Princess Anisphia may not be able to use magic but she can more than make up for it with the ideas and inventions she has for magical tools, which may or may not be based on a past life of hers. Anis certainly loved reading fantasy stories in her old life and so when she stumbles in upon a tense situation between her brother the crown prince and his fiancée she asks hey, is this a breaking-off-your-engagement scene by any chance? Well, if her brother has no more need for the genius magic user Euphyllia Magenta then Anis is going to snatch her right up, for both the sake of science and love!
Anis hasn’t reincarnated into any story she’s familiar with which means that she’s approached her life with a bit of frivolity that we don’t usually see in otome heroines/villainesses; there’s no plot she needs to follow or defuse and with her royal status it’s a real wish-fulfillment set-up. Euphyllia’s life has followed a much more common path however, she’s been raised her whole life to become queen and with no obvious cause it’s a bit mystifying why the prince and his comrades have all suddenly turned against her. Things aren’t entirely against her however — it seems that the royal family cared more about getting Euphyllia as a capable daughter-in-law/future queen more than they cared about their son being king (a similar dynamic to the annulments in Prison Life is Easy for a Villainess or Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools). So, while publicly her honor has been besmirched, behind closed doors no one is blaming her for it at least.
Incidentally, the reason why Anis isn’t in the line of succession isn’t because of her gender but because she publicly forfeited it saying, “You’ll never get me to marry a man! If I have to love someone, I’ll take a woman any day!” She says that it’s just because she doesn’t want to deal with having kids (and in private it’s clear that she’s very gay for Euphyllia from the start) but it seems like her family wouldn’t have let a little queerness stop her from inheriting the throne if they had any say in it. Anis might be called “the princess peculiar” but at least she has morals!
Euphyllia is a much calmer heroine compared to Anis’s bouncing off the walls genki energy. Even after she regains her composure over being publicly dumped, watching Anis give her room to have emotions again is a delight. The art for this manga adaptation is also quite charming, it’s full of lively energy, good faces, and some fun word bubble/sfx placement, but does have one or two questionable fan service scenes that makes it clear that the reader should be as in love with girls (or at least Euphyllia) as Anis is.
It’s not quite another entry in the “now that I’ve reincarnated, I will smooch the villainess!” sub-genre but it’s a close cousin and a fun story so far. I’m looking forward to checking out both the light novel and the anime in the coming weeks!