about this manhwa, i really wanted to like it, but somehow the main character just doesn't do it for me. i've read till around chapter 52, and she's never done anything that makes me actively root for her.
Everything she's done all along was just 'reasonable'. She's cute when the story and surroundings call for it, but not really much else –– the only adjectives that come to mind are 'capable' and 'reasonable'. Of course, you want to root for her, but that's because she's suffered numerous injustices, and the other characters apart from the male lead and potential love rival or whatever are made out to be insufferable and unlikeable. That being said, they're still more interesting to read about because they all have some form of a driving force ( for instance, Rashta wants power to protect herself and become independent, aside from wanting the emperor's affection, which still gives us more of an idea about her character than anything we've gotten from Navier).
Navier, our titular empress, has done nothing for me to like her. She seeks justice for herself, she fights back when Rashta tries pulling off things above her pay grade, she helps her friends and acquaintances who have been wronged. In theory, these are all good traits and should be enough for anyone to like her, but she's so cold and emotionless during the ordeals– we don't see her displaying much emotion or thinking to herself about these things, it's just so cold and you don't look forward to her scenes at all. She has a past of loving the emperor, which could have been explored more and played with but no, she quickly moves past that and does not let it show nor does she communicate directly with the emperor (again, reasonable given her position, but for god's sake do something interesting for once)
The male lead falls for her at the drop of a hat, which is fine, shoujo love interests have fallen for less, but that just makes it all the more boring because all the empress does is smartly subtly turn him down (again, reasonable). If she had fallen first, that could have made for an interesting story where she has an internal conflict (but she's just too capable for that isn't she). For the record, he's a ridiculously boring overused character archetype as well.
At the beginning of the story, we're given a scene showing us that the emperor demands a divorce, in response to which the empress agrees on the condition that she is allowed to remarry. It's been made clear that this entire story will probably consist of the incidents that led up to this point. The title implies that the story would be about an already remarried empress, or perhaps on the route of remarriage. In truth, she's far from a divorce, after which her immediate remarriage will probably be the end of the story. I feel more cheated than she lets on.
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