Elena was the Empress after the duke killed the previous empress, she used to be a queen? rather than an empress, so I believe this girl is the future empress.
@EminaDigiCC0306@MoeMoeKyun Main girl became empress after her family assassinated the girl who was just introduced. That is part of the reason why the prince/emperor hated her so much.
A queen is often under an empress so i believe she was queen until the empress somehow died (is killed? Since there are those blood splatter like parts) and afterwards she became empress
@twilightspirits I believe it was the chapter where Elena was studying the pictures of the empire’s nobles and came across the document on the crown prince. It only got a couple sentences mentioned. It might have been chapter 1 instead though, I will double check and edit this post.
The web novel version of the same chapter goes into slightly more detail but this is my first time seeing her name.