At 14, the Crown Prince's mother threw him a birthday party, partly as a goodbye to her child who was soon moving to the academy, which all nobles attended at 14.
As a child of a fallen noble, Arabella wasn't in any way supposed to be there. However, one of the daughters of her adopted mother was a palace maid and had managed to smuggle her in, leading to the very first step that began her capture journey.
Her meeting with the Crown Prince was just as magical as planned.
Having sneaked out of the heavy party to take a breather, the Crown Prince was blown away when he suddenly met an incredibly beautiful young maiden, whose silver hair sparkled under the moonlight and blue eyes struck a gorgeous match with the water fountain.
Everything was so shiny, so pretty, so striking—not to mention that the female lead knew the exact gestures to show, what to say, all in the right way, to steal the heart of the juvenile prince rather effortlessly.
She became what the many-translated Chinese novels Evelyn had read would refer to as a "white moonlight" in his heart.
The mysterious angelic girl, who appeared suddenly and out of nowhere, stole his heart and vanished right after, and he was determined to have her.
After experiencing what most teenagers would call love, the Prince pushed even harder to dissolve the engagement with Verity, and the more rejections he faced, the more displeased he became with her.
The academy began, and while Bella was busy capturing the hearts of everyone, including a future duke, a future mage tower head, a future powerful knight, and the Crown Prince, Verity went down the most generic villainous route ever—buying a clique just to bully Bella after she learned of the affection that the Crown Prince had for her.
Her jealousy spiked even more after finding out that Bella was practically perfect in everything compared to her, making her more vengeful and cruel than ever.
The only twist in Verity's villainous route was her death, but even that was still as typical as they get.
Lucian—yes, the Lucian Castellan—also madly captivated by the female lead, could no longer endure Verity's villainous actions toward Bella, which continued even after the Crown Prince humiliated her and cut off their engagement at her coming-of-age ceremony.
By that stage, Verity had pretty much already lost her mind, driven mad with grief and jealousy from losing the Crown Prince and officially becoming the laughingstock of the century.
She determined within herself to kill the female lead. As for whether Lucian knew of her plans or just got tired of her shenanigans, the author never truly confirmed. And at the fresh age of 20, Verity was towered over by her "brother" and told the most obvious of lines: "I've always despised your existence," then viciously stabbed.
She was thrown into a moving carriage while bleeding out, and off the cliff she went, never to be heard of again. Her story arc officially ended there, and the author couldn't even be bothered to properly wrap up everything—like what the readers were most curious about: what happened after her death.
Though they could make a few calculated guesses from how badly her adopted family treated her.
Evelyn wasn't sure what the author wanted to achieve by subverting the usual villainess trope—where the villainess just happened to be evil or spoiled or simply obsessed with the male lead—but instead made her the most pitiful character in the story and still cruelly disposed of her without a character growth arc or even a minor break from her misery.
But one thing was for sure—Verity was a character whose story touched the hearts of many.
After her death, the story actually didn't lose its spunk. Between the harem fights and the interesting plot lines thrown in by the author, the story ended as an absolute 10 out of 10—at least to Evelyn. Though most of the fandom would agree with her, the author was just that good.
The story went in an otome-style route: one main route where she ended up with the Crown Prince and other secondary routes where she ended up with the other male leads, but not a single reverse harem route.
When asked, the author's words were quite interesting:
"It's too OOC for Bella. I don't think she'll be able to tolerate all four men at once."
"Tolerate" was a very funny word to Evelyn because it mostly confirmed the major theory in the fandom that the female lead never really loved any of the male leads.
Instead, she simply settled down with them to get away from her groomer of an adopted family—which made sense, given her mermaid origin and how mermaids were basically described as psychopaths by the novel.
Thinking of it, this novel was really, really popular. Could that be why she managed to remember it as a standalone and not merged with the countless similar others she had read?
Partially so. However, the main reason was that the story, the fandom, and even its fanfictions were a straight-up 10 out of 10, embedding themselves into Evelyn's memory.
The most popular fanfiction being an Arabella × Verity enemies-to-lovers fanfiction, which was adopted by the fandom as a canon route. The typical fanon-so-good-it-became-canon—except the author never really did recognize it, though they gave a nod to it in one of their many interviews.
Surprisingly, the most popular character and face of the novel was Verity.
She somehow became the "baby" of the fandom, which seemed to make a pact to give her all the love she couldn't get—in their own silly way. It was so much that many took up the story thinking of her as the female lead, due to the many misconceptions that spread through the internet.
Evelyn had never been a fandom person, but that fandom sure was fun. She laughed at herself mockingly. As expected, life really got a jerk out of screwing her over.
Because she had so many good memories of the story, it decided to throw her in it and have them replaced with the terrible ones?
She groaned. If only she wasn't such a coward, then she would put a strict end to all of this nonsense.