts, we see her kept chained in a dank basement and treated like a criminal. Every day, Lavienne comes to the cellar to drain some of Dinah’s blood, which she consumes to create the fiction that she, the daughter of a duke, is the true saint. If this seems a bit over the top for a villain, it’s worth mentioning that Lavienne has perfect parent manners – she’s an expert at convincing adults and later higher-ups in the church that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and she’d never do something as horrible as lock a rival up and bleed her dry. She’s blonde and pretty and perfect, after all.

Lavienne is, of course, just part of a systemic problem within the church, an organization that took Dinah in and then left her to be abused (while doling out some of the abuse themselves). Dinah doesn’t fully understand that until she meets the kingdom’s only archduke, Dewin Tersia. She believes that if she, a scrawny pre-teen who has clearly been neglected, charges him with a knife, he’ll just kill her without a second thought. After all, that’s both what the rumors about him and what her own life have prepared her to believe. But instead of murdering a child, Dewin offers to adopt Dinah – and after only a cursory glance at her sorry state, he quickly pays the church handsomely to relinquish any claim on her.

Dewin is an excellent hero (not romantic, don’t worry!). Mostly this comes down to the fact that he’s that rare creature in media, a fantastic parent. He’s been raising his twin sons Jude and Dennis, and he recognizes that Dinah needs a loving family and a fresh start. Renaming her Esther, Dewin begins his campaign of treating the poor girl gently and with love. One of the most heartwarming scenes in the volume is when she has a nightmare during a storm and he and Jude both sleep in the bed with her all night so that she feels safe. It’s top-notch familial love, and even the more standoffish Dennis is devoted to making sure that Esther feels like she belongs. These are the people she always needed in her corner. When Dewin renames her, he’s trying to send the message that she’s no longer being judged (the meaning of the name “Dinah”), but is instead a shining star, which is what “Esther” means, as Hwang mentions. (It may also come from the goddess Ishtar, which has its own implications.)

Most of this volume is about Esther making the transition from reviled and tormented orphan to beloved daughter. It’s smoothly presented but not smooth for her, and I appreciate that the story is acknowledging her trauma. Her situation can’t be fixed with one hug and a couple of cookies; she needs steady care over a long period to believe it’s true, and even then, she may have flashbacks. Her history has taught her not to trust, and we can see that in her words and actions over the course of this volume. Her new brothers take the brunt of this simply because they don’t really understand what she’s been through, but by the end of the book, even less emotionally literate Dennis is clearly making an effort. It’s lovely to see.

The art is lovely, too, and Hwang has a good touch with colors and facial expressions. All outfits are done in the same basic style so that they look less “unspecified fantasy time period” and more “basically mid-Victorian” without obvious deviations. Esther’s hair color is my one major complaint, as it seems to go between light brown and dark brown with no rhyme or reason.

Crossed Hearts has released two editions of this: regular and limited. I have the limited edition, which comes with an obi around the book, a bookmark of Esther, character sheets, and a couple of bonus short-short stories. Both editions are beautiful, though, with French flaps and foil touches on the cover, albeit in a smaller trim size than most English manhwa books. (Think mass market paperback versus trade paperback.) Crossed Hearts also includes “Observational Log” pages after some chapters – these are basically reading journal pages with questions to promote active reading. My teacher/librarian self loves this idea, and anything that gets more graphic novels into schools is a win for reading comprehension and modalities. But I could see how these pages might feel juvenile for some readers, and the questions are a bit all over the place – from “If you entered this chapter, what would you do?” to “Do you have any phobias or lingering trauma?”

Whichever edition you pick up, The Archduke’s Adopted Saint is off to a good start. Emotionally honest and a good take on the time loop story, it’s a story I’m looking forward to reading more of.