Princess Principal: Season 1/ Episode 11 “Humble Double (Case 23)” – Overview/ Recap (with Spoilers)

Operation: Changeling finally arrives and also goes awry. However, not for Control and what they planned but Ange.

Goodbye Comrades: Ange, Chise, Dorothy, Zelda

With the military taking over Control, Dorothy finds herself reassigned, Chise is withdrawn from her duties, and that leaves Ange alone to handle Charlotte. All the while, a new commander for the operation, Zelda, is introduced and she is clearly a backup in case Ange doesn’t pull the trigger, snap the neck, or what have you. Making it so Ange has to be creative if she wants to save her dear old friend.

The Second Denial/ The Declaration of War: Zelda, Ange, Charlotte

As a huge amount of agents watch, including Zelda, Ange tries to figure out a way for her and Charlotte to escape the assassination plot. One way this is done is by swapping identities, and the second part to this is by using a smoke bomb. But then comes an issue: Charlotte has no intention to run off to Casablanca with Ange. She wants to be queen, she wants to cause change. So, being sick of Ange trying to control her life or leave her to clean up her mess, she locks Ange in a storage area.

Following that, she takes on Ange’s identity and learns that Control has been planning for war. One in which Queen Victoria will be killed and Charlotte made the new sovereign. Leading to the old anecdote needing to be said: Be careful what you wish for.

On The Fence

It’s Hard To Fathom What May Happen Next

Though it sucks that we had to wait until towards the end of the series, at least it finally happened. We finally got a consistent storyline building toward something. Heck, we even see the Duke of Normandy, who seems aware of this rebellion and, who knows, could very well be the head of Control. Making it so we finally get what this show has been missing: The twists, betrayals, and politics which go along with espionage.

Something which, for the most part, has utterly been lost as the show spent an exuberant amount of time building up these girls backstories. All the while, not really investing in whatever the Duke of Normandy was doing to maybe undermine how much Queen Victoria favored Charlotte. Alongside not pushing the idea that all these missions we see do actually mean something. They aren’t just some B-line for another backstory.

 

But with Ange now out of the picture, Dorothy who knows where, Chise dismissed from the mission, and Beatrix likely none the wiser, so comes the question of what may happen next?