ha ha ha... oh what this says about the whole "harem ending" fetish/issue... hah ah ha.... Oh but it does count, just not the way to fulfill the 'harem ending' fetishers.
You're right, it is a bad ending to be a monster, controlling everyone, getting your harem and having it forever. That's what a harem ending is after all, the fantasy wish that a harem of beautiful passionate women lusting after your body can be something that lasts forever. It's not enough for the harem ending dreamers to have a harem during a story, they must be able to get the harem at the end of the story and then believe that it lasts forever. Nothing else 'counts.'
So there we have the raw truth about our irrational thinking of what fulfills our bodily needs. The 'harem ending' is a drug. It's the doper who says, "As I fell to the floor, I cried, Gimme more gimme more!!" An Insatiable craving.
So here is probably the most articulate, well written plot around realistic relationships in a fantasy setting that makes the real point that 'everything costs' and therefore you must be careful in your decisions because they have consequences. The people in this story are well written and have real needs and desires and many readers reveal their own problems by their reactions to how it comes out. I see the same thing in the other well written story that I admire, Callisto, where you actually do get a harem throughout the story but are faced with a real decision at the end. So many guys just can't handle the truth. Wake up guys, it is a good story that reflects real life choices. Life bites. Learn from it.
See, my reason for discounting the demon–harem ending (and bad ends in general) was just that, like many bad ends, it’s abortive; one doesn’t get to see the narrative to its completion. For comparison, would getting killed and getting a game over in the first ten minutes of the game be considered an ending? It would, in a way; but it certainly wouldn’t fall under the same category as a real ending. One could make the argument that the demon–harem ending comes close enough to the end to be treated as a proper ending; on the other hand, I would counter by pointing out that it does not receive the same level of attention as any of the other endings. Unless I’m mistaken, Belle intentionally made the ending unfulfilling in this manner specifically to discourage haremseeking players. In light of this, I don’t think I could blame a player for not regarding the demon–harem ending as a “real ending”.
In addition to this, while
Long Live the Princess is indeed better written and generally more realistic than many of the other games on this site, this does not mean that the “deconstruction” of a harem ending presented in the game is the only valid or realistic interpretation of such an ending. While it’s true that the generic harem ending found in many, less creative games involves every single love interest essentially becoming a live-in sex slave to the MC, a harem—in a nonhistorical context at least—is, at its core, just a polyamorous relationship between one man and multiple women (from my experience, generally understood to be three or more).
There are already two “proper” endings in this game which feature polyamory: that with Evelyn and Callie, and that where Dickon becomes king (he marries Selena, but Lilith remains a part of the arrangement, I believe). What is it that makes a polyamorous situation with one man and two women believable, but one with three or more women suddenly ludicrous? Is it really that impossible to imagine one more woman joining either of these established relationships?
Actually, one doesn’t even have to imagine: Belle the pixie already does tag along in both endings, unless you morph her sexuality. And so one could consider both of these endings harems of sorts (maybe “miniharem” would be more typical, considering not every love interest is present); unless of course Belle is abstaining from sex with Dickon, or Dickon’s having sex with Belle is just cheating, and he keeps her existence secret. I consider the first case unlikely, as it goes against the reason she chooses to keep following Dickon in the first place; the second case is also improbable, as this—Belle being kept as a side piece unbeknownst to the ending’s main girls—would have serious ramifications on all of the “good” endings.
Moreover, harems are already a thing in the world of the game, because concubinage exists. This is revealed when Selena expresses the wish, during Dickon’s confrontation with her, that she had one of the palace concubines at hand, so that she could use her to take care of her sexual urges.
However, even without taking into account the evidence in favour of harems already present in the game, the fact is that Dickon is an accomplished mentalist who has already demonstrated the ability to impose his will on the girls, changing their behaviour, their opinions, and even their sexuality. It’s even him who makes Evelyn seduce Callie in the first place, potentially leading to one of the polyamory endings. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that, if he had truly wanted, he could have gotten the both of them to agree to include a third girl—and then maybe a fourth, and so on. In a sense, Dickon already does things during the normal course of the game which, fundamentally, are not so different from his actions in the demon–harem ending. On one hand, he doesn’t take things nearly as far; on the other, he’s working a lot more gradually, so it’s not at all clear where the end result would lie if he just kept at it. If Dickon continued to slowly warp the girls’ perceptions, morals, opinions of themselves and others, etc., for the next year or so, he could realistically end up with a brainwashed harem, just like the bad end.
It is true that, during all this, I am working under the assumption that Dickon will have sex with every love interest over the course of the game. I would argue, however, that the gameplay encourages this, for three reasons:
The first is that Belle abets this way of playing.
The second is that—and this ties in with your point about the “realism” of the writing—there are absolutely no consequences for infidelity, up until the very end of the game. A game wishing to explore infidelity in a realistic manner could bring up any number of issues for dramatic purposes—schedule conflicts, the need to stay hidden, juggling the different expectations of each girl, etc.—but none of these are touched on. There isn’t even a more general time constraint: one can pursue every single love interest, view every sex scene, and still have ample time to complete the every objective before the deadline, the hard limit on the day counter.
The third—and perhaps the more subjective—is that the game has little immediate replay value. Sister Agnes was added later in development to help shore up this issue, but it remains the case that every puzzle remains the same, in the same order, with the clues in the same location, and there is no gameplay loop, such as combat or exploration, to incentivize trying a new playthrough with a different loadout or destination to keep things fresh; not even Dickon’s interactions with the girls change depending on whether you’re seeing one of them or all, only the endings—and even then, not enough, in my opinion, to justify multiple full playthroughs of the game. And, as good as this game is, it’s not Macbeth—I’m not going to be replaying it for the story alone. (I want to point out that this isn’t a criticism of the game—I’ve seen very few games on this site with significant replay value, and in any case not every game needs it.)
(In any case, even if one chooses to remain monogamous, it’s not possible to progress through the game without practising mind control.)
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Anyway, harem is just a fetish like any other. It’s not exceptional in any way to see someone hoping for a fetish they enjoy to be included in a game they like. As you may have guessed, I am a “happy harem” fetishist myself. I would’ve liked to see one in this game; I can accept that there isn’t. I won’t be losing any sleep over it.
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