Mielle Roscente

"… As expected, you are the daughter of a foolish prostitute. Things don’t work that easily, but you can’t even figure out who you are. The blood of vulgarity deserves to remain shallow forever."

- Mielle Roscente to Aria Roscente (chapter 158)

 is a main character and an antagonist in the series The Villainess Turns the Hourglass. Following Aria Roscente’s rise in status, she plotted to ruin Aria on a personal and social level. The success of Mielle’s schemes ultimately led to Aria’s execution, at which point she was sent back in time. This forms the basis of the series’ events.

About
Mielle is the daughter of Count Roscente and the sister of Cain Roscente. As her mother died while she was still an infant, Mielle spent most of her childhood in the care of her maid Emma. Following the marriage of Carin Roscente into her father’s family, something Mielle had vehemently opposed, Mielle began to develop elaborate plans to ruin her new stepmother and stepsister, though it is unknown to what extent her decision to take such drastic measures originated from her personal feelings; Isis Frederick is shown to have pressured her to do so after Mielle’s failure to prevent the marriage in the first place. Using the generally poor reputation of Aria as a child of lowly origin, she span a narrative of victimization by a wicked woman in the original line of events, taking advantage of the rather spoiled demeanor of her stepsister, who had just achieved a life of luxury after living in poverty for 13 years. She also controlled Aria’s social environment by assigning her maids to her, making sure her sister would always stay in her shadow and be encouraged to commit sinister acts that would bolster her narrative, as well as further isolating Aria on a public level. Finally, she had Berry one of her close maids, offer poisoning Mielle’s tea to Aria, an act that finally led to Aria’s execution. She then went on to mock Aria, who was filled with sincere regret for her actions, just before having her beheaded, revealing that she had set her up all this time and awakening a deep-seated regret of having so thoroughly fallen for Mielle’s plans in Aria. This caused a special power to awaken in her sister, sending her back in time a decade.

History
In this revised timeline, Aria Roscente, who vows to pay back Mielle above anything else, stops behaving as planned; however, Aria only truly starts getting under her skin when she proves successful in seducing her love interest Oscar Frederick and earning the favor of her father. After being asked to do so by Isis, she had Berry poison Aria’s tea; however, her attempt to get rid of her stepsister ended up backfiring, as Aria saw through it and, pretending to drink the poisoned tea, got up two days later. A few days after the failed murder, Berry shows up back at the mansion following an offer by Aria, denouncing Emma. This constitutes Mielle’s first major defeat in the story, being exceedingly desperate and shocked during the trial and becoming all the more resentful of her stepsister.

As Aria becomes more and more successful, even being handled as the Crown Prince’s future bride, and Mielle’s reputation declines, Mielle attempts to set up Aria as having murdered Count Roscente, pushing her own father down the stairs and preparing fake eyewitnesses to accuse her sister. However, this plan also proves to be a failure as Aria is saved by Asher, who uses his special powers to move her far away from the place of the incident. The trial proves to be a showdown that ends poorly for Mielle, and as she is now convicted of attempting to murder her father, Mielle is sentenced to twenty years of prison, a sentence reduced to five years of house arrest after the Count awakens, albeit in a severely weakened state. Having been abandoned by Isis, she threatens to leak documents outlining the Fredericks’ conspiracy against the Imperial family, which Isis responds to by reluctantly taking her in as a maid of the Frederick family.

During a trip to Croa, Mielle begins to get closer to King Lohan Croa, fellow conspirator of Isis. She tells him about Asher’s special power, which leads him to take interest in her and take her in. She finally meets Isis again when Lohan visits the Empire, supposedly preparing to execute their plan but betraying Isis, Mielle and the entirety of the Aristocratic Fraction. As all prominent members of the Aristocratic Fraction (aside from Vika Layers and Oscar Frederick) are charged of treason, Aria decides to save Mielle from execution, wanting her to suffer a more humiliating end than merely being executed amongst all the others.

In the end, only Mielle and Cain are not sentenced to death; Mielle is sentenced to fifty years of custody, which she is allowed to spend outside of prison if accompanied by Annie, her guardian, and Cain is made a lifetime servant at the Imperial Castle. Within this arc, Aria pretends to care about Mielle as a family member (leading Mielle to sincerely re-evaluate her judgement of Aria), telling Annie to be hard on Mielle instead; Annie, in turn, happily engages in relentless bullying and abuse against the former noble. Having developed a seething hatred for her guardian, Mielle is encouraged by Aria to poison Annie’s tea, which ends up backfiring; as intended by Aria, the poisoned tea is instead drunk by Cain, who drops dead, and Mielle is sentenced to execution, having been set up as having made an attempt to kill Aria. She is visited by her stepsister the night before her execution in prison, an occasion Aria uses to get her pain and trauma off her chest. Mielle is executed the next morning with her final words being, “She really did turn back time!”

Appearance
Mielle is a cute young woman of petite and frail stature with very childlike features even as an adult. She has long straight light blonde hair, which she generally wears open with bangs that end below her eyebrows. Like most noble women in the series, Mielle is pale-skinned, slender, and is noted to have particularly large round green eyes.

Over the course of the series, Mielle is mostly seen wearing somewhat modest clothing; as an aristocratic lady, she possesses a wide variety of dresses, her favorite ones being those gifted to her by Oscar Frederick. After being stripped of her noble status, Mielle, like the rest of the Count’s family, is expropriated; after being released from prison, she starts wearing the uniform of Aria’s maids, much to her own dismay.

Personality
In the original line of events, Mielle was known as a kind and generous woman, even said to be a saintess. Beyond her public image, however, Mielle was shown to be sadistic, elitist, and incredibly selfish, taking great joy in Aria Roscente's suffering and declaring with pleasure that her point that “these people” needed to die had been proven shortly before Aria’s execution. Mielle is quite childish and cares about little other than her own well-being, even using her mother figure Emma as a shield and letting her be executed because admitting her own responsibility would’ve harmed Mielle’s future prospects. This leads her to be the perfect pawn for Isis, willing to go along with her as long as she got her permission to marry Oscar Frederick, whom she is madly in love with.

Despite having a high degree of self-control, Mielle is presented as being rather vulnerable and emotional, as well as not particularly bright. She is very easily hurt and, while good at hiding her emotions, chooses to act on them rather drastically behind closed doors. Emma and Isis Frederick are shown to be key assistants in the development of her schemes – the schemes that originally brought down Aria. When she feels treated unfairly, Mielle is quick to open her mouth, also happily using her pitiful appearance to get others to empathize. She is shown to be extremely upset when things don’t go her way; the execution of Emma in particular is shown to have had a lasting impact on her.

Sometimes Mielle can be seen as delusional, as she seems to always believe that she’s in the right. During the court where the evidence was stacking against her, she seemed to truly believe that Aria pushed him even if she was the one who did the action. When she was in jail for treason, Aria was able to manipulate her easily into believing everything was Isis’ fault and she truly believed that Aria would get her out. Mielle is quick to blame others, always believing herself to be the victim in the right. She can also be selfish, as even though her punishments were light she viewed them as if she was having her rights stripped away.

Etymology

 * The name Mielle means "honey" in French.