No matter what anyone says, I still can't stand Rashta and someone around her to influence...

You don't have to like her to acknowledge the fact she is the victim in this story.

Victim? Girl was greedy before anyone whispered in her ear. If she wasn’t, then she wouldn’t have accepted being the kings mistress in the first place. Difficult to have sympathy for someone that wanted a very clearly married man. (Not that I’m cool with the ex husband, he shouldn’t have been interested in another woman.)

The castle environment only watered the darkness she already had in herself. So it’s not surprising she turned out the way she did.

Calling a 17 year old enslaved girl 'greedy' for accepting the protection of the most powerful man in the country is an astonishing lack of media literacy honestly empathy., Slaves don't get to negotiate they survive. saying she wanted a married man ignores the massive power imbalance between a FUCKING EMPEROR and an abused teenage slave consent under coercive circumstances is not the same as free choice.

‘the darkness she already had'? Based on what? She was trafficked, abused, raped, and enslaved before she ever entered the palace. You're taking trauma responses and pretending they're innate character flaws because it's easier than acknowledging how abuse shapes people it's amazing how people demand perfect morality from the child slave while extending endless nuance to the rich nobles who literally uphold the institution that destroyed her life. That double standard says far more about you as a reader and a person than it does about Rashta. I’m so tired of you dumb hoes fr

Her age was never confirmed. And she could have taken advantage of the help she was receiving without being a complete hindrance towards the MC. (Not to say everyone else in the story was a saint) But saying she didn’t have a choice is bonkers because for the majority of the manhwa, the emperor was clearly letting her do whatever she wanted. Only on rare occasions was she reprimanded by him. Was there a power imbalance between her and the emperor? Yeah there was but she made her desire for him abundantly clear. It was to the point that she was bringing it up in MC’s face that they would be sharing the same man. (I understand it’s better to be the mistress of an emperor than a slave but there are better ways to go about that kind of situation.)

She had plenty of instances to improve herself on the down low. To show she could be more than just a dumb naive slave of a mistress but guess what, she chose to do whatever she wanted. She got upset (lied and threw tantrums constantly) when things didn’t go her way and people took advantage of her because of that behavior.

Does it suck she had a horrible childhood? Yes, it sucks. Does that excuse her behavior? Her mannerisms? No, it does not excuse it. She practically wanted things handed to her and gave no interest in comprehending why that’s not how things work. Especially with someone of her station that is surrounded by people who are prejudice against her kind. (She was sat multiple times and told why she shouldn’t do certain things but she was too stubborn to listen.)

It is very, extremely difficult to like a character that never really put forth effort to educate herself appropriately (she had access to that as a mistress). And yet everything she did was for her own selfish benefit, without a care for the consequences. (So yes she was way too damn greedy and egotistical for her own good. Which add onto the reasons why she was any easy target for manipulation)

And just in case you think people would have loved her as an MC, that’s not true. The author would have had to do a complete 180 on her reasonings for trying to survive to make her likable. Like have her want to educate herself, be it book wise and social wise so she can expand her knowledge, get her to improve the empire with limiting discrimination of commoners or ridding slavery, the list goes on.


(And I’m gonna say again, I am not saying everyone else in the story is a saint. They all have their own problems but Rashta is a character that completely wasted a very rare opportunity in that life time all because of her ignorance. Her background doesn’t excuse it, because it’s ones responsibility to learn and adapt in life which she failed at horrendously.)

You keep judging Rashta as if she had the same starting point as everyone else, and that's exactly the problem. First, "she had plenty of opportunities to educate herself" ignores that education isn't just about having books in front of you she spent her formative years as an enslaved person who was denied autonomy, security, and basic human dignity people don't magically develop emotional regulation, political awareness, or social skills the moment they're removed from abuse trauma doesn't disappear because your surroundings changes.

Second, you're treating survival strategies as evidence of innate moral failure rashta lies because lying kept her alive as a slave she's paranoid because one mistake could send her back into slavery she's desperate for status because status is literally the only thing protecting her from being dragged back into bondage those aren't admirable traits, but they make perfect sense for someone with her background.

Third, you say she "wanted things handed to her." What exactly was handed to her? She didn't inherit wealth she didn't inherit education she didn't inherit political allies every bit of security she had depended entirely on an emperor who could discard her whenever he pleased and the thought that she should have become an anti-slavery reformer is honestly bizarre why is the traumatized former slave expected to fix the empire while the educated nobles who've benefited from that system get a free pass? That's an impossible moral standard that almost no real person could meet.

Finally, this idea that "she could have survived in a better way" is easy to say from the perspective of someone with hindsight survivors of abuse rarely make perfect decisions they make desperate ones the story repeatedly punishes Rashta for acting like a traumatized victim while rewarding characters who were born into comfort for behaving with composure. You don't have to like Rashta. I don't think she's a saint either but reducing an enslaved abuse survivor to "greedy and egotistical" while holding her to a higher moral standard than the aristocrats who uphold the system that created her is weird af

Also Rashta age is not confirmed but easily guessable from not only how she behaves but the fact the reason the emperor likes her is because of the fact she reminds him if a younger navier and navier isn't exactly old.

"And just in case you think people would have loved her as an MC, that’s not true. The author would have had to do a complete 180 on her reasonings for trying to survive to make her likable. Like have her want to educate herself, be it book wise and social wise so she can expand her knowledge, get her to improve the empire with limiting discrimination of commoners or ridding slavery, the list goes on."

This is exactly the kind of black-and-white thinking I'm criticizing you're saying an enslaved girl isn't "likable" unless she becomes a selfless social reformer whose life goal is fixing the empire that's an incredibly childish expectation but it's to be expected since all you read is middle school level writing in revenge slop manhwas. A competent writer doesn't need to turn every oppressed character into a flawless activist to justify their existence wanting freedom, safety, stability, and a better life is already a compelling motivation. That's enough. An author with half a brain understands that surviving slavery is a valid goal in itself. Good writing lets traumatized people be messy, selfish, scared, and deeply flawed without implying they deserved what happened to them. If a character has to dedicate their life to improving the world before you think they're worthy of being a protagonist, you've completely missed the point of writing human beings instead of moral mascots.

A writer can make a character not be a traditional moral mascot and make them enjoyable to read about, however, you can’t expect people to enjoy a heavily flawed character if their sole trait is just that, pure flaws. Which is what Rashta is, she is an extremely flawed person, to the point of dislikability. The author could have done way better with the character and chose not to, hence the heavy dislike for her actions and existence.

The author chose to pile flaw after flaw into the enslaved abuse victim while giving the privileged nobles far more grace youre treating that has proof Rashta is inherently unlikeable when it's actually evidence of the author's bias and classism. A traumatized slave shouldn't have to be sanitized into a perfect victim to be worth empathizing with and you finding her unlikable doesn't matter, she is still the biggest victim of this story.

Victim during her childhood? Yes. She didn’t have many choices during that time of her life. So that was a situation of being a victim of circumstances. But during her time as mistress and then empress? Not so much. She’s a victim of her choices by that point. She had access to means that would have made her life better, made it easier.
Resources she completely squandered.

AGAIN your problem is that you act like trauma magically disappears once someone gains a little power a victim can still make bad choices, but those choices are shaped by years of abuse and survival reducing her entire character to “a victim of her choices” is just ignoring the circumstances that created her.

I’m not saying trauma disappears. I’m saying she had the opportunities to work on herself, to heal, she chose not to. Which is why she continued to spiral emotionally throughout the story. A person can’t get anywhere in life if they allow themselves to be constantly controlled by their past.

Healing isn’t a switch you flip just because opportunities appear people with deep trauma don’t always make the “right” choices, and blaming her for struggling is dumb and childish

You’re right, it isn’t a flip you switch. It’s a choice, it’s a multitude of choices that a person has to make. And Rashta was held accountable for all the decisions she made throughout the story. (Were the rest of the cast done in the same manner? No, sadly not the case. In fact, apparently the ex husband has a redemption side story. Baffling but it’s what the author chose. Tbh, at the end of the day, I’m pretty sure the only characters that did no wrong were the babies, which depressing to say the least.)

Rashta isn't a real person making choices she's a fictional character making the choices the author writes for her saying she chose not to get better ignores that the author deliberately refused to let her grow because her narrative purpose was to make Navier look morally superior. The clearest example is the extra story, where the only timeline in which Rashta gets a peaceful happy life is the one where shes back in servitude as Naviers maid think about that the narrative literally imagines her happiest ending not as a free woman but as a loyal servant beneath the noble heroine that's an incredibly telling message about the author's worldview.

Bro...just reading your replies fuel my rage a thousand fold. Like...no one is telling you to like her, gng. The other person was trying to make you understand Rasta as a character and how she was the victim in the story that was based on the author's own classist ideology. And the fact that you kept on talkin' and talkin', writing those long paragraphs like the lengths themselves could compensate your lack of any critical thinking skills was truly painful to read.


And you keep blaming her for not "choosing" to heal from her trauma. But answer me this, how can she "choose to heal" when the moment she step foot into the palace, the poor girl was immediately bombarded with complex politics/palace struggles? Not to mention, the hostility directed at her from everyone around her? Because from the beginning of the story, not a single person was genuinely on her side except the king. And even then, the dude was only using her as an incubator to give himself an heir. So tell me, how would she have had the time, the energy, the CHANCE of even thinking of healing herself when throughout the whole story, not a single person even offer her that option? To you, all of her actions were from her own greed for the throne. Yet for an enslaved girl like Rastha? It was all in the name of survival.

Talking to that person almost made me pop a vessel like Jesus Christ how many times do I have to explain something for them to get it

At the very beginning of the story she had people who tried to keep her away from the empress. Even the empress didn’t want anything to do with her and she made that very clear but Rashta chose to ignore that. (All she had to do was lay low, something she didn’t want to do cause she wanted attention.)

She wasn’t very enthusiastic regarding learning academically nor did she keep up with her studies. (Something the emperor tried aiding in, mostly for his own benefit but had she utilized the help adequately she would have benefited significantly herself.)

Another instance off the top of my head with someone actually helping her was the checks she found for the donations from the empress. She gave her specific instructions on why they were left there and what to do with them. She ignored that and did what she wanted. (If it was a matter of not trusting the old empress then she could have consulted with someone like her husband regarding the matter. Which she didn’t do and her decisions for that wound up back firing big time later in the story.)

You keep saying that everything she did was for her own survival which doesn’t quite fit. Most of her decisions were heavily influenced by her emotions. (Which weren’t all based on survival.) There were plenty of times she did things just because, for pure ego or jealousy rather than survival. As a slave girl who was supposedly forced into becoming the emperor’s mistress, her best course of action to as you say, “survive” in an environment she clearly knows nothing about is to not rock the boat. But that’s mainly what she did throughout the story.

You would think based on her past experiences in her childhood she would have been way more cautious and avoidant of people but she was the complete opposite of that. (It’s not until later that she becomes extremely paranoid which only worsened her horrible decision making.)

You almost almost popping a blood vessel over a discussion on a fictional character is quite sad. At the end of the day it’s a story so there isn’t much to get emotional over. I for one don’t feel anything regarding the characters, at least not to the extent of pure aggravation when someone has a different opinion than mine. All the characters in the story are flawed. I just find that Rashta could have ended up differently had she made wiser choices. (And I’m on complete hypotheticals regarding info from the manhwa and not the authors viewpoints. That’s a completely different discussion.)

And I’ll make this further clear because tone isn’t always present with text. If you were agitated while responding, that’s a very you concern. I was never mad at any point while replying. All I did was respond, now if you took that as me being angry and arguing well I can’t do much about that. I’m not in control of your head or emotions. But yeah, wanted to make it clear that I hold no hard feelings.

You do know that all of her actions were shaped by the environment that she was born and raised in, right?
Here's the thing. From reading all of your comments, it's clear to me how much you underestimate how bad Rastha was treated and how much a person's background affects them not only mentally but morally.
To you, those actions of her were based on greed. But have you ever considered that from the day she was born, greed and selfishness was the only choice to survive?
And yes, by then, she's already escaped the dept of hell that's slavery but do you think a person's brain could adapt that fast? Especially the brain of a girl that was shaped by the years of those said beliefs? In the story, Rastha was a human, was she not? Human aren't robot that can just factory reset their brain and wash away all the trauma, life lessons and experience the moment to move to a different environment.

One more thing.You kept bringing up specific scenes like they were proofs of your claim yet you fail to take a step back and actually look at the bigger picture. You fail to look for the real reason as to why she did those things, what conditioned her to act a certain way.
For instance, you called her an attention seeker for approaching the empress. But have you ever thought to read through the scene once more from Rastha POV? Because if you did, you would have realized that, in the story's setting, the empress was a mother figure to the empire. A woman Rastha and everyone else in the empire idolize and worship. And naturally, to the ignorant and naive Rastha, the empress was like a saint, a kind-hearted idol that she had long dreamt to meet—just like any other people of the nation. That's why she was approaching the empress. It was simply to meet the empress. Anyone from her circumstances would have chosen to do the same thing.

Not just that, you complained about how she wasn't enthusiastic about learning.
Girl...who likes studying? Genuinely. "Had she utilized..." why are you expecting a girl who were born the the dept of poverty to even think of that? In that time period, most commoners barely know how to read—let alone value education—now imagine a slave fresh off the street. Expecting her to learn or even want to learn is like expecting a homeless dude(or anyone, really)to want to go work after he won the lottery.

Now one thing that pissed me off the most was when you said all of her actions were based of her emotions— her jealousy, her ego—as if she chooses to do so on purpose. Like...have you ever thought that it's actually because the girl was terrified out of her mind that her position will get taken or slip away from her hand which then will get her get tossed out of the palace and back to poverty or even worse, Slavery again?
And sure, you might interpret that as her being a jealous, annoying brat. But anyone with even a shred of empathy would see it a traumatized girl trying her best to protect her new-found life, a life that doesn't involve getting r*pe, being starved and ab*sed almost every damn days.
So yes, maybe you're right after all. Most, if not, all of her actions were influenced by her emotions. But unlike your shallow interpretation of her motivation— saying that it was her jealousy, her ego. The emotion that really influenced all of her action was...simply...Fear.

So yes, my points still stand. Rastha was the victim—not only of the circumstances she was in, but also of the disgusting classist ideology the so-called heros of the story, the author, and people like you have.

How shallow can a person's mind be...oml.
Look beyond the surface for once will you?
Nobody is mad because "OH! such in justice! my Rastha have suffered greatly!" instead they were pissed at your comments because of the pure ignorance seeping through every letters of those text. Personally, the thought that caused me such an intense aggravation was "why is this person so ignorant? Fck this is painful to read"
It's the same feeling you get when you try to explain something—in this case, the concept of empathy—to a child who clearly doesn't want to listen.