i don’t understand why the manhwa was adapted this way. it’s like the manhwa is the un...

i don’t understand why the manhwa was adapted this way. it’s like the manhwa is the unedited first draft of the novel, it shares similarities but omits an enormous amount of details.

starting from the first chapter, the mc was not scammed in the novel and he didn’t transmigrate after coughing up blood. in the novel, it focused on his work life and relationship with his coworkers. he was never drowning in debt working multiple part time jobs, but instead was an assistant manager to a company. he did have loans he needed to pay off though.

instead of him being by scammed, they show two characters: assitant manager kim and a new employee. manager kim is your typical obnoxious rich guy who looks down on other ppl and the new employee is innocent and a little slow at work.

the biggest difference is that instead of some loser pushover who fell to a scam, the mc is a cold person who just doesn’t give a fuck. when manager kim goes after him and tries to punch him during a drunken conversation, he dodges which makes the manager fall and hurt himself. even when the manager is cursing him out, he doesn’t respond to the hostility.

he doesn’t vomit out blood, the mc actually falls asleep while reading his book. the only similarity is that the book he had was what helped him cross over.

the crow never flew into his room. the mc walks over to the window and realizes he’s in a different body. the crow pecks at the window until the mc opens it. at first he thought it was a dream. he transforms into a crow on the first day. his aide sein sees him as a crow and chases him out. in his crow form, the mc flys around eavesdropping. he sees the national flag with the three circles and when night comes, he sees the three moons. only then does he realize he was in the fantasy novel he was reading.

he spent a week as the prince and no one suspected him of being a different person besides anna. sien didn’t visit him the first night with anna like in the manhwa. that scene happened after a week of possession. it was a little strange but in the scene where he throws his teacup, there were three maids including anna. it wasn’t just anna by herself. sien purposefully wanted to humiliate the mc in front of the servants. he wanted him to lose control of his anger and even possibly kill one of the maids.

the mc wasn’t a pushover, he actually adapted to the seventh prince’s life pretty well. it wasn’t shown but after being mocked, the mc made sien re-enter. sien enters without permission and this is where the mc throws the teacup at him. sien is scared of him in this scene and is dismissed by the mc. then the mc orders the three maids to clean up the mess, not sien (as shown in the manhwa). the mc also spends a lot of his time as a crow.

the evening ritual scene is also slightly different. when cellos (the eighth prince with red hair) picks a fight, the mc actually curses at him instead of just remaining silent.

during the hunt, in the manhwa, the mc threw the rock because he thought it was a wild animal. he instead hits tollin, duke piteos’s aide. i was disappointed with this change because in the novel, the mc sees the duke (he assumes) chasing after the golden fox on a horse. in an attempt to thwart him, he throws the rock. however it wasn’t the duke he saw but tollin, so the rock hits tollin. this deliberate scheme revealed the mc’s character so it was a shame they switched it out to him being some scared prince who was paranoid of a wild animal showing up. in the manhwa, the mc hides after throwing the rock but in the novel, he runs to tollin and checks if he’s okay. tollin recognizes the mc as the seventh prince in this scene.

in the manhwa, the mc runs away and wishes to be faster which turns him into a horse. however, in the manhwa, the duke is actually very far from tollin. so the mc runs after the duke, his desire to reach the duke (not run away from him) is what transforms him into a horse. once again, a disappointing change in the manhwa adaptation.

when the duke sees him, he stops and recognizes mc as “the seventh prince’s horse” so he tried to take him back. the mc rejects him and instead leads the duke to his injured aide. then he runs off and turns back into a human. initially, he planned to leave but he stepped on a branch and made a sound so he had to reveal himself.

the mc comments about tollin’s injury. because he is royalty, tollin cannot accuse the mc of injuring him. he tells tollin that he did not throw the rock and that they didn’t see him today. tollin agrees, which the mc compliments his loyalty. the mc then provokes the duke further by dragging on how the duke and his son will forever grovel underneath the royal family. then, as a reward for their loyalty today, the mc “gifts” them the bag of rocks.

in the manhwa, he loses the bag and the duke picks it up. once again, i think it’s a shame how this got adapted. the mc injuring tollin then forcing him to deny that it was him who caused the injury only to reward them with the same bag of rocks that he threw at tollin was such a diabolically evil move that was meant to provoke the duke into betraying the royal family. removing this by making the mc lose his bag while he runs away completely destroys his character in the novel by portraying him as some fool.

when the mc returns from the forest, he’s immediately called out by the first princess’s servants. he rejects saying he is dirty but they threaten him that they will harm his horse so the mc follows after the servants and meets the first princess.

the princess questions why the mc has suddenly changed. the first princess’s manis is to control people’s minds and she threatens to change the mc’s servants into simpletons if he does not answer. the princess realized her mind control didn’t work on him anymore which is why she saw him as a threat and questioned him. there are two conditions to reject the princess’s mind control: 1.) be related to her by blood and 2.) familial love.

the mc decides to lie and pretend that the reason the mind control doesn’t work anymore is because he loves her as a family. this is where he lies about his mom dying. there was no necklace, instead he made up a lie that in a far eastern country, falcons fly east whenever royalty dies. he lies saying he saw the falcon fly from his window and knew his mother (who was a princess from the east) had died.

when the princess asks if his remains by blood relatives became important to him, the mc laughs and says no. he tells her that he realizes there is no one left around him but people who will live longer than him. which im assuming he means the only people who are around him now are people who will live longer than him (meaning his siblings who are more powerful, who don’t necessarily care about him)

in the manhwa though, the mc responds by saying his resentment turned into longing in a single moment. that that’s what “family” is. which is a completely different answer from the novel. so ??

afterwards, in the novel, the princess dismisses him then reveals that his horse was never with her but in his stables instead. i’m not sure why they made her kill his horse in the manhwa.

during the sacred ceremony where the emperor grants the winner of the hunt a wish, if someone objects the wish, the wish can be cancelled. however, in return for objecting, the person who interrupted must pay with their life. in the novel, the duke doesn’t yap all of that bullshit like he did in the manhwa and instead requests permission to step down as head of the house and appoint his aide tollin as acting head. there was no letter telling tollin he was now the duke if the duke died.

in the manhwa, he objects by saying his family can take care of the vagrants better but in the novel he objected by stepping up. he knows that by objecting he will be killed so he asks for tollin to be the acting head. the novel dives into the duke’s inner turmoil. his loyalty and his morals collide with each other. he has pride as a person that protects the royal family but witnessing all the cruelty has wavered his loyalty to them. additionally, because the mc provoked him saying the duke’s son will also have to grovel underneath them, it forces the duke to speak out and object.

by stepping forward (objecting), the duke would now be executed by being thrown off a cliff. also, when the duke is executed, he falls off a cliff. he wasn’t just randomly tossed across the mountains. and the og protagonist never chased after him like in the manhwa. the bag the mc gave him made him fall faster down the cliff. it also protected him.

there are so many details that were altered, i can’t even list them all. for example, cutting out scenes from the novel or changing them up slightly.

when the squirrel scene happens, the mc did not order anna to go get him new clothes. the squirrel bit the mc and he started bleeding, anna panicked and ran out saying she would get medicine. and anna did not meet the princess. the princess did not seek out the mc like in the manhwa because it already happened during the hunt.

there’s a scene where his younger brother the redhead visits him before the family rituals. this is because during the hunt, the mc revealed that he knew cellos’s secret: his manis is very low. ashamed and scared, cellos barges into his room before the evening ritual to see if the mc will spill the secret. in the manhwa, this plot device is only used after the evening ritual. i’m not sure why they switched the order.

this is where he threatens the eighth prince to speak nicer to him in exchange for keeping his secret.

in the novel, in the scene where duke piteos wakes up in the cave, the duke didn’t reveal his real name, he told the og protagonist that his name was “jing”

it’s just weird how the details are switched. the princess talks to the mc first before the meeting not after the meeting. in this scene, they make small talk but mentil (the first princess) is purposefully showing friendliness to the mc. this worries the mc because he doesn’t want to stand out so he tries to cut the conversation short but mentil isn’t budging.

she jokes that the mc cares too much about what others think but the mc tells her he also cares about his future. the mc reveals he is scared of dying when the first prince becomes the emperor. mentil is confused because royal family members cannot kill each other, all that will happen is that the emperor can exile their siblings. the mc confesses he is very scared because he won’t be able to survive if he’s exiled to barren lands.

i’m not sure why this entire conversation was cut out because it happened before the evening ritual. in the novel, she just tells the mc to not show that he’s too bored with the gathering.


in the manhwa, when duke milo provokes tollin, tollin threatens him by refusing to to supply minerals however in the novel, tollin threatens duke milo with an untold secret, a “special hobby” that could get him executed. i don’t understand why they would change that.

in the novel, it’s not the first and second prince who show up at the council meeting. it’s the emperor and the first prince.

the prince is very hostile in the manhwa and takes initiative to provoke tollin by mentioning duke piteos’s execution. the second prince praises tollin’s work, commenting about the public safety of the hospital.

but in the novel, the first prince does not mention all of that and instead comments about the decrease in crime and improvement in security. he never provoked tollin by talking about the objection and the execution.

because the duke objected to the first prince killing the vagrants near the temple, the land near the temple (where all the vagrants live) had been given to the piteos family. in short, for one year, the rights to whatever happened with this land belonged to the piteos family. only after one year had passed would it return to the royal family. instead of eliminating the vagrants, tollin decides to build a hospital.

tollin was given the choice to accept the royal family’s proposal to help or to reject. if he rejected, the resentment from the imperials may grow and lead to them attacking the piteos family after a year. if he accepted, the first prince would do everything in his power to interfere with the hospital project in the guise of “helping”. ultimately, tollin chose to accept because he would rather the imperials target the hospital project instead of the piteos family.

in the manhwa, tollin is portrayed as this character who is being stepped on by the imperials. like he is someone who has no choice but to grovel and obey. yet, in the the novel, tollin is referred to as a “viper”. he chooses to grovel because he doesn’t want to waste the life duke piteos gave away. although he has to submit to the imperials, he isn’t a doormat.

additionally, the order in which the scenes are shown are messed up. some scenes that appear early in the novel don’t appear until later chapters while scenes that appear later are being pushed into the early manhwa chapters. plus, there are scenes that are newly added and scenes that are completely erased. it feels like i’m reading an edited version of the novel and not an adaptation.