In Chapter 41, the old bookstore owner tells Athanasia that she’s cursed. This is before she has the ribbon that Jennette gives her, which is being purchased earlier in the same chapter. The old man maybe an unreliable source, but I’m going to assume he’s right in this instance until proven otherwise.

My theory is that her curse is something carried over from what I now refer to as an alternate timeline of possible events, i.e., the web novel “Lovely Princess.”

What could have carried over though? 

Obviously, her death is a possibility, but I think that there is more to this curse.

My theory is that Athanasia’s curse is to be magically drained by her uncle, using Jennette as a living conduit for her power to transfer to him and that this magical draining would result in Athanasia’s death. I also theorize that this curse was intended for Claude, but since Jennette meets with Athanasia more, it has affected her instead. 

At first, I thought this kind of magically draining curse applied to Claude only, especially after we see Chapter 43′s alternate timeline or the future through one of Athanasia’s dreams where Claude is collapsed, and Jennette+his brother are above him–and that could still be the case, but then I realized that thus far only Athanasia has been genuinely suffering. So, what if the curse has gone wrong. What if Claude was the goal, and it extended out to Athanasia?

Starting with the few scenes where we encounter the present-day uncle, Anastasios, we know that he has disguised his royal physical attributes by coating his hair in black and making his jewel-like eyes black looking too. 

At first, I thought that this was magic, after all, Lucas and Athanasia are able to do such–but looking back, people don’t suspect that she could be using magic to hide as they search for the missing princess. It doesn’t seem like they have tools to figure out such disguises (if they did, I doubt Anastasious could have made it into the Debutant Ball). So, perhaps only strong magicians can perform such appearance altering magic.

If so, it would explain how his appearance is in a slight, though still apparent, state of flux. When we see him around Jennette, his eyes begin to take on their jewel-like feature again, such as during the Debutant Ball when Athanasia notice’s his jewel-like eyes for a second, or in chapter 41 when they begin reverting back to blue. Both times, Jennette has recently or is currently in the presence of Athanasia. This is true too in chapter 57, as his eyelashes right where the iris would be revert to blue (which I think meant that his eye was supposed to be partially open but was drawn over, though I could be overthinking it).

He has some magic, but given the coloring of his hair (and more specifically, his eyes), it might be that he’s running low on magic while in hiding or that it flares up when he is around Jennette. When he is apart from Jennette, the jewel feature and blue seem to be missing, hence my reasoning that his royal features, which are clearly defined as having to do with the magic of their bloodline, might be coming back from taking something away from his meeting with his chimera-human daughter. Since this only happens around or after Athanasia has been with Jennette, I’ve made the assumption that the two are connected.

Cursing the ribbon that Jennette plans to give to Athanasia may have been him moving his plans forward since she was not introduced to Claude at the Debutant Ball, which was, as far as we know, the original plan. The ribbon clearly caused Athanasia’s magic to spike and had Claude not interfered, it seems like Athanasia would have died from her magic’s instability with Jennette right there to absorb it. 

The hair clip caused Athanasia’s magic to go wild, and Blackie/Raven disappears within her as the magic spikes out. Jennette, who was right next to her, could have absorbed some of Athanasia’s magic at that moment, which could become a plot point in the near future.

I suspect we’ll know more in the next chapter as Jennette confronts the man that is her actual father in her own home. 

Well, what do you all think?