On October 19, 2022, Seven Seas Entertainment announced on Twitter that the A Stepmother’s Marchen English translation of the webtoon will be sold in physical and digital forms in August 2023. The webtoon can be found on Tapas, and for the first time will be in English.
A Stepmother’s Marchen is also referred to as The Fantasie Of A Stepmother, but it turns the stepmother trope on its head. Shuri von Neuschwanstein is not evil.
She’s not obsessed with her looks and isn’t trying to make her family suffer. Shuri is a victim of the time she lives in, but will she remain as one?
What is A Stepmother’s Marchen?
Shuri is from a noble family that owns nothing. However, while Shuri was still a child, a nobleman came, and her parents sent Shuri to his home to be his wife.
But Shuri wanted to sell grains and buy livestock, much to her family’s amusement. And feeling embarrassed, she decided never to mention her dream again.
When she arrived, her new husband greeted her and said she must climb all of the stairs before she could receive the house’s blessing. But when she said she couldn’t see the end, he said she’d be able to do it.
Shuri begins to climb the stairs, and she encounters his children. Two twins keep calling for their birth mother and two older boys around her age.
It’s unclear whether the stairs are real or a metaphor, but it sets the story’s start perfectly. Shuri didn’t ask to be married and expected to be a mother when she was still a child.
Nor did she ask her husband to will her everything he owned when he died when she was 16. But she made him a promise and did her best to raise his children.
It’s a shame that miscommunications and misunderstandings ruined their relationships, but can Shuri change anything in her second life?
The trials of being a stepmother
I love the watercolors during the flashbacks! It gives the story a fairy tale vibe and hints at what went wrong during Shuri’s first life.
The children were grieving, and it didn’t occur to them that Shuri didn’t choose to be there. So although we see her vent her feelings at Jeremy, it’s also clear that it’s not going well.
And it’s unclear whether her husband tried to help her. Moreover, the first several chapters don’t explain why he picked Shuri to marry him.
Her family didn’t sound very well off despite being nobility, and there’s the fact that he has four children. We also don’t know when or if they consummated the marriage, but Shuri doesn’t have any children.
I love historical stories, and The Stepmother’s Marchen has an interesting premise. But, why did Shuri come back to life, only to find herself to be 16 again?