All the talk about Rashta made me dust off one of my oldest opinions in how to improved her.
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I've been thinking about this for a long time, because I started analyzing the entire Remarried Empress manhwa after finishing it a long time ago and I realized there was something very icky about the way Rashta is written, and Navier too, by the way.
This isn't an unpopular opinion. But I'm not going to say what everyone else in this subreddit is already saying; I'm here to share ideas for fixing it. I genuinely believe there were better ways to write her as a villain without resorting to villainizing a victim.
I have written a good number of characters who go from victim to perpetrator in the past and there are several key components to make a traumatized person become the bad guy of the story, which I thought of applying to Rashta by changing elements of her story and her evolution.
Welcome to: How I would have written to Rashta. An essay.
1. Make her a person who was a slave but is now free.
his is the crux of the matter when it comes to justifying Rashta. Being a slave is not pretty. Furthermore, it's quite distasteful that, given Navier and Sovieshu portray themselves as the most benevolent emperors in the world, slavery existing within their empire comes off as very wrong.
Furthermore, if we keep the story within the genre of romantic melodrama, the truth is that it doesn't leave room to address such a delicate topic as slavery with a Game of Thrones-style nuance, let's be realistic.
So let's say Rashta was indeed a slave, but not in this empire, rather in another where slavery exists, and that she escaped from there to the Eastern Empire. We can even consider her affair with a nobleman, as she had with Lotteshu's son. Add to that the existence of a law stating that if a slave escapes from their master, the master no longer has the right to pursue them, much less if they escaped the country. This has existed in real life.
If Rashta escaped from a country where slavery is legal to one where it isn't, it would create an unfounded fear, an outdated defense mechanism she hasn't overcome, and this could be the source of her paranoia, much like in the original story. However, it's important that this fear has to be unfounded because in this country she is free. Thus, we have a person at a disadvantage compared to the nobility, yet free to choose, find work, and generally be part of society.
2. Give Rashta options other than being Sovieshu's mistress.
This goes hand in hand with her being a person with free will. After meeting the emperor, assuming Sovieshu didn't force her to be his mistress (since I think the idea of using Rashta to have a baby occurred to him some time after rescuing her), it's possible that after her leg healed, she could have left and taken other paths in life, looked for a job, or stayed as Navier's maid, as happens in the alternate version of the story.
This alternate version also states that a nobleman proposed marriage to Rashta, though she rejected him. This suggests that serving the Empress opens doors to advantageous marriages. It implies that Rashta could have lived a comfortable life among the nobility.
Create organizations to help slaves reintegrate into society, just like we do with convicts. Make Rashta reject that idea now that she has the emperor in her grip.
If there had been more options like that, it would have suggested that Rashta didn't have to stay with Sovieshu, but she chose him anyway, whether out of genuine but misplaced love, ambition, or paranoia about escaping something that has no validity, as I said before. It's not the first time we've had a villain whose evil deeds stem from unhealed trauma becoming a defense mechanism that does more harm than good. Look at Darth Vader.
But let's say that in the end Rashta can't refuse the emperor, which is more likely. One of the very few good things Sovieshu does is that he was going to give Rashta a luxurious villa and a very generous pension so she could live the rest of her life in comfort. In Survive as the Hero's Wife, the main lead Canaria plans to do this, and I know it happens in many other similar manhwas.
But we already know that Sovieshu cut short that possibility before even presenting it, but let's imagine that Rashta had had those options and had rejected them.
3. Give her real allies.
Part of what makes Navier not relatable in the story and makes Rashta so sympathetic is that she is alone, while the Empress has an entire court of ladies and nobles on her side, whereas Rashta has no one. This puts her at a significant disadvantage.
Okay, she doesn't have to be adored because pompous nobles certainly won't want to share the air with a peasant girl, but they could at least have given her maids who cared for her, or some noblewoman who took pity on her and instructed her in court etiquette and manners. This way, Rashta could have learned how to behave. Bonus points if those lessons helped her perfect her victim facade or read the room to manipulate others. With ambition for the throne, she could have used all of that for evil. Taking every person who was kind to her and destroying them for her own gain.
This brings me to the last point.
4. Make Rashta truly intelligent.
Another unfair problem between the mistress and the Empress is that Navier is portrayed as intellectually gifted, while Rashta is depicted as a fool. You can't compete with someone who doesn't know how to play the game. She needs at least one positive quality, like intelligence, to make her schemes more interesting, at least initially. More elaborate traps, more sophisticated lies involving others. If you add to that having maids or ladies-in-waiting as allies, as I mentioned before, then you can also add manipulating other women to do her dirty work or involve them in her lies.
She wouldn't let others like Duke Ergi manipulate her, but instead, she should consciously pull the strings, aware of the consequences after months of preparation. She would be aware she had everything she needed for a different life: new freedom, other paths, other loves, allies, and tools... and yet she rejects it all for the sake of a security she no longer needs because her former owner can't reach her here.
This would have made Rashta truly dangerous and showcased the dangers of poorly managed trauma. Also, having her defeat Navier once or twice would have created more tension in the story and made Navier seem less like a Mary Sue.
In short: I wrote this in a hurry and may have left out some important details, but I want to emphasize that I noticed this manhwa was written with certain classist and misogynistic undertones. The noble and wealthy Empress is intelligent and perfect, while the poor slave is foolish and vulgar. Sovieshu is the true author of all the major tragedies in the story, and many of these issues would have been resolved if he had told them both his plans, but the story glosses over it to place all the blame on Rashta. If Sovieshu had offered Rashta a better life or rights to her baby, and she hadn't accepted or had even conspired against him, that would have made her more villainous! But no.
Anyway, thanks for reading this essay.
TL;DR: Give Rashta agency, freedom, and real choices, so that it feels much more malevolent when she rejects these opportunities to make the cruelest decisions due to poorly handled trauma, Darth Vader-style.
Sorry for typos or misspelled words, English is not my first language.