It's what he experienced as a child, so he views it as normal, and she never complained about it, so he saw nothing wrong with it. The standards for child abuse are still quite new and even today aren't universal, so in a fantasy world that takes place in a past-setting, it would also be seen as normal for the most part.
If he views as normal, why did he apologize, he just didn’t care about her enough to think further. I get that you’re trying to explain why he does, but at the same time why are you trying to defend this?
Also you said it yourself this is a fantasy world and it’s also a manga I have the right to hate a character especially when we make excuses for shitty male leads and abusive/ neglectful fathers and no tea no shade but have you ever wondered why a majority manga and webtoons that feature a plot with parenting love usually feature a father but never a mother and why the main character usually has brothers but never sisters or if they do have sisters the sister is usually evil? It’s the internalized misogyny that reinforces the idea of men’s love hold power.
I believed he apologised because someone pointed it out to him. If not, he would've continued as is since he also thought it was normal. Even the way she studied...honestly I'd blame the household at this point.
That's an interesting point and is likely very valid but I have seen the parenting trope with just a mother figure too, though they seem less frequent. I just figured the "I'll charm the daddy" trope was because we all have daddy issues (・∀・)人(・∀・)
lol yes I definitely do think that part of the reason why this genre is so popular is due to daddy issues lol but I do think that there is something to say about all these men/ fathers and brothers being in positions of power and the main character having to almost please or get them on their side to survive. I’m not saying everything written within this genre is internalized misogyny but I think a fair bit does especially when the mother is usually dead and the sisters are always evil. And most of the villains are women too. Although I think fandom spaces has always had a lot of issues with internal Izard misogyny it’s just especially prevalent in this genre due to the fact that the main character usually has no power due to the fact that they usually start out as a child and of course I’m not blaming them due to that, you got to do what you got to do. I do think it’s fascinating how often we excuse the behavior of men whether fictional or in real life.
Yeah I agree but the fact that he was waiting for her to speak up means that he knows there was somethign wrong in the first place. Honestly idk what the author was thinking when they added that, but I guess the author wanted the male lead to be all knowing and “cool”
I don't think he is supposed to be cool. He is a trope of japanese characters that play into neurodivergency: he is expressionless, doesn't know how to look for emotional cues in others, very blunt/literal in what he says and expects the same from most people. There is generally no reason for him to believe someone will lie, nor refrain from speaking up about anything that is truly bothering them.
You can see when the FL meet him outside her room and says "good morning", all he does is correct her that it is already noon. While the FL spins a tale inside her head about how he probably thinks she's lazy, or smth, he means nothing of the sort. He is stating a fact – there's no hidden messages in what he says. He takes and says things at face value, and fails to exame the emotional aspect of situations – so, when Rebecca says she's fine and that the countess was nice, he takes it that she simply doesn't have a problem with the situation (that's why he asks if she kied– it's not a "gotcha" moment to pressure her, he LITERALLY wants to know if she lied about that). When he says the countess could be dismissed, it's on account of her disrespectful behavior, and not necessarily because he thinks Rebecca must have felt bad. Still, he understands emotions play a role to people, and he is logic-driven – so when the FL makes a convincing argument, he accepts that and changes accordingly. In the future, he will probably take that more into consideration when analyzing what Rebecca may be going through.
Think of it as him being a blank slate. So far, there have things he has been taught about and things he hasn't. He knows heirs to the dukedom have strict lessons and are held to high standards, especially regarding the knowledge of their own status – taught to him by experience. He doesn’t know what familial love is, and neither that Rebecca's situation is much different to what his own was. He is open, however, to learning and rewriting what is necessary.
Ahem. I rambled a bit, but regardless, I do want to make it clear that what he did was – though not abuse, – still negligence, and therefore still bad. Nothing of what I said is supposed to be an excuse for him to keep being a bad parent, it's just to explain how things got to that point. He never expected to be a parent that suddenly, and he never had any tools to fall back on at the moment (i.e, good parents to imitate)... But with a push to the right direction, he can still be a great parent.
So he just lets the tutor keep abusing her just because she didn’t say anything? THIS IS CHILD ABUSE