He's a young puppet emperor with no backing or power tho. Took him 5yrs to even clear Rakia/Lakia's name. Before ML came along, his only ally was framed and his family wiped out. Even ML was surprised he came to banquets bc who would dare befriend him after what happened to Lakia?
Who he meets and what he does is so tightly controlled and monitored that even a commoner probably knows about the famine situation better than he does. And even if he knew, there's not much he could do. All the money and power is with the 2 dukes. ML was his lifeline.
Moreover, the famine had only barely started. Clearly the nobles unhappy about the marriage spread rumors that she somehow caused it. If there wasn't a famine, she would've been blamed for smth else
Doesn’t the emperor receive all kinds of intel?? The emperor should have known the famine will start happening soon. So it was kinda frustrating he chose the empress at that timing. That part was the only thing that frustrated me. I was expecting he’d do something, but MC was the one to resolve the issue instead.