#Sovieshitslander

[snowswan-royalehigh]

My personal thoughts on Remarried Empress

Hi there! I'm not going into an too much of an in-depth analysis, so please take my words with a grain of salt. I'm going to focus on Rashta's past.

Rashta is a very well written character, she's shown to be naive and innocent, with underlying layers of cruelty and a character development towards greed which is wonderfully executed. However, the fandom refuses to allow her to have nuance to her character.

When the webtoon and novel start off, we already know Rashta is somewhat portrayed as a villainess, and during my first readthrough, I also wanted to sucker punch her in the face. (I would be publicly executed by Sovieshit) But when I reread I realized how much nuance I missed, and some nuance the fandom ignores entirely.

We start off knowing Rashta is a runaway slave. Which already starts us off on a generally sympathetic note, because we can tell she's had some form of a bad life prior to becoming Sovieshit's concubine. We know she has an annoying habit of speaking in third person, she's a crybaby, she's incredibly controlled by her emotions, she lacks critical thinking skills, and she doesn't even know how to read or write.

Rashta is incredibly easily manipulated, she shows that with her interactions with Sovieshit and especially Duke Ergi. Duke Ergi influences almost all of Rashta's moves, such as the Christmas tree wedding dress, which was a huge embarrassment. In defense of Rashta's lack of knowledge, she was a slave. How was she supposed to know about how these things, when she had spent her life, being forced to clean, with no hope of escaping. She hadn't even done anything to become a slave in the first place, she was made one so her father wouldn't have to pay for his crime. She was uneducated as can be. Reading and writing at that time was only for the highborn.

Rashta is confirmed to have had a lot of love for the idea of her children, and she carried that baby to full term. Imagine how mortifying it was when Lotteshu showed her that corpse. (How the hell did he even get his hands on the corpse. We should be focusing on that a lot more) So could we really blame her for running away, Alan abandoned her as well, and Lebetti always treated her like trash.

Rashta undergoes a corruption arc because of the people around her. Navier remarks in her head that Rashta has no one good around her to inform her, in the webtoon.

Now, imagine this situation from the point of view of Rashta. You just saw your supposed dead child with an obvious great amount of trauma via your whole childhood, and now, the emperor, an incredibly powerful man, has proposed to become your lover. He's going to give you protection, and most likely save you from your horrible life. Everyone forgets the power dynamic of these two. Rashta is the lowest in society while Sovieshit is the highest. What terrible consequences would Sovieshit's pretty ass conjure from rejection? Even the webtoon remarks that it's like a fairy tale.

Navier and the rest of the nobles are her enemies, because of how she was raised. She actually started off the webtoon looking up to Navier, and seeing Navier as someone she could basically worship, and believed that Navier would act as a motherly figure although she was greeted with Navier's justifiable pettiness although Rashta didn't know what she was doing wrong.

If Rashta was the protagonist everyone would be gushing about her, because she is manipulative, but so is Navier. The people around Rashta fail her, when she could've been so much more, and she has so much underutilized potential. Rashta would've been incredibly hyped up for kicking Navier out, and Navier would be seen as cold hearted and self centered.

TL;DR, Rashta is still an antagonist, but she is not a straight up villain. She's complex, and she's more human than any other antagonist. She's only hated on for being the 'other woman' and the fandom acts like she seduced Sovieshit for the funsies.

(Fuck Sovieshit, all my homies hate him!!!))

#the remarried empress #Rashta #Sovieshitslander #Characternuance #Nuance #mischaracterization #character arcs #sovieshu #Sovieshu slander