🍁Ruby ᡣ𐭩

Claiming the Eastern Empire is a nation "built on slavery" is a deliberate mischaracterization that tries to equate the fictional world's legal system with real-world chattel slavery. The Eastern Empire's economy does not run on slave labor, and they are not subjugating entire populations to build the nation's wealth. Slavery in the Remarried Empress universe is strictly a punitive, judicial system. It is the ultimate criminal sentence for severe offenses like high treason or massive, unpayable debt. When someone commits a crime of that magnitude, they are stripped of their citizenship and reduced to penal servitude. It operates much more like a penal colony system—very similar to how Britain originally founded Australia to house convicts—rather than a system of generational chattel slavery. Rashta's father committed a crime and fled, leaving her trapped in that debt-bondage system. It is an incredibly cruel legal system, but it is a criminal sentence, not the economic foundation of the empire. Holding Navier personally accountable for not dismantling a centuries-old judicial system completely ignores how the government in this universe actually works. Navier is the Empress Consort, an administrative role. She manages the palace budget, social diplomacy, and domestic affairs, but she does not have the legislative power to rewrite national laws or overturn the judicial system. That power belongs solely to the Emperor. Blaming Navier for not single-handedly abolishing penal servitude when she legally cannot do so is just a bad-faith excuse to hate her. Finally, attacking the author for "never addressing this" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are reading. The Remarried Empress is a fantasy soap opera focused on palace intrigue, interpersonal drama, and a messy divorce. It was never written to be a sweeping geopolitical manifesto on the ethics of the penal system. The author used this punitive system strictly as a plot device to give Rashta the lowest possible social standing, maximizing the contrast between her and Navier's extreme privilege. Trying to force a real-world moral crusade onto a romance web novel just to excuse Rashta's canonical crimes is a massive reach.