Why Rashta Failed as a Character
Rashta is the most iconic character in the Remarried Empress by far and might be one of the most known otome isekai manhua ever. Every day, here and everywhere else on the internet, there is endless fighting about whether or not Rashta was a villain or innocent or misunderstood or whatever.
While RE was at its peak popularity, everyone hated Rashta. She might have been one of the most hated characters at all times in that moment. Now that everyone is coming out with sympathy for her, some people are confused. Here's my answer to that confusion.
The problem is that Remarried Empress isn't very well written, and the author wrote herself into a corner trying to make a character like Rashta work. Rashta needed to be inferior to Navier in any way that really mattered (intelligence, morals, virtue) while somehow being powerful enough to be something of a threat, which she couldn't be on her own (because she needed to be dumb and short-sighted to showcase how Navier was much smarter and insightful), so she included Sovieshu (who used her as his reason to hurt Navier) and Duke Ergi (who genuinely encouraged and guided her towards her path of paranoia and destruction). She needed to give a backstory for Rashta to motivate her so hard to aim to be an Empress while also explaining her lack of family, poor education, and emotional instability and a reason to portray Rashta's ambition for a better life as unrealistic and misplaced. She found her solution in portraying her as a slave.
Rashta has few to no genuine positive character traits, other than that she's beautiful. Even her childlike naivete is portrayed negatively, and instead of that being shown as an annoying but pure characteristic, it is shown as her being too stupid and naive to recognize reality.
Since she is meant to be a complete opposite to Navier, who is everything good and moral and noble, Rashta was supposed to be bad and terrible and low class. What's lower class than a literal slave?
That's how you account for everything that's wrong with her. The issue is that slavery is terrible and that it makes Rashta seem like way too sympathetic. A runaway slave like her would be killed if anyone discovered what she was; she had no formal education at all and was shown as not being able to read or write (something that seemingly even regular commoners are able to do); she was shown as being deliberately dumb and childlike; she was portrayed as being younger than Heinfrey, a 19-year-old; she was a sexual assault victim that was henceforth psychologically abused by having her slave masters pretend that the child had died; she was consistently surrounded by people who genuinely didn't have her best interest at heart and genuinely led her to worse and worse actions for their own gain (her slave master and Duke Ergi); she was immediately met with hatred, dislike and contempt by everyone but Sovieshu the moment she entered the palace (remember how Navier's entourage talked about how filthy she was before Rashta even did anything at all); and she had no one to help her understand how court politics worked at all, or even what and how to behave towards Navier until it was literally too late to mend their relationship.
The argument that I am making here is not that Rashta is innocent; she did a lot of terrible evil things. Rashta is a terrible person—that is, in all senses of the word, evil—and by the end of the story, unredeemable. But especially as the story progressed, her behaviour is a direct result of everyone around her genuinely neglecting what might be the most vulnerable character in the world.
The authors' determination to have Rashta be so useless and pathetic forced them to write a backstory that completely justifies Rashta's state, while still wanting to pretend that Rashta is evil itself, forcing Rashta to do acts of evil that might be entertaining but seem strange for someone like her.
This ultimately reveals the problem that I have with RE as a whole, which is the author's underlying beliefs about the world.
Slavery is, to everyone's surprise, bad. Hence, it's confusing to see Mother Theresa herself in the Shape of Navier allow slavery in her country. Of course, perhaps she disagreed with it and Sovieshu still allowed it, but in the story, Navier never has a moment where she's like, 'Wait, the slavery in the empire, which I dominate and lead as its supreme leader is kind of sort of bad!' Instead, she befriends Rashta's slave master, who abused Rashta wayyyy before she had done anything even remotely evil, and we are still supposed to believe that Navier is the epitome of noble and just morality. Her own brother tries to get a pregnant woman to miscarry her child, which is attempted murder, once again way before Rashta does anything that's evil and not just incredibly dumb and annoying, and Navier sees the situation and scolds her brother like he stepped on someone's shoe and not like he tried to commit one of the most horrifying and cruel things you could do to someone.
But because the author cannot bear to criticize Navier even a little bit, the author makes Rashta do increasingly cruel acts to make Navier look great in comparison. Which successfully worked. Once Rashta committed animal abuse against that one bird, it was game over.
Navier is beautiful and loved by everyone in the kingdom; the noble families all respect her and value her even more than the Emperor, she was their Pope on her side; she was the regnant of two different countries madly in love with her; she was wealth beyond measure; she's always the smartest person in the room; she has a fully alive family that loves and cherishes her; and she was raised with the express goal of her being an empress.
What did Rashta have? Beauty? That only somewhat rivaled Navier? Or what is the Emperor's affection, which everyone warned her was temporary and volatile? An affection that, if she lost would send her back to a life of literal hereditary slavery?
In one of the side chapters, the author presents an alternative reality in which instead of being faced with the advice of malignant agents, she instead enters the care of Navier and becomes (or remains) a pure, loving soul that becomes enamoured with Navier. So much so that when a Duke asks for her hand in marriage, she refuses and remains with Navier as her maid.
The corner that the author wrote for herself is the one that reveals her sociological ideals; an empress is an empress and should always remain an empress. a slave is a slave and should remain a slave. trying to raise yourself higher than your station is itself a crime and a moral affront to the natural order. A good slave should know their place and grovel at their master's side and, through their loyalty, maybe receive a semblance of condescending affection.
Navier is good because she was born Good; Rashta is bad because she dared to wish for more than she was born for.
P.S.: This also happens, where an author gets themselves stuck into a corner by making an evil or antagonistic character wayyy too understandable and nearly excusable by making them too cartoonishly evil and thus having to give them a backstory so ridiculously painful with circumstances too strained for them to make a good choice that winds up sort of justifying their actions in Yellowstone with the character of Jamie.
