honestly the only explation I could have for novel Ijekiel's strange compulsion to needlessly martyr himself for Jennette by acting like a subserviant housewife while secretly resenting her is that it could be tied to Duchess Alpheus. Ijekiel's mother is kind of a black hole in the story. We know that she had to have existed otherwise Ijekiel would not be born, but except for one or two mentions of her she is completely absent from the narrative as if she were already dead. The manhwa side stories at least supplied a reason for her absence: Duchess Alpheus had been chronically ill and had likely passed away from her illness long ago. I thought there's potential to create a parallel to Claude and Felix's mothers. We know that Roger assured Ijekiel that he was the most important treasure of the house of Alpheus and he should not allow himself to be ordered around by a little girl, but we don't know how Ijekiel's mother treated him and Jennette. Duchess Alpheu's illness, which probably rarely permitted her to leave the house and mingle with society and Jennette's status as a hidden princess who was not allowed to leave the house except on rare occasions under supervision. It is possible that this circumstance allowed Duchess Alpheus' to grow closer to Jennette than Ijekiel. Like Felix, Ijekiel might have spend little time with his mother when she was alive, and imagined this was because she was caring for another's child. Felix confessed to Athy that he even resented his mother a little and pretended her death had not hurt him, because he could barely remember her face. I could imagine that rather than hating his mother, Ijekiel was resenting Jennette for taking away his mother's love. This is where the accusations of selfishness and greed against her could steem from. A theme in wmmap is how the lack of a mother's love or even the missing presence of a parent during childhood can twist men.
I've even played with a Jon Snow scenario. Roger not officially claiming Jennette as his or Lord Margarita's bastard but letting people believe she was one, because it was safer for people to think she was an illegitimate child born from an affair than the crown princess. What went through Ijekiel's head when Jennette entered his home and he was expected to treat her like his little sister but everyone would refuse to tell him who her true parents were and his dad became mad whenever he asked questions about Jennette's origins? He could have thought his mother's illness that allowed her to be send to the seaside might have been an excuse. Children can sense when their parents are hiding something from them and can come up with the wildest explanations. His parents had a fight, perhaps one of them had an affair. Ijekiel's not blind or stupid, he knows marriage is not about love and nobles cheat like crazy. Most men keep a mistress or two, the Emperor had dozens! Jennette had to be hidden from high society for some reason and the most obvious assumption is that she was the illegitimate child of an affair.
The seaside was the perfect place to hide such secret. Mietta has even a big geographical advantage as a port city. Duchess Alpheus and Jennette could easily take a ship to another country should Claude become suspicious and send his knights to investigate the wherabouts of Penelope or her possible child.
Ijekiel would have been raised by Roger in the capital and Jennette by Duchess Alpheus in Mietta. Ijekiel/Jennette's would parallel and foil Athy/Jennette. Ijekiel thought Jennette was his half-sister but she ended up not related to him and they married, wheras Athy thought Jennette was an unrelated noble girl but she was revealed to be her presumed half-sister. Ijekiel Alpheus was Jennette Margarita's fake cousin and Athy ended up to be Jennette's true cousin. The situation would give another reason why lp Ijekiel might have fallen for lp Athy if they both were competing with Jennette for each of their parent's attention and both envied and loved their spoiled sister. Ijekiel was recognizing his younger self in lp Athy and felt drawn to her. Like lp Athy who studied diligently in hopes her academic achievements would make her father finally aknowledge her, Ijekiel strived to become an impossibly perfect gentleman to make his mother proud.
Her dying wish could have been for her son to take care of Jennette and Ijekiel felt shackled by that promise he gave his dead mother. He felt like he had to fullfill it like he fullfilled every of his parents' expections, but every romantic gesture, every word was poisoned by bitterness, jealousy and resentment, because Ijekiel felt like Jennette stole his past, present and future and he was to be her eternal slave. Should Ijekiel reject Jennette (his heart already does, but should he abandon her completely) he would feel like his mother's ghost would haunt him for breaking his promise to her. He can't stand the thought that he could break his mother's heart and she would cry tears from heaven for this betrayal. So he does what he thinks she would demand of him and believes he is honouring his mother through Jennette.
