The tone and pacing on this are all over the place. There isn't a great scale for the passage of time and it doesn't know if it wants to be a power fantasy knight story or game of thrones without any actual intrigue. The characterization of the emperor is fairly flat, he's said to be cunning and a great strategist but all the actual maneuvering is handled with extremely abrupt skips. So, is it a character drama? Perhaps, but whats there is pretty thin. Pauliana herself is pretty static and has few interesting traits other than being a woman; outside of that, she just is a run of the mill lunkhead knight like the rest of them. To me, it feels like the premise is the whole point and the substance is lacking. Maybe the novel is better, maybe it picks up in later chapters, but this one fails to live up to the premise. Maybe skip on this one.
Oh, and the emperor has no real cassus belli to declare war on more countries than his neighbors other than manifest destiny, so her basically as much a bad guy as Napoleon was. Why are we supposed to like him again? The story doesn't have the nuance to act like he's anything other than cool and handsome.