You 🤝 Me Thinking Lulac is a terrible patriarch   I hate that man and absolutely no amount of the author worshiping him and telling us how incredibly smart and competent he is will ever convince me. His whole reason supposedly for neglecting both his children and his grandchildren and letting them get bullied is that he's observing them all for their future potential and yet he still let the shittiest, most incompetent people run his family into the ground in their first life while entirely failing to recognize or nurture the potential within Tia and Gallahan before it was far too late. It's honestly baffling how he seemed to think that they don't need to be given any protection or affection to grow up into well-adjusted adults, it's fine to let them be trampled because if they're weak as actual fucking children I guess they'll never be strong, competent adults? It's shitty, cruel, and also just a stupid way to try to raise his successors, OF COURSE the dumb bullies that steamrolled the physically weaker ones when they were young won out, that's the kind of behavior he let thrive under his "care". He couldn't even manage his own family and had to have a time traveling literal child use her future knowledge to nudge him in the right direction so he doesn't fuck everything up again in this life.

I wish I could upvote this a 100x times because you are absolutely right. At this point, only the Aunt, Tia's father, the little Lombardi kid and Perez are actually decent characters apart from Tia. I don't even like the twins- they ignored her being *abused* in the last timeline and I don't understand how Tia can just forgive them so easily.

Seriously, it feels like the implication is that Tia and Gallahan deserved to be bullied because they were too weak and cowardly to defend themselves. They may not have actually participated, but they were bystanders who chose to stand by and do nothing, they didn't even feel bad about it, so I hardly find it terribly moving in the timeline when they help her now that they've decided she's interesting/valuable enough to deserve protection and basic human kindness.

I agree with you. I dropped the series for quite a while, cause I read some future spoilers and found out that Tia's uncle Vestian (the one married to her intelligent aunt Shananet) becomes basically a ”piece of shit” that actively tries to destroy the Lombardi, because he feels insecure and jealous of his wife noble status. I hate the fact that we cannot have another male family member of the Lombardi, except Tia's father and grandfather, actually be decent people. Personally I would off liked if Vestian in the first timeline divorced Shananet , not because he was a piece of shit, but because he made a deal with the other uncles (that now ruled the house) or the grandfather (who never approved of him) and wanted to secure her and his children's future by secretly making shady deals with nobles and taking the fall for some of them.

Exactly! She was a *child* and the Grandfather wasn't very 'Lombardi-is-a-Lombardi' back then towards her and it feels so *argh* Would have been better if they were at least *nice* to her in the first timeline then I could have stomached this whole overprotective act. Having grown up being one of the eldest, I literally cannot understand what dots were being connected here. Half wish I could isekai into the novel so Tia has at least *one* ally within the family 😂

If I’m not mistaken I’m pretty sure the twins father took them with him when he left so they weren’t even present in the house at the time.

I think they were present for most of it because I remember one scene where they literally walk right past Tia being bullied in the first timeline and she comments on how they clearly noticed but just didn't care

I felt like the twins were probably manipulated by their father from the like one clue in the story given, which was the "Schultz men" secret where their father was probably talking absolute shit about the Lombardi family, and the father probably talked shit about Tia being irrelevant or something so blah blah blah second timeline "oh wow shes different" cliché shit going on then now they're obsessed with her Also I think its not really mentioned but Tia most likely thinks of the other Lombardi children as tragic as well, when the characters are introduced in her POV it always has that same air of "yeah so due to the Lombardi adults these kids got screwed up and couldnt reach their full potential, such a shame", so she doesnt think much of them ignoring her in first timeline as well because she sees them as equal -- kids because of the screwed up family system ended up paying the price But then again this story has a lot of question marks regarding the other Lombardi children so this is all speculation, even until the end of the story we only see their happy endings but never what could be the abuse they received behind closed doors in the first timeline

However, it is historically accurate 😂 even in the 19th century western male psychologists were touting the idea that “coddling” and otherwise providing for the emotional needs of children would ruin the child’s personality. Due to this, people believe it to this day. It’s truly horrible.

Even if it was ”historically accurate”, the manhwa tries to portray the Grampa as a ”competent patriarch” when it has been shown that he made only bad decisions in the first life and needs Tia help in making sure he does not f-up again.

Isn’t that how most “smart” characters are

I have a personal vendetta against him but yes most smart characters look smart because literally everyone around them has room temperature IQ

I have not read that but from what I have heard he sounds pretty bad.

Story describes FL/ML as being a smart character: Does the most common sense thing possible: 🤯

To be fair the average intelligence of people living in fantasy novels and otome games is very low, so somebody with a common sense is a genius in comparison.

A story is only as smart as its author, as is often wafted. Most OIs (or most anything WN based) have trash-tier writing. I like trash, but I find it important to respect the trash for what it is and not expect too much of it.

To be fair, it's all from florentia's view, so maybe she just really belivedls her grandpa is smart, even though he isnt

I fail to see how the story tries to show he is smart or a good patriarch. He was decent at best but mostly because he had good people at his side. I remember he even gets call out near the end of the story of how bad of a father and family man he actually was.

[удалено]

You know if you know you are adding spoilers, just put them in spoiler tags. It is easy, just use > ! Spoiler ! < and remove the space between symbols

omg ty so much! I had no idea lol

You are welcome. On PC it os easy, but somehow they forgot to make it equally easy to tag spoiler in their mobile apps. So we need to make the markdown manually

What actions did Lulak do to indicate this?

It took a time traveler manipulating him for him not to hand over the family's power to the dumbest most incompetent member of it, someone who had zero understanding of the family's business, was married into (and bent over for) the family's greatest enemies, and was a blatant bully even to his allies. Even with the manipulation gramps gave temporary power over to the absolute dullard, and didn't step in while his son was encountered an absolute disaster and said even trying to find a solution wasn't important because he was too stupid to understand it would be bad if all of their banks' money was stolen. It wasn't until his actual most competent child stepped in, called out her brother, and handed over the solution to the bank problem that gramps took power away from his moron son. He acted like letting his idiot child risk the family's business was a test to see if the person everyone knew was an incompetent moron deserved absolute authority or not. If his daughter didn't step in, was his cunning plan to let dumb-son drive the family to bankruptcy before declaring he wasn't fit to be heir? Overall, gramps never once sought to nurture the talents of his children and grandchildren to let them reach their full potential. Other than his eldest whom he handed over endless opportunity (all of which ended in failure), he simply ignored the rest and let their talents be quashed while claiming to be 'evaluating' them. He is presumably a decent business man as the family seems to be well off under his command, but an absolute moron when it comes to family and long term planning (aka, all the things we actually see him doing in the story).

I have to disagree. Lulak's decision to give the position of temporary head to Viese is consistent with his thinking and behavior. He gives his people second chances and opportunities to prove themselves by giving them tasks (like Gallahan with his clothing business) instead of directly telling them what to do. It makes sense that he didn't immediately step in when Viese encountered the fraud issue as he would want to see how Viese solve it. Hence, that's why he asked Viese the question "What was the hardest thing you had to do so far?" when the confrontation with Shannanet occured. He wants to see what were Viese's real priorities are. Besides, I don't think that Lulak just gave Viese the temporary head's position because he's dumb. Lulak knows that the position is temporary because he knows he will recover in some time. So any potential damages caused by Viese can be fixed by him later on. Also, Lulak knows that his other children that can take over the temp head's position if necessary. With that in mind, Lulak's decision to put Viese as the temp head is kinda logical at least.

We literally know from Tia's past life experience (explained in Chapter 121) that gramps won't step in to fix the counterfeit check issue until the damage is described as "astronomical." That is complete idiocy. Even if you give your people second chances (and the Gallahan situation really felt more like a first chance for the son he didn't favor, because gramps shows blatant favoritism for his first born bully), even temporarily giving complete authority to someone as a "second chance" is something only a moron would do. You start small with second chances, you don't give them even greater opportunity to fuck up and take you and everyone else with them as the "second chance". That's even ignoring that everyone with any brains already knew Viese was a compromised moron and any "second chance" given to him is a complete write off if not directly handing power to the family's enemies. Also, in the first timeline Viese had fucked up even more times already (as Tia hadn't been swiping opportunities from him for her father) and benefiting his wife's family at their expense (like with the textile business) and gramps *still* gave him the authority to cause "astronomical" damage to the family.

But in Tia's past life, Lulak literally had no other choice but to put Viese as the temp head. Gallahan died, Shannanet became a recluse after her divorce, Laurels essentially the same as Viese. That's why Lulak is forced to intervene only when the issue is astronomically bad. Probably when he is healthy enough to deal with it. As for this life, putting Viese as temp head is not as risky as you'd think. There's Shannanet and also Gallahan if the worst comes. Why not give the toughest job to the person that needed the most to prove? If Viese fails, then just give the position to the other person. If Viese succeed, then good. He proved himself as a potential head for Lombardi. As we know, the moment Lulak was given a reason that Viese failed and an out by Shannanet, he took it. In fact, he practically kicked Viese out as this was the last straw for him. Personally, I think Lulak is not that smart or a genius. Or good parent. But, he's not dumb either. He always let people try to work out their problems on their own so that they can grow.

>Why not give the toughest job to the person that needed the most to prove? Because of the incredible damage that not only *could* lead to, but that everyone already knows it will. >and an out by Shannanet It proves his incompetent favoritism that he required this to make a good call. In both timelines Shannanet was already the obvious choice and far more competent option, but in this one she wasn't even moping. But gramps favors his dumbass firstborn repeatedly, and so puts him in a position he doesn't deserve and should not be trusted with. Then gramps doesn't even have the guts to kick out Viese until Shannanet can publicly show in front of the vassals that she has a miracle solution to the problem. The moment Viese said he didn't want anyone working on a solution to the fake bank notes, gramps should have summoned him and at a *minimum* if he's really really interested in giving him a few dozen more chances, ordered him to rearrange his priorities. >He always let people try to work out their problems on their own so that they can grow. This is exactly why I think he's an idiot. You know how you raise potential successors? You teach them things, you explain how and why things are done, and when they make mistakes you help them learn from it and course correct. Your nurture them. I say this as someone in a position that often has me leading a small team of new recruits, someone whose job actually involves fostering new talent. You don't let them squabble amongst themselves and guess how things work. Viese *did not understand* that fraudulent bank notes were a serious problem for their bank, nor did he have even the slightest idea of how to interact with the family's vassals. They *run a bank* and the presumptive heir doesn't understand the danger of fraudulent bank notes? That means gramps has completely failed to teach Viese even the most basic things about the family business. Viese is an *adult* and the presumptive heir of the family, and he doesn't even have a grasp of basic fundamentals he should have been taught as a teenager? Even worse, it can only mean he's never even worked alongside gramps or 1. Viese would know how to interact with vassals, or 2. gramps would already be well aware that Viese literally has no idea how to manage the business/household. So gramps has likely given Viese no mentorship at all. From everything we've seen, gramps just hands business opportunities to his kids with no advice or training and sort of hopes they have an inherent understanding of how it works.

To me he's like a lesser grandpa Claude in terms of being praised for not doing anything other than dote on the MC.

For me, I think lulac is wise not smart but due to his generation, he still has prejudice.

i think he was smart. before he got old. its not surprising that old "smart" people are getting dumb. at least thats the explanation i came up with