Maria Campbell is basically the main heroine of the otome game "Fortune Lover"—which is the whole world Katarina's stuck in. She's the first commoner in over a century to get into magic school, and on top of that, she's got light magic, which is stupidly rare.
Being a commoner in a school full of nobles means she gets bullied pretty badly. In the game's original story, the love interests would've swooped in to rescue her, but Katarina decided to beat them to it and just. became her friend instead. That friendship actually matters—Katarina genuinely encourages Maria's baking, which she loves doing.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
