The second series I studied for my reverse harem research for The Genie Whisperer was Kiss of the Rose Princess. In this series, a young woman who’s meant to save the world has four rose knights who she can summon by kissing the card that corresponds with their color. It’s kind of like Cardcaptor Sakura . . . except the cards bring handsome young men, lol. It’s a pretty fun concept, and more rose knights who don’t serve the main character are brought in throughout the series.
Warning: This post has some spoilers for up to book five (The Doorway to the Future) of The Genie Whisperer. If you haven’t finished book five yet, proceed with caution!
Rose Princess
As mentioned in my Ouran High School Host Club post, I broke my study of the series down into four categories to keep my focus on what I felt would be most helpful for writing reverse harem:
- the guys’ interactions with the main character
- the guys’ interactions with each other in relation to the main character
- the main character’s interactions with the guys
- the plot elements related to reverse harem
Like with Ouran High School Host Club, some of the plot elements I wrote down for Kiss of the Rose Princess ended up in The Genie Whisperer. For example:
| Plot Element: | Kiss of the Rose Princess | Genie Whisperer |
| Getting closer to the guys makes the main character stronger | The main character unlocks her knights’ potential power in stages by deepening her relationship with them. | Ali can connect with the genies to make them and herself more powerful – but they have to have a close relationship for it to work. |
| Themes of self-sacrifice | One of the rose knights is willing to give his own life to save the main character from sacrificing herself to stop a demon from being unleashed on the world. | Ali gives up her parents and then the life she planned for herself for the sake of helping the genies. |
| Wants to escape her new destiny when it appears | When the main character is told she’s the rose princess, she tries hard to get out of it and rejects her rose knights. | Ali, from her perspective, doesn’t have a destiny, but Tavor very much disagrees. Ali fights against letting go of her own dreams up until they determine they have to go across seas to continue their search for how to obtain freedom for the genies. |
Smaller things I took note of were things like a love interest having faith in the main character and her abilities, which applies to a couple of the genies in regards to Ali, especially after what happens in the Archives. Another is a desire for the main character to take up her “true role.” This comes out with Tavor in regards to Ali, though he’s probably the only who believes that Ali being a genie whisperer gives her a role in life that she should fulfill.
There are a couple other little themes I took note of in Kiss of the Rose Princess that are relevant to The Genie Whisperer, but those haven’t come out in the plot yet, so I’ll keep those to myself for now!
I admit that not all of the plot elements in the table are strictly related to reverse harem, but they still got utilized in The Genie Whisperer in ways that I felt serviced the reverse harem plot. After all, it’s partly Ali sacrificing so much for the genies that endears her to them.