@gladiatorua
Ah, did it sound like I didn’t think the Simperor (I like this name, so pardon me for taking it. It’s more kid-friendly than Sovieshit) wasn’t at fault? My bad, I honestly think he’s also a piece of crap. I didn’t bore a few holes into him earlier because I didn’t want my comment to get too long. I have a few comments on pretty much all these characters tbh. Navier especially.
As for the Simperor, however, I find him even less appealing than Trashta. Frankly, I’m pretty sure a majority of the reason why the Simperor was able to assume the throne was because of Navier’s ability to perform almost without fault as the Empress. She’s there to compensate. Otherwise, the vassals of the Empire would have never let a Crown Prince with this level of incompetence to become the Emperor.
A model Emperor prioritizes the empire over his own personal interest. A model Emperor is a wise and just ruler.
The Simperor ignores the fact that his concubine could potentially be a runaway slave (which the empire has laws against, might I add) and instead scorns his wife - his
Empress - whom he has known since childhood, shows his inability to think rationally. The fact that this Simperor complains and moans to Navier that he wanted a wife rather than a partner clearly shows his inability to think for his empire.
Can I fault a man that can have this longing for a warm family in this kind of society? Tbh, I’ll admit that I can’t. If I said yes, that would be considered having double standards and I respect myself too much to become a hypocrite. In all honesty, if the Simperor were an ML that hadn’t used another woman to garner the FL’s attention and had instead tried to woo her properly without all these machinations, I’d be eating that up without a doubt.
However, akin to a spoiled, attention-seeking child, he did use woman to do exactly that. Even if he did fall in love with Trashta, that makes him so much worse. I absolutely abhor people who think that it’s okay to use jealousy or purposefully hurt others just to get a smidgen of affection from another party.
Addressing people’s opinions that it’s the Simperor’s fault that all this is happening and that it’s okay to sympathize Trashta because of her past and the situation the Simperor threw her in, I have something to say:
They’re all at fault. The Simperor didn’t make Trashta a total trash-hat, as long as it meant that she could live better than she had as a slave, she would have been like this even if she had ended up at a Duke’s house. The Simperor merely paved a road and we are here to witness it.