I have something against the Otome Villainess Genre

I enjoy some of these shows, but there is still an issue I have with the premise at its core.

I remember in one Lindsay Ellis video she said she couldn’t enjoy Frozen because she fundamentally disagreed with its perceived critique of prior Disney Princess films.  The problem is the message that you shouldn't rush into marriage with someone you just met is objectively a good one to teach young people, it doesn’t need to be some metatextual commentary on prior works in the same genre or from the same corporate brand to work.

However that same defense can’t be made of this Reincarnated as an Otome Villainess genre, and its other variants. As a subgenre of modern Light Novel Gamer Isekai the perceived commentary on prior works of fiction is explicit in the Text not mere Subtext.

Is there a single actual Otome Game that fits the generic framework all the hypothetical Otome Games imagined by this Genre share?  A Magic School in a Victorianish setting where the protagonist is the only commoner attending and her romantic options include The Crown Prince and her Ojousama Rival usually experiences some horrific Bad End alongside the Heroine’s Happy Ending?

I admit I’m pretty Anime Only when it comes to all these Genres, but none of the Anime I’m aware of that are adapted from Otome Games are at all like this.  There is usually not both a Reverse Harem and a Romantic Rival to the protagonist, that’s a bit too complicated for a truly generic Dating Sim to handle.

I feel this is a cynical perception of not just Otome Games specifically but Shoujo media in general held by Men and NLOGs who've never actually consumed any of it directly.

Classic Shoujo Anime and Manga are in fact always by default very sympathetic to the Romantic Rival and/or Ojousama character (they aren’t always the same person), and so I refuse to believe an accusation that Otome Games made for the same demographic were ever any different.  

Sometimes they are way more sympathetic to Bully characters than a lot of Western fans can handle.  Take Peach Girl who’s “Villainess” is the Trope Namer for the Wounded Gazelle Gambit, even she is given an arc and becomes a good person by the end.  In Pretear the Ojousama character is mostly comic relief but shows her own heroic qualities in the climatic episodes.  There are even Shoujo where the Protagonist outright admires her Rival like Princess Tutu and Shattered Angels.  

There are also Shoujo Manga as old as the 2000s where the Spoiled Rich Girl is the Protagonist like Pink Innocent. 

I talk a lot about how part of what I love about Otaku Media is how often Saving even the Villain is explicitly the goal.  Well that’s a Value modern Otaku Media inherited from Classic Shoujo, it comes principally from the Magical Girl Genre.

One YouTube VIdeo I watched on this Villainess trend says it’s a “dead unicorn trope” meaning it may have been a thing in the past but isn’t anymore.  But I doubt even those old ones ever treated these characters so unfairly.

Amelie Doree has a video on a Game that can be considered the Ur Text of the Otome Game genre called Angelique.  And while it does have somewhat of a proto Ojousama Rival character she is not treated as a “Villainess” at all.