“Your Crown is Mine”: Can You Win a Kingdom as the Villainess?
From dramatic elections to high-society scheming, Your Crown is Mine is shaping up to be one of the most ambitious otome visual novels of the year and we had the pleasure of sitting down with its solo developer, Lyyycaena, to talk all things villainess, stat management, and romantic intrigue.
In this exclusive podcast, Lyyycaena opens up about the inspirations behind the game, the joys and challenges of solo development, and what players can expect from the choices that shape their rule.
Listen to the full episode on YouTube or Spotify.
Highlights from Your Crown is Mine – Podcast
Lyyycaena: I’m a student right now and I started drawing around 5 years ago as a hobby digitally. I first started with pure illustrations and comics and I also liked writing stories and novels in my free time. And then about 1 year ago I started to code games because I thought it would be a great way to do visual storytelling. My work is probably inspired by Volcano Princess and other stats raising life sims as well as comics with the villainess genre which are quite popular in recent years.
Lyyycaena: In Your Crown is Mine, you mainly take the throne and try to fix a corrupt kingdom, but you can also worsen it. It’s sort of a fantasy life sim where you balance your stats with every choice. And even your romances can help you gain power over the kingdom. Every choice you make will affect the whole nation and in each in-game day, you can choose daily activities that affect your stats. And there will also be story content and character interactions in every in-game day. All of these are interlinked with your stats. And you will play as a lady who was supposed to marry the duke until he replaced you with a soft and saintly girl. As a calculated schemer, you have been branded a villainess. And after your public fall from grace, your goal is to take the throne in an election where your opponent is the duke. And if you do manage to win the throne, that’s sort of where the real fun begins. And you can rule your kingdom.
There are also boiling conflicts in the background of the story. For example, your citizens oppose a new energy source that is from your close ally’s country. And another kingdom is threatening war against you. There are various conspiracies and schemes to shift blame onto innocent scapegoats. And the four love interests are highly involved in these plots. They have their own views and goals, so you also have to figure out who you want to align yourself with.
Lyyycaena: I was inspired by comics where the main character gets reincarnated into a story as the villainess and it’s quite interesting to see how they sometimes they will try and continue the villainess path but others might try to change the story completely so I always thought what would I do if that happened to me and I thought that would be a great idea for a game for players to be able to choose what they want to do in those circumstances
It’s definitely fun to be able to play as a villain because in most games that’s not possible. At the start the choices are more tame in the introductory phase, but as the story progresses you can choose to be more evil. And I wanted to know that when faced with tough choices, can players still choose to maintain their integrity or will they take the easy and immoral path? I think this would be really fun for people to try and play as the evil character.
Lyyycaena: In every situation in Your Crown is Mine, you can choose from many different options that mid-range from morally good to evil, and those will be recorded within the game’s stats and affect the story. So you can sometimes choose to be good in certain situations and evil in others, but there will also be consequences for these choices.
Lyyycaena: Yeah, so in each in-game day, you can choose different activities to do. These activities will consume your stats, such as wealth, energy or mood, but in return they can boost your other stats, like charisma, intellect, wealth, popularity and more. If any of the stats fall to zero, you might trigger a bad ending. And your choice of daily activities will change your stats and the story. You might also encounter the characters in your activities.
So in Act 1, there are 8 types of activities to choose from for each weekday. For example, debating at the Model Imperial Council, Flower Arrangement, Combat Training, Investment Club, the Citizens’ Council, and Working and Resting. And on weekends, you can choose to visit each of the love interests. In Act 2 and onwards, after winning the election, there will be more activities and stats relating to ruling the kingdom.
and you can also affect the kingdom’s budget, events, foreign relations and more. And after your daily activities in the story content, you can also get to know the characters and see more of the story. And you can also increase or decrease a love interest’s affection.
Lyyycaena: Yeah, there are many types of bad endings that you might find yourself in. You can lose the election if your popularity is not high enough and then the game will end at Act 1. Even if you win and become the monarch, your choices might also lead the kingdom to disaster. For example, if the citizens are too angry with you, you might be deposed, or another kingdom might have a serious conflict with you. If you get bad endings like these, there are still certain choices that can help you sort of cheat and continue the game, but they will come with a price. If you truly end the game at a bad ending, you can still go back to a previous save and try again.
Lyyycaena: Тhe affection stats of the four love interests can also affect some parts of your rule, for example your popularity and foreign relations. Most things aren’t locked behind any particular love interest, so you can still win the election or achieve your goals even if you haven’t romanced some of them. As you said, Helios can boost your popularity but there are also other characters who can make up for the loss in popularity if you did not visit him.
There are also many ways to change your stats and affection is only one of them. Near the end of the game, you can formally choose one of the love interests to marry you as your consort if their affection is high enough. This will also affect your foreign relations and popularity, though you can also choose to have no consort.
Edgar – The Cold Duke of the North
Lyyycaena: I noticed in most villainess comics that there was also always a cold Duke of the North and this is sort of a character trope where he seems cold on the surface but he’s actually warm on the inside. So I wanted to explore that character trope a bit more. He’s sort of a classic character so players might already know what it’s like to have a cold character and also wanted to dive deeper into his backstory and motivations.
Rosalie – The Kindhearted Commoner
Lyyycaena: She’s sort of a common born character, different from the others who were born into high status, which I think gives a different perspective on the kingdom and the citizens. She’s the only way we can really see how the villagers live. She did decide to get into high society to help the villagers and also get to know you… Her main goal is to help the villagers which presents a sort of dilemma…
Aeriselle – The Foreign Villainess or Ally
Lyyycaena: She can definitely come across as another villainess and I thought that would be interesting. In most stories there is only one villainess and that kind of gets boring. So she’s sort of an equal to the main character. You can choose to befriend her and ally with her… But that would mean that you also have to agree with some of her actions which might seem quite immoral or wrong. If you choose to turn her into your antagonist, she’s quite a threat. Her motivations and identity are mysterious.
Helios – The Gentle Businessman
Lyyycaena: He’s also from another kingdom and I wanted to represent another perspective. He is sort of placed in a high society role while not really wanting it which is a foil to the main character who does want to be more ambitious. I think for the main story about him it’s quite spoilery so I will leave that for the main game.
At the end of the interview, Lyyycaena treated us to an exclusive look behind the scenes of Your Crown is Mine. From early concept art and character designs to CG previews and inspiration boards, the bonus content offers a glimpse into the creative heart of the game. It’s a visual feast that highlights the depth of worldbuilding, attention to detail, and passion poured into every pixel, without spoiling any surprises of course. You can try out the demo on our website or on Steam.
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