typical case of butterfly effect. a little change and a big ripple that expands from it.
everyone had a bias towards the series of events that led to her execution that forced that path to occur.
If I had a chance to escape all of that I would be genuinely annoyed to be dragged back into it. screw the candidate selection, just reject it and give us a story that truly goes in a new direction. as readers we can already see the 'noble' BS going on thats like "she's trash so she should reject it, but even more so if she dares to agree".
imagine making a candidate of people who are already seeing other men, exposed? deserved lol.
the rest losing just proved they were incompetent and magic gave them no advantage over her.
seems the crux of the matter was going as far as "assassination" and there being evidence of it (though something tells me that somehow this timeline will reveal it 'wasn't really her assassination attempt' idk...)
hoping for a good story, worried it'll turn into a rehash of the countless pre-existing templates already done.