Re:ZERO Emilia's Failure as a Liege and The Simp Squad Cover-Up
Strip away the narration and the tragic framing, and arc 3 is the story of a prospective ruler failing the single most devoted person she has, then being shielded from any consequence for it. Everything that should reflect on Emilia gets redirected onto Subaru. Her failure as a liege is so total that it takes the full simp squad trio, Subaru, Puck, and Tappei, to cover it up and gaslight a whole fandom. The discourse only ever asks whether Subaru was a worthy knight. It never asks whether Emilia was a worthy liege, or whether she ever grows into the role at all. That's the trick. Point the scrutiny at the retainer and nobody checks the ruler.
It works because the world stops mattering after arc 4. The story pivots to lore, the Witch Cult, some foreign nation, Aldebaran, and the royal selection turns into a farce. Lugunica becomes a joke. The medieval sociopolitics that justified Subaru's humiliation in arc 3 were never a real system, just an aesthetic the author flips on and off as the plot demands. The exact dynamics that broke Subaru never get enforced on anyone again.
Now imagine the other route, where Re:ZERO took the politics, and Subaru and Emilia learning the capital, as seriously as it does for Felt, Anastasia, Crusch, even Priscilla. Those candidates actually engage with the Kingdom. Maybe Emilia was never meant to be King, only the Dragon Maiden, since Rickert hints at it in LN 4 and it comes up again at Subaru's knighting. But with the other candidates dropping like flies, and with Emilia shifting public opinion on demihumans and learning to handle people being set up as a real engine of progress, dropping that thread is a genuine waste. The story is too bloated, stuffed with too much, burns ages in Vollachia, leans on ass pulls, and switches its seriousness on and off entirely to keep dragging Subaru through the wringer.
Who Owes Whom
First of all, it's Emilia, as royal candidate and prospective ruler, who owes a lot to her allies, not the other way around. Nobody owes her the fulfillment of her wish to save the Elior elves. She's the one who decided to take the insignia from Roswaal and drag all these people into the royal selection mess, chiefly Subaru, who got his belly torn open defending her life, then was nearly ripped apart by witchbeasts, a huge deed that would have been amply rewarded in any other camp, because it saved her reputation and her chance to proceed in the royal selection.
This is the part that gets lost: a liege doesn't just command loyalty, she owes something back for it. The whole logic of the bond is reciprocal. A retainer who throws himself in front of a blade for you has a claim on your attention, your candor, and your respect, and the more he sacrifices, the larger that claim grows. Emilia inverts this entirely. She takes everything Subaru offers and treats the debt as flowing the wrong way, as if his devotion obligates nothing in her.
The contract with Ferris doesn't count, because what we're talking about here is social obligation: how she talks to Subaru, how she treats him, whether she respects him, listens to him, and so on. Her behavior is exceptionally stupid and hypocritical considering she saw Subaru less as a servant or retainer and more as a friend, one she already had feelings for and wanted to see her as a "normal girl." Whatever "normal" is supposed to mean, she wasn't going to get that treatment in return while she constantly put him down and exerted her authority and control over him.
Emilia's POV and What Subaru Became to the Camp
From Emilia's POV, she doesn't remember the first loop where she saved him, plus she didn't think much of the lap pillow she gave him, and she's basically running from the high of having gained an Authority user, because the two psychopathic demons in her camp kept killing and torturing her benefactor, and after she told Rem "Subaru is a good boy," he basically comes to view Emilia as his one pillar of safety. Then, over two months, Subaru brightens her life and brings a lot of joy to the mansion and village. He's the thread connecting the villagers and the kids he saved to Rem, Ram, Emilia, and the mansion in general, plus he's a rare sort who got along with both Great Spirits in the mansion.
The Liege's Abdicated Duty
Emilia had an immense responsibility to actually, properly listen to Subaru's wishes and treat him with respect. He's basically a godsend, someone willing to go to any lengths for her, and what does she do? She treats him like a child, tramples on his feelings constantly, ignores him, sidelines him, and keeps him out of discussions concerning his own health. She actively refuses to come to an understanding with him, and in the throne room she fails to stand up for herself, so Subaru has to step in. She'll defend Felt from Priscilla's words, but she stands there and lets Subaru be insulted over and over by Julius, and after a rival knight brutalizes such an important member of her own camp, she decides to throw a tantrum in front of him, throwing her clothes at him, calling him selfish, a liar, all because he broke a promise she coerced out of him.
A ruler who cannot protect the people who bleed for her, and who turns on them the moment they slip, has fundamentally misunderstood what the role demands. The bare minimum a liege owes a knight is that she stand between him and those who would humiliate him, and Emilia cannot even manage that.
She Couldn't Even Kick Him Out
As a matter of fact, she simply didn't have the authority to kick him out. She's leaving him behind with Rem and alienating him, yet functionally he's still part of the camp precisely because of Rem. Ram doesn't give a shit about Emilia insofar as she's just Roswaal's pawn, but she gives a shit about Subaru because he's important to her sister, who would be upset if Subaru were kicked out permanently. The same would go for Beatrice, who would be upset and stop coming out (which is what happens), especially considering her favorite food is mayonnaise, and the villagers and kids would start asking questions if Subaru went missing (which is exactly what happens; Subaru comes back in LN 9 and the villagers are immediately relieved).
How Small Subaru's "Sin" Actually Is
In short, Emilia is unbelievably pathetic. Pathetic doesn't even begin to describe it. She actively did everything that would make it harder for her own camp to proceed in the royal selection, she had zero skin in the game, and she was basically let off because of Puck and her status. That's it. "Subaru wanted validation" is not really that big of a sin, you know? Wanting to prove oneself to the person they love, fearing something bad might happen to them, these are all basic human emotions. In any story, even if the protagonist were incapable and the author was attempting to "deconstruct the isekai protagonist," at the very least he wouldn't rag on the MC so much. Instead he punishes Subaru unreasonably, he constantly makes other characters act as his mouthpiece, and never once does Emilia properly apologize to Subaru for being far more selfish than he was.
That's another thing: she announced her candidacy, brought the Witch Cult down on everyone, and is later shown to not even know about them, chiefly because Puck never explained it to her. The mistakes the people around Subaru commit are just far, far graver, and yet what do we get in his narration? What do we get from scum like Ferris and Julius? These characters aren't misunderstood; nobody is, because none of their stupid sob-story backgrounds come close to Subaru's suffering, and yet he puts up with their BS.
Not Christ, Just Self-Erasure
It would be one thing if the dude actually behaved like Jesus, if he forgave people for their sins and had some semblance of understanding of the wrongs committed against him, but no, the dude just keeps apologizing. A pathetic, submissive, dog-like main character working for a pathetic, stupid, mentally challenged child, for the sole sake of bolstering the author's fetish for Emilia-archetypes. Someone once said that Re:ZERO is basically a kind of misandrist fantasy, and that explains a lot LMFAO.
The Failed Deconstruction
Emilia is extremely sheltered and coddled, even in the so-called "character growth arc," which is arc 4. She's utterly unbearable. The author basically fails to subvert isekai tropes, because the typical isekai hero takes the form of Emilia, who's essentially living a wish-fulfillment fantasy. Roswaal's Gospel was basically that, and Roswaal is 100% right considering RbD. He's right to believe in people's weakness, because the entire world of Re:ZERO is filled with shit people with shit standards and morals, the Emilia camp filled with monsters who constantly try to blow themselves apart, and Tappei will justify it all by giving them some vapid backstory.
Emilia is hated by the world, but this one Authority user falls into her lap, plus she gets a Great Spirit who'll throw his weight around for her, coddle her, and even make the guy who wanted to help her as miserable as possible. She can be as bad a liege and friend as possible, she can be as childish, useless, naive, and hypocritical as possible, but Subaru will put up with all of it because he loves her. Subaru's love for Emilia feels forced in that he doesn't even have an escape route. He doesn't even have a real choice to leave her life from the moment he decided to save her, because not only would he be leaving Emilia, he'd be leaving all his friends and allies behind, abandoning them to die, since the Emilia camp actively tries to kill itself in each arc. And even the one time he had a chance to escape in arc 3, that was with his former torturer and murderer, the very cause of the abandonment issues that led to his separation from Emilia in the first place.
The Subway Sandwich
Emilia is a disgusting female lead. Subaru and her "growth" fall apart the moment you have any standards for the story and try to examine her actions from the perspective of a prospective ruler and liege. Subaru never coddled her; it's the author who coddles her. He's the one who makes the Subway sandwich, then blames the Subway employee for the sandwich being shit despite the ingredients being just fine. Why is she never allowed to learn how babies are made? In such a brutal world, where Subaru has rabbits go up his anus and eat him inside out, having Emilia be this stupid fucking doll is abhorrent. Why does the author write Subaru and Otto openly insulting Emilia in arc 5, to the point Julius has to step in and berate him? It's so stupid. Status dynamics, medieval sociopolitics, the very things that caused Subaru so much suffering in arc 3, they never matter again in the story. For all the lessons about appearances Subaru gained in arc 3, that shit is never followed through, because self-love or some shit, Subaru and Emilia like each other for who they are or whatever.
The Real Problem
Then. Why. The hell. Does she not recontextualize arc 3? Ever? Characters in this story simply do not behave like real people. Traits and worldbuilding morph according to the whims of the author for the sake of plot or gags. There's no there there, you know?
A filthy piece of fiction. There, that's my hate post for Re:ZERO.
Well, I'm exaggerating. I don't hate Re:ZERO, I hate lost potential. I can sympathize with people like Anastasia. The biggest issue with Re:ZERO is Emilia, her relationship with Subaru, and how her character grows. I'm not talking about her confessing to Subaru, which I'm not that interested in, since they already act like a couple.
Considering the sheer extent of the suffering arc 3 Subaru went through, karma hitting the people who wronged him back then leaves a bad taste when Subaru himself never realizes he was wronged in the first place. He completely lacks self-respect and simps for everybody. Unlike his arc 3 self, who despised the aristocracy, the Subaru of arc 10 is a lot like Julius, who simps for them. They're both rather pathetic and stupid.
Simply having Subaru or Emilia talk with the top brass of the capital, beyond just the named characters of arc 3, would do a lot of good, Rickert Hoffman at the very least, but no luck. In this story you've got these teenage girls who apparently don't even know the names of most of the nobility or the royal guard, yet it forces this pretend-realist medieval theatre in LN 4 purely to inflict suffering on Subaru. It really isn't wise to expect much from Re:ZERO. At the end of the day it falls prey to so many other tropes it isn't even funny, considering how much this show gets glazed.
