Urgh... Why do I keep getting dragged into these kind of stories? Am I that weak for drama? I never watch romance dramas on TV, but I keep regressing back here.
Read the spoilers for the novel and all I got to say is:
Sovieshu or whatever (the emperor/first husband) is a real and complete POS. There is absolutely nothing to redeem him and I sure hope he gets his fair dose of karma.
On another note, Heinley is an absolute sweetheart. Can’t wait for the future chapters featuring his interactions with Navier.
I hope the manhwa moves just a tiny bit faster than the novel. I mean it was mostly necessary plot stuff and the story is really well written, but I want the juicy parts!
Finally a real empress. I'm kinda fed up with the ones that just become queen or something out of love but don't have any real knowledge on dealing with court AR ruling a whole fucking country.
Makes the emperor being unreasonable even clearer in comparison and the emotional down for her just so much more meaningful.
I got excited for this and decided to read to chapter 97 of the web novel. Not gonna read any more, though I will come back to the webtoon occasionally. Maybe the webtoon will portray things a bit differently (I hope).
Long story short I expected/anticipated one thing but that's not what I got. Ik ik, boohoo, sulking over not getting what I want. I swear I tried!!! ...okay no maybe not really lol.
Anyway....from what I've read of the novel, without giving away real details I'll share my thoughts in spoiler.
First off...a whole lot of nothing happens in 97 chapters. Really. Emperor gets a concubine, who is obviously the instigator for all trouble. Empress becomes a friend of the western prince who is apparently the main love interest/the dude she remarries. A whole lot of verbal abuse/accusations happen. This apparently accumulates until empress finally has it and the dumb emperor suggests a divorce and she accepts.
I also don't like any of the characters. The empress is fine; as was mentioned before it's nice that she actually has a background as an empress and knows what the floop she is doing (at least according to the story). But honestly? She has very little personality, and she is put into a very uninspiring drama role as the poor female lead fulfilling her role but being in a loveless marriage, and there is nothing she can do about it, and her somehow once very good friendship with the emperor turned stale for no apparent reason even though they grew up and discussed a lot of things together, but now they act like strangers (who the heck is like that in real life? You dont just stop liking people you really like for no reason...and they definitely were close friends). There is a lot of other stuff I will ommit about this.
The actual frustrating part is that there is zero character development. Like zero, nil, nada, RIEN. At first the empress seems cool; she's level headed and savvy, but she gets crammed into a state that she's always taking verbal abuse from her husband, she 'apparently' stands up for herself but not really (she never gets to the heart of the matter, and doesn't really communicate...takes a half step then retreats).
The concubine is your typical manipulative villain who annoyingly talks in third person and somehow magically has everyone adoring her (i've never met a girl who acts like that, and anyone who did would likely get hit for being annoying...or at least scoffed at) and has her own story. Emperor is your typical insensitive shoujo insert who for some reason doesnt have an ounce of discretion/think for a person of his background/position (and he's probably going to be justified as lonely and actually likes the empress a lot but somehow always says the wrong things and was somehow blinded that she is a person too but is just trying to play her role well and *GASPs* them run on sentences leave me winded. But so on and so forth. Main romantic interest is your cast-as-frivolous-but -is-a-good-ish-dude-whose-personality-changes-as-often-as-i-change-socks.
Umm what else. I'm ranting.
For all this crap I've written...well yeah it's a rant. My problem was my expectations (damn you).
I applaud anyone who managed to read all that.
Tldr; WN is basically your standard K drama. The setting/context isnt significant to the plot.