90% sure Rishar doesn't want to be emperor because of his love and respect for Etienne. Once finding out he is an omega, he may even push for co-regency but never full emperor. He sees the potential Etienne had if his mother wasn't, well, evil and abusive. As things stand, she would 100% control her son like a puppet because she has beat him down so much.
Instead of telling the emperor he's an omega (as clearly there is no ounce of trust between them,) he could tell him he fears for his own life after his mother made him ingest medicine that made him ill that night. It's not enough to lock her up but it would create a reason to keep them apart.
Totally agree on your take of how the emperor is handling the situation. I also would have a difficult time looking at a child conceived by r**e. But he did leave his son totally under the empress' thumb and he made clear he thought he was the same as her without giving him a chance. The fact it has been brought to his attention and he is giving his son a chance to prove him wrong his great and all. However, Etienne has been abused for his entire life and is only aware that his mother controls his world. As much as he knows she doesn't care about him, he is most likely too fearful of her to tell the truth(and maybe not even tell the emperor he needs to get away from her.)
This story has been burning from the beginning but it looks like it's about to turn into a brush fire. I almost can't wait. No, others spoke of a novel. I am going to go look for it now. I hope it's just a bit farther.
Realistically the emperor is not gonna always be the one in power. There’s too many political parties at hand and the empress is also using dark magic and such so she mostly has the upper hand. The emperor was also assaulted in order to have a child. He did not need to really have found feelings for this child considering the child was a result of his r*pe. To add to that the child IS WHAT THE EMPRESS wished for, and so how was he to know that the empress would abuse the very thing she had wanted from him? Also looking at how everyone’s dying one by one, his family literally being taken away! He’s busy trying to figure out the right way to kill the empress while also maintaining peace like any emperor that has his peoples best interest at hand. When you are an emperor, the nation is your children. It’s unfortunate but being an emperor comes before being a father for the sole fact that it’ll be thousands of lives at stakes in comparison to one or two of your own kids. It’s not an easy thing to weigh and in a proper kingdom he wouldn’t have to weigh it but here he does have to. Plus ML literally makes more sense as a future emperor because he has shown what he could do. Our MC is literally always sick, and hides behind his mother who’s obviously evil (not really by choice). The emperor has done little to the MC aside from ignoring him and not wanting him to be the emperor. Heck as a reader even i even feel that currently he’s not fit to be an emperor AND I know more about his background then the emperor.