Review: From a Knight to a Lady Volume 1

New publisher Crossed Hearts has been gaining a lot of attention as it announced licenses across the manga, manhwa, and manhua industry, as well as launched dedicated boys’ love and girls’ love imprints. Today I’m here to take a look at one of their releases, From a Knight to a Lady Volume 1, which happens to be their second-ever licensed title. A popular webtoon series based on a web novel by Hye-rim Sung, but how does this edition fare? Let’s take a look. 

The Premise

Our story follows Estelle, a knight who belonged to the Kingdom of Ersha, which is in the midst of a war against the Empire of Jansgar. However, her life comes to a sudden end when she’s betrayed by one of her subordinates and murdered in cold blood. But she’s given a second chance at life when she wakes up and finds herself in the body of noblewoman Lucifela Aydin, daughter of a count in Jansgar. 

To Estelle’s shock, three years have passed since her death, and in that time, the Kingdom of Ersha lost the war. With no home to return to and now reborn into a life nothing like her own, Estelle must decide how to live going forward. And things go from bad to worse when it’s revealed that an engagement has been arranged with Duke Zedekiah Heint, one of the powerful foes Estelle faced in her past life. 

Lucifela has a terrible reputation after she supposedly tried to drown herself, and Estelle’s awakening in her body happened not long after. Lucifela was supposedly in love with one of the princes, and Zedekiah is unconvinced that she’s given up on him. Especially as he believes her cold attitude toward him is born from that (but we readers know it’s simply because of Estelle’s past life).  

A Second Chance 

Estelle could have chosen to peacefully live in Lucifela’s shoes, but as you may expect of a former knight, she’s keen to figure out what happened to her subordinates back in Ersha. She also wants to get to the bottom of why she betrayed and killed. With so many unanswered questions, she sets about rehabilitating her body (which, as a noble daughter, lacks the stamina she’s used to from her last life). Of course, to some degree, she does have responsibilities as Lucifela, and that includes her doting father and Zedekiah.

While Lucifela’s story is, of course, the main focus, it doesn’t take long for our attention to be taken elsewhere. A murderer is targeting young women in Jansgar, and rumour has it that it’s one of Estelle’s old subordinates. Knowing that one of her subordinates is in the empire, Lucifela plots to run away from home and find him, but she naturally gets caught up with the murderer… 

This storyline was where I felt From a Knight to a Lady got somewhat distracted from the initial goal. Yes, it seemingly tied into Estelle’s past when someone from Ersha was rumoured to be behind it, but it meant that the focus shifted from Estelle to Zedekiah, who was charged with investigating. Along with another knight commander, Duke Louis, who Zedekiah despises and also has ties to Estelle’s past life. Narratively, we need to spend time with Zedekiah and Louis to get to know them better, but Estelle is sidelined for so long and so early that this storyline ends up feeling quite disconnected from the initial setup. Thankfully, by the end of the volume, it feels like things are getting back on track. And that’s reassuring after this somewhat clumsy execution. 

That said, if you read a lot of these reincarnation / second chance stories, there’s not a great deal here that’s all that original. And that’s not particularly an issue if you’re very into the genre, but for newcomers to it, I don’t think this is the best one to read, largely because of how it falters in the middle here. I’m sure my opinion would be difficult if I read considerably further, but based on Volume 1, this wouldn’t be my first recommendation in this crowded market. 

Crossed Hearts’ Vibrant Physical Release 

This was my first time reading a physical release from Crossed Hearts, and I was impressed by the presentation. This first volume includes 17 chapters as well as ‘journal sheets’ between chapters, a side story, and a special Lucifela illustration. There are also two fold-out pages with never-before-seen images of Zedekiah and Louis. However, I was a bit confused by the placement of these, as they’re randomly slotted into chapters. In contrast, I think they would have been better at the beginning of the book, similar to how light novel publishers handle colour illustrations. This is also the only publisher that’s tried this type of fold-out, so maybe they’ll adjust going forward based on feedback.

The volume is reasonably priced for the amount of content and quality, coming in at £15.99 here in the UK or $20 over in the US. Certainly very comparable with the other publishers. It’s age-rated a 13+, which I found a bit surprising given there’s a recurring talk of suicide and the murder storyline was reasonably gruesome in places (this one is no stranger to violence in general), so I think we could have done with a slightly higher rating, all things considered. 

This release is listed as being printed in China and has a high-quality paper used throughout, which beautifully depicts the artwork by Ink. The colours are relatively muted, but I think that helped maintain the more serious nature of the story. The transition from webtoon to a paged format like this has also worked out for the art, which is well-suited to it, which isn’t always the case when you’re making the jump from a scroll format. 

This release has been adapted by Aurora Aurealis (who is also listed as editor), and it reads well throughout, although it is unusual to see an ‘adapted by’ credit rather than translation. However, I don’t know Korean the way I’ve learnt Japanese, so I can’t speak to how accurate it is to the original work. 

Volume 2 is currently scheduled for a release at the end of May, where there will also be a limited edition version with a photocard of Zedekiah and Louis. Volume 1 had a similar release, which included a tarot card, but that appears to be sold out now. Nothing further is currently in the schedule for this series, so we might be in for a considerable wait afterwards.

In Closing

From a Knight to a Lady Volume 1 is off to a promising, if slightly muddled, start. For existing fans or those into the genre, it will certainly prove an appealing offering. It also shows good signs for Crossed Hearts, given the splendid presentation. One to keep an eye on, if nothing else!

From a Knight to a Lady is available to read in English on Webtoons and TappyToon. Crossed Hearts also has a free preview available to read on their website.

©Ein, Imk., Hye-rim Sung / Crossed Hearts

Anime Atelier was provided with a free copy of the book for review purposes.