Katarina Claes has many love interests in My Next Life As A Villainess: All Roads Lead to Doom, but the most interesting are Mary Hunt and Sophia Ascart. In the original timeline of the Fortune Love otome game Katarina is in, both Mary and Sophia are meant to be rivals of a sort to the heroine in the game. Neither of them were villains like Katarina; rather, they were just obstacles for her to overcome on her way to happily ever after.
However, once Katarina regained the memories of her past life and flipped the script by trying to make friends and influence people, both Mary and Sophia fall in love with her. Although Sophia doesn't seem to be as infatuated as Mary is, it is possible that they have changed roles and now, they are each other's rival for Katarina's affections.
But could this exciting LGBTQ spin really become a reality in the anime? In Episode 2, Prince Alan accuses Katarina of seducing his fiancé, Mary Hunt, because all she ever talks about is her friend and she refuses to make plans with him on a day that she already has plans with Katarina. The fact the prince believes it is even a possibility that Mary could be seduced by a woman implies that a lesbian romance is indeed possible within the world of Fortune Lover.
This theory is supported by the entirety of Episode 3, which has a recurring theme of homoerotic romance novels. After meeting Sophia Ascart, Katarina mentally compares her to the breathtakingly beautiful common girl that the heroine falls in love with from a novel called Sophia and the Emerald Princess. Later, while visiting the Ascart family, she even quotes a line from the novel to Sophia and asks if she can touch her silky hair.
The dazzled way that Katarina reacts to Sophia's looks could easily mean that she is romantically attracted to her. Each time they interact she seems to stare and be at a loss for words, which usually means there is some sort of crush going on. It is also fun to see that all of the girls bond over a love of romance novels, and their favorites are always about a princess who falls in love with a commoner girl.
The love of female romances alone and each girl's attachment to Katarina does not make it clear if their sexuality is meant to be questioned, but when they bring up another novel about a Count who is so beautiful that he attracts both men and women, the straight, heteronormative lines are definitely blurred. Sophia even compares the Count to her brother, Nicol Ascart. The fact that they talk so openly about a man who attracts people of different genders once more implies that same-sex relationships and bisexual orientations (or others) are possible within this world.
Despite this, it seems unlikely that My Next Life As A Villainess will veer toward having Katarina actually end up with Mary or Sophia -- although it absolutely should. After all, having the heroine end up with a woman would be a fantastic way to subvert the expected ending of the game. In fact, should the anime follow the original plot of Fortune Lover and Katarina wanted to avoid her titular "doom," all she would need to do would be to choose between Mary or Sophia as her love interest and all of her problems would be solved.
Even if it doesn't happen in this time around, having a lesbian or bisexual couple as the main focus of a romance anime with as big a following as this one would be amazing to see in the future.
