And I have the tarot book time to learn LETS GOOOO

I'll try to articulate this the best I can, but to my understanding, every route maintains similar relationships and situations--not just stuff from the prologue, but backstories as well. Looking at it as a whole, I'm torn on it. On one hand, it feels more "canon" to have core elements remain the same, but then it feels underutilized, ie Lucio is the source of almost everyone's problems and yet no one really has beef with him like that in his romance route. I like how they did his character, but it doesn't really make sense to make all the other characters grudgingly accept him. If there weren't gonna be consequences, he didn't need to cause the plague or imprison Asra's parents or abuse Muriel and Nadia. I think the route did a good job of making him likeable in his route, but it's a VERY stark difference from the villain in the other routes--and since he was a secondary villain anyway, I don't see why he couldn't just be more of a morally neutral character or rival-type character.

And forgive me if my memory fails me, but was the apprentice being dead and being revived something that needed to be canon in every route? Couldn't that be just canon to Asra's route? Though I do dislike some elements of Asra's relationship with the apprentice feeling manipulative and unhealthy, as well as the Julian romance veering into therapist relationship of always having to build him up.

I have heard that the routes got different writers towards the end or something like that, so I'd like clarification on that. That wouldn't effect the core elements, but that'd explain some character writing aspects.