I think you should watch it
The first half may have a lot of plotlines that seem frivolous or melodramatic, but it provides great contrast for the actual masterpiece second half. If you're even a little entertained, watch until the end.
The story takes place in the years preceding and during the French Revolution. It's historical fiction: emphasis on fiction, a lot of the shit even with real people just didn't happen. So consider all the characters as just characters. I think the anime does a great job at development: character development and world development. Slowly over the course of 40 episodes you can see France change and the characters change with it. Oscar starts off as a noble and very loyal to the queen, but she's also a person with an extremely upstanding moral character, which, without giving too much away, doesn't lead to her staying that way.
It feels like a 70s anime for sure, but also the best 70s anime to exist.
I think Oscar may be my favorite anime character ever.
It's an amazing show but
E28 spoiler
The sexual assault scene and the way the aftermath was handled was done so horribly imo, and it almost made me drop the show despite everything else being fantastic.I love how it portrays the buildup to the revolution, instead of just going "everything is fine, then the people rebelled" you see a progressively worsening situation and the nobility idling and not really caring about what happens.
That scene was completely unnecessary too, even the characters involved decide to forget about it. Could strip it out of the show and nothing would change.
I also got bothered by the fake miscarriage plot in episode 15 literally never being brought up again, and after episode 19 certain events got brushed aside for Fersen shit for a while and
spoiler
Polignac and Rosalie's arc kind of became an anticlimax and happened mostly off-screenBut otherwise I think the show was really great and the ending was especially so good it made me forget about problems I had earlier in the series