The following is the reason there has not been an update since the 16th. I was assigned a pop culture research paper in one of my college courses, and the text below is the finished product. If you are not interested in an in depth analysis of Malori's potential to end the Demon War then I do not recommend reading this paper. A new chapter will be posted sometime soon. In the meantime if you would like to read another Yuri romance I would point you towards my second story My New Sister.

The traits that usually characterize a fantasy hero would be a noble, stoic, and a very moral person. The protagonists usually go on adventure to eliminate the source of evil. If there is a romantic subplot it is usually with one of the main characters tagalongs. This categorizes most of the fantasy heroes. Malori Crowett is the complete opposite of these traits, but it helps her achieve the goals she sets out for herself. Malori Crowett is obsessively in love with the enemy leader, and with that love she has the best chance of stopping humanities war against the demons for the sake of getting the girl and peace.
Malori Crowett is a yandere or someone you would think of as harmless, friendly, or nice to be around, but she actually obsessed with the enemies leader Queen Velverosa. (Tropes) She is a very nice young mage who excels far beyond her peers even recognized as the human with the greatest potential to defeat the Demon Queen. When provoked however Malori can do some pretty insane things. She displays a lapse of mercy when someone says anything bad about anyone she is close to. A good example of this occurring is during part nine. In part nine she confronts a fighter who had bad mouthed her best friend Cerik. She completely annihilated the man with a high-level explosion spell without any remorse. It is still currently unknown in the story if the fighter had lived or died from the confrontation. In this world you can respawn, the way the respawn system works is that you need to have enough gold to pay the church to resurrect you or they will allow you to die. The fighter had just bought two high level party members so he could have been out of gold. Malori's use of her insane side is not just limited to her enemies, she has actually killed Cerik when the opportunity arose for her to be able to gain Velverosa's favor. I will note that in this instance she had made sure that Cerik had enough funds to respawn and keep some of the special items they had acquired going up to the Demon Lords' floor. That still doesn't change the fact that she had not only killed Cerik, but the two other hired party members just because the battle had turned to far into their favor. Her violent yandere tendencies hold the most commonalities with The Future Diary's Yuno Gasai. Yuno would do whatever it took to keep her love interest safe. She had killed most of the other diary holders, and she was even willing to kill Yukiteru, her love interest, to be able to see him again in a different universe. (The Future Diary) When she faked her suicide to end the game and claim god hood she did it with the intention to resurrect Yukiteru, but she failed and had to travel to a different universe. (Mirai Nikki) Malori differs from Yuno in the aspect that she would not kill her love interest. Malori takes every possible route to avoid causing Velverosa any discomfort, and when she realizes that she was most likely being a burden to her Malori stops going to visit Velverosa giving up her emotional crutch. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 44) Her decision to return is currently up in the air as the story is still ongoing, but Velverosa's own motivations show that Malori's presence in the Demon Tower is needed.

Malori's romantic yandere tendencies have come across in some ways as fairly stereotypically, but in other notable ways she is anything but average. She has given letters, gifts, and foods that she has cooked to Velverosa displays of her affections. She has also openly confessed her feelings of love toward the Demon Queen on many occasions. Sometimes Malori would even ask for physical displays of affection most notably hugs. The advances have all ended with Velverosa rejecting her. Velverosa has burned most of the gifts given to her by Malori because she is unwilling to believe a human could be trusted. (Mage & Demon Queen) Malori could be compared to Koharu Mutsuki from Koharu no Hibi when it comes to romantics. Koharu gives gifts to Akira Torii who she had become emotionally attached to after he stopped her from falling on the train. She starts stalking Akira, and she like Malori found allies within her targets friend group who push the two together. Having his friends support causes Akira to fold and start dating Koharu. (Koharu no Hibi) Malori does this as well by befriending each and every demon in the Demon Tower.(Mage & Demon Queen Episode 7) Malori uses these friendships to her advantage by having access to anywhere in the tower she wants to go. She even uses it by asking the demon generals to fake injuries so that her party would be at full strength to fight Velverosa.(Mage & Demon Queen Episode 11) This trust is instrumental to her having a major battle later on in the plot. The Queen knows about her relationships with everyone, but she doesn't have any real options of dealing with it.(Mage & Demon Queen Episodes 5 and 7) A similar situation occurs in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, Rimuru the protagonist of the story becomes "besties" with Demon Lord Milim.(Volume 6, ch. 31 page 22) Their alliance stops a threat that attempts to destroy Tempest, Rimuru's town. That attack was caused by another Demon Lord, but with Milim's help there was no possibility of defeating Rimuru.

Malori has been defeated by Velverosa multiple times throughout the plot of Mage & Demon Queen, but each time she becomes more and more enamored with the Queen. Malori actively enjoys being killed by her. "Queen Vel's cold gaze as she fired at me" this line in particular shows just how obsessed she is. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 2) This is actually a pretty common trope in anime and manga in general especially in this genre. In these moments Malori reminds me of Darkness from Konosuba with how much she seems to enjoy it. They both make very lewd faces as they imagine what would happen with their respective attackers. I should note that again Malori only holds these feeling towards Velverosa, but Darkness is just a flat-out masochist. (Konosuba chapter 4 and 6) The theme of bdsm is spread throughout the entire work. Looking at episode 18 gives us some insight on how Velverosa truly feels about Malori. She imagines what would happen if she captured Malori and sent her to the dungeon to be tortured, and by the end of the scene she is asking if Malori would still love her. That scene leads to Malori saying she still would, and then Velverosa giggles in giddily. I feel like this scene shows that not only is Velverosa aware of the power she has over Malori, but is willing to use and enjoy it. Melathia, the highest-ranking demon general, even writes fanfiction about the two. Melathia's fanfiction's characterize Malori as a bunny and Velverosa as a dragon showing how she perceives the power balance of their relationship. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 11)

Malori and Velverosa's actual power is pretty comparable. Malori is capable of dealing out a massive amount of damage. Her true power can be seen in episode 23 where she uses her most powerful spell, and with it she kills her tank and her archer. The spell also takes Vel down from almost full health to a bit below half. I should mention that this was a fair bit into the fight, and during the parts of the battle prior to Lightning Sword's use all three of her allies were attacking Velverosa so Malori had done more damage than the other three character's attacks combined. The one area that Malori is not comparable however is her durability. Even with her Magical Barrier ability she can be easily one hit at any time by Velverosa. This is in contrast to how most protagonists can take an insane amount of damage. The character that exemplifies the unkillable protagonist is Naofumi from Rise of the Shield Hero. His attacks do little to no damage to his targets, but with his legendary shield he can stop virtually any attack an enemy throws at him. Using his shield in combination with his companion Raphtalia he is able able to actually fight things. (Rise of The Shield hero) This is the opposite to Malori's glass cannon approach. She could die at any moment in an engagement with Velverosa, but in the fight listed above Velverosa was too concerned with killing everyone else so she could question malori. Velverosa has never lost to Malori due to her level of durability and power. This does not mean that Velverosa doesn't recognize Malori's potential. Velverosa states that she is the youngest person to ever make it to her floor of the tower. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 3) This goes back to her having the highest chances of anyone in Falstina to defeat her if trained properly.

Malori could just avoid fighting by continuing to build relationships with the demons and Velverosa. Probably the best example of building a relationship with someone you previously considered an enemy would be Beauty and the Beast Girl. The main character of the series is a monster named Heath who had previously attacked multiple villages, and lives on her own in the forest. She meets Lily a blind woman who was traveling on her own from town to town. The two become friends and slowly build a relationship together, but Heath soon realizes that she was the cause of Lily's blindness. The village she had attacked all those years ago not only caused lily to go blind, but she also killed her mother. When Heath confesses what she had done Lily forgives her, and the two become a couple. (Beauty and the Beast Girl) Vel is similarly lonely up in her tower, and she is just sitting at the top of the tower waiting for anyone to make it past all of her generals. This leads to Malori being allowed to the top of the tower to help Velverosa get over her loneliness. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 6) Melathia states that she should be happy with Malori coming up to "play" with her every day. The time they spend together allows Malori a sense of hope with their relationship.

Malori obsession allows her to be dedicated to an extreme degree. She would spend everyday training to be able to one day meet Velverosa. She directly states to her party members that the reason she is as powerful as she is, is due to her love for Velverosa.( Mage & Demon Queen Episode 14) This contrasts why most protagonists reach the level of strength. Naofumi achieves his defensive strength for his battle against waves of demons that invade the world he lives in. He, a chosen hero from another world, has no choice but to participate in the conflicts. (Rise of Shield Hero) Rimuru achieves his strength by accident. He basically requested all of the powers he wanted before he died and was reincarnated with everything he needed. He also spent an entire year eating things as a slime and gaining powers from the items broken down properties. (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime)

One concern readers may have is that even if Malori starts a relationship with Velverosa she would not make an attempt to end the war since she has achieved her goal. In episode episode 42 se explicitly states that she would use her influence as Velverosa's lover to end the conflict. A counter argument to this would be that Velverosa would not care that she was causing humans to suffer, but I disagree. Malori's father Marcus has said that he had found her on the roadside, and that she was a refuge from an attack against a town that was involved in human trafficking. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 33) Though Malori would not go into detail with Marcus Crowett she later has as flashback when choosing what vocation she would focus on during her training. The flashback shows the hand of an "unknown" magic user, and it is almost unanimously believed within the community that it is the hand of Velverosa. (Mage & Demon Queen Episode 34) This would show that she had some care for humans as she allowed the children to live. Much like Heath from Beauty and the Beast Girl velverosa just cannot trust humans. I feel like if she started to put faith in and love Malori like Heath did with Lily that the rift between the humans and the Demon Queen could be closed. (Beauty and the Beast Girl Volume 1 page 43)

Malori has started building bridges with the demon population in Mage & Demon Queen, and this has the greatest possibility of changing the mindsets both groups have about one another. If Velverosa learns to trust Malori it would legitimize the idea that the two species could cohabitate, and it would allow Malori to persuade Velverosa to end the long running war.

Citations

Aiya Kyū. The Rising of the Shield Hero: the Manga Companion. One Peace Books,

2016.

Akatsuki, Natsume, et al. Konosuba, Gods Blessing on This Wonderful World!Yen On,

2017.

Esuno, Sakae. Future Diary. Tokyopop, 2011.

Fuse, et al. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Kodansha Comics, 2017.

Neji, and Elina Ishikawa. Beauty and the Beast Girl. Seven Seas Entertainment, 2019.

Ōshiro Yōkō. Koharu No Hibi. Kōdansha, 2010.

"Yandere." TV Tropes, tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Yandere.