What happened to all their parents? Doesn't it seem strange that all three kingdoms are currently ruled by teenage (or preteen) princesses? Where did the adults all go?
Leo is maybe 17. Milhi is about 14. Couverte is 12. How'd they all end up in charge of their kingdoms? Couverte makes a comment at one point to Rebecca about how her parents left, but it doesn't sound like she's talking about them dying.
Here's my guess: All of them, together, left on an important quest, probably related to the cursed swords. And in season 3 it's going to be revealed that the quest failed and they've all been taken prisoner. That's going to be the story of the series: all the royals, and all the heroes, and sundry supporting people (Eclair, Violette, the Genoise, Yuki and Brioche, etc.) will embark on a quest to find and free them, and to finish the job they were trying to do.
And in the end it will take all three heroes, together, to seal/defeat the final bigbad, and they'll do so in a way which sends them home and makes it impossible to ever summon them again.
But Tatsumaki and Cheney and whatever squirrel Couverte uses to summon Rebecca will still be able to travel back and forth carrying letters, so they'll stay in contact.
The biggest weak link here is Brioche and Yuki. Knowing about the swords, and going out and doing something about them covertly, is their job, and furthermore one they're pretty well-qualified for. Certainly everything we've seen about Brioche indicates that she's a match for anything any of the other kingdoms can throw at her, without taking things even remotely seriously. For the previous royal of Biscotti to go do something cursed-sword-related and NOT bring her along, he/she would have to be in the same weight class when it comes to kicking ass, and I don't think we can square that with Biscotti as we see it at the beginning of the show. (I'd expect that if Biscotti had been run by a powerhouse, Milhi would spend more time being angsty about not being as good of a ruler... and, frankly, I'd expect a few comments from the old farts in the advisor's chairs.)
But Brioche is often away for quite a while on demon duty. So something could have come up while she was gone! Except... she's kind of in slacker mode once she gets back. For a third season to have her say, "Oh, that's right, I'm supposed to be questing to recover the missing royals, let's get on that," would be tough to reconcile.
So they're not missing, in the sense that clearly Brioche is not worried about where they are. So... maybe they did have a quest of that type, but didn't survive it. Or maybe they did, but ended up sealed instead (some kind of "only if you three sacrifice yourselves can the big bad be sealed away!" thing?) That way, you could square their absence and Brioche and Yuki's seeming indifference - if you know they're sealed in the mysterious ancient sealing thingy, there's no need to go looking for them, and you don't really want to bust the seal to get them back.
Which would actually open up a plausible scenario, where the three Earth heroes, led by Cinque the endless optimist, bust the seal and kick the bad guy's butt.
There's even a precedent - Calvados was sealed away in a similar fashion, also by a royal... though that's kind of a weak link too. The show already subverted that trope, so running it again as a straight plot point would be a little off.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at May 05, 2014 10:34 AM (ZeBdf)
2Leo is maybe 17. Milhi is about 14. Couverte is 12. How'd they all end up in charge of their kingdoms?
Maybe that's in dog years?
Posted by: Wonderduck at May 05, 2014 05:44 PM (PN+++)
4
The implication in S1 was that Millefiore's parents were passed. S2 implicated the Couverte's parents are alive, but Couverte is ruler over a smaller domain within their territory.
Not sure on Leo & Gaul's parents. Maybe they took up a position within the Kingdom's main domain? It's not historically uncommon for sub-rulers to get moved around, especially to the historic Japanese thinking on the subject. Being a daimyo was actually pretty terrible during a lot of periods.
Posted by: sqa at May 05, 2014 08:02 PM (8ldDI)
5
Perhaps I just wasn't watching too attentively, but I'd been thinking, "These aren't the real kingdoms, these are <i>training</i> kingdoms." Slap-stick violence rules are in place, the most devastating attack is the MCSA. (And it's even PG, stops at the underwear!) Hardly any adults around.
They're training kingdoms, and nobody asks where the parents are, because, who asks where your parents are when you're at summer camp?
Posted by: Brett Bellmore at May 06, 2014 02:43 AM (HGNzm)
6
In other words, they're principalities, not the whole kingdoms, which is why the rulers are princesses.
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