Daughter of the Emperor Volume 3 Review

I’ve never…felt this burning desire to see someone before.

I almost screamed when I reached that page. Caitel is warming up to Ria! Our tsundere emperor Caitel is finally starting to admit his feelings for his only daughter. And the best part is that people are noticing it. Will this cause more trouble for Ria, though?

After three volumes, I can confidently say that Daughter of the Emperor is a slow-paced manhwa. I thought that the first couple of volumes would be about introducing the main characters, and then the pace would pick up from there, but it seems not to be the case. In each volume, Ria grows one year older, but hopefully we won’t have to wait much longer before something happens. If I can apply the term shojo to this manhwa, Ria needs to be 15 or 16 before she can find her love interest, and it would be really painful to wait for 15 or 16 volumes to come out before our (read ‘my’) wishes come through.

I’m still undecided if I like or dislike the pace of the story. Compared to other manhwa or manga where Volume 1 shows the catalyst which will start the story and the characters on their journey—whether it’s an epic adventure or falling for one’s classmate—in Daughter of the Emperor we follow Ria and her mini adventures, which can almost be described as her day-to-day life. It’s different compared to what I’m used to reading, but this way of narrating actually gives its readers more insights on the character per se and the story itself.

There hasn’t been any major character development, but we get glimpses of how the relationships are progressing among Ria, Caitel, Perdel and even Asisi. In this volume, Perdel and his wife Silvia take centre stage. Caitel is away at war, and so is his (in)famous knight Asisi. Ria doesn’t have much to do. She plays with a pregnant Silvia and sometimes Perdel, but we all know how weird he is, so Ria can’t help but mess with him a bit. Although in her twenties in her original world, Ria is only three now, and there isn’t much she can do. And at times she wonders (and so do we) if being in a younger body is affecting her personality, because she’s petty and childish at times. She enjoys messing with the adults, especially her father and Perdel. Although she has to be more careful with her behaviour toward Caitel, nobody can hold her back against Perdel.

Throughout Ria’s daily life, we get to know more about her, but the questions keep accumulating. Who is Dranste? And why was Asisi crying? What’s going on between Caitel and Asisi? Why does Ria feel sad when she sees Asisi? And why does the knight avoid her now that he’s been officially introduced to Ria? We still don’t have answers, and we can only speculate.

However, Silvia and Perdel’s children are born in this volume. Will they be love interests together with Ria’s nanny’s son, Graecito? That’s what I’m really looking forward to finding out.

As usual, the illustrations are lovely. As a full-colour manhwa, we get to see the characters with the correct eye and hair colour, and we don’t have to wait for the anime (if there will ever be one) to guess what it is. The colour palette is based on pastel and muted colours to give the story that ‘kawaii’ feelings and representation. And both the publisher and the illustrator surprise us with a folded full-spread illustration of Ria and Caitel right behind the cover.

Daughter of the Emperor Volume 3 is written by Yunsul and illustrated by Rino. It’s published as a print volume by Yen Press with the English translation by Micah Kim. Volume 4 is slated for release in June 2023.