Freya has ridden to Fort Leren to help “her” soldiers fight off the invading Sigurd army but there’s not much that two people can do to turn the tide, even if one of them is the emblem of the kingdom and the other is the kingdom’s most ferocious knight.
But Freya is tired of people dying because of her, dying for her even, and will do everything in her power to keep this battle from becoming a massacre.
Keiko Ishihara says in the afterword that the series was initially scheduled for only three volumes and that it would continue only if sales are good. That wasn’t a surprise for me since as I read this third volume I found myself thinking “it’s been three volumes already but the plot is still bare bones and none of the characters have been deeply fleshed out, are they to write a story that will ‘sting’ less if it gets axed?” It appears that was exactly the case and, while Ishihara must have found out about the series’ new extension on life before the cliffhanger ending of this volume, it doesn’t seem to have been early enough for Ishihara to begin to dig more deeply into the story.
Characters that are still lacking depth aren’t my only issue with this volume; I grew up reading a lot of fantasy-adventure YA novels, like the works of Tamora Pierce, so I’m no stranger to medieval style battles in my fiction. Honestly it can be a lot of fun watching characters work out battlefields like a puzzle and I’ve been completely let down by Prince Freya in that regard. The story acts as if the characters are fighting a clever siege in this volume but the actual actions are anything but clever: “previously smart opposing army loses their heads and falls for an obvious decoy, leaving their siege engines unguarded” made the Sigurd army feel like they were only a plot device that Ishihara used however they needed, not like an actual entity in the story they inhabit.
That’s not the only clash between the two forces in this volume and the one at the climax of the volume hinges upon one character revealing themselves to be a sociopath after previously presenting as a perfectly typical character. Again, character-writing doesn’t seem to be one of Ishihara’s strengths and that’s a rather critical part of any story.
While Prince Freya may be continuing past volume 3 I do not believe I will be; reading this series just makes me miss other, battle-shōjo series with more compelling characters and more fleshed out conflicts and stakes. Prince Freya feels like it needed another pass or two at the editing table before it was ready to go to print. Pretty art alone can’t save a series if the creator can’t think of a good story to go along with it.