So the setting is that the FL's father is a extremely powerful duke who basically controls the country and has deprived the Emperor ML of power and forced both the MCs to get married so that their child aka his grandson will become the emperor and the duke can get more power.

Now I will explain the holes in this setting below:-

• • Acc. to what I understand the duke holds a lot of power, so much so that if he so wishes he can overthrow the royal family. And it wouldn't really be hard in a world that follows the settings of Medieval Europe, i.e., the nobles hold a lot of power and there is even a noble council that works on governing the country with the emperor. The duke here has already taken over governing the country from the emperor and the emperor lacks supporters in the council and even in his own palace (I remember an aide telling the ML to be careful of the duke in his own study). So all the duke has to do is kill the emperor (who it seems is an only child) and the throne will lack an legitimate heir and the duke, with the help of his supporters can take the throne and become the emperor or place a obedient puppet on the throne.

• • So this brings us to the question why the duke would rather marry a daughter to a powerless emperor and create an alliance that gets him virtually no benefit??? this is hole no. 1

• • Ok, now its clear that ML can't compare to the duke at all, but for some reason the duke marries his daughter to him as form of marriage alliance, and instead of making the best of it to form his own forces and supporters, what does the ML do?
    Insults, humiliates and isolates her, in public many times, aka tries to get pleasure of stepping on duke's face through her. This is something that would effectively push most of the neutral and royalist nobles to the duke's side, as who would want to help a emperor that tramples upon nobles' pride and dignity. (Its seen that most nobles are on the FL's side and quite look down on the ML)

• • As if that wasn't enough, we see that in a flashback, the duke's threatening ML that he wanted his life but the ML couldn't do anything to him; it once again speaks volumes of the duke's power and ML's lack thereof; however the ML keeps humiliating the duke in front of the public as if he wants to die early and duke does nothing about it. This is hole no. 2.

• • Adding another block to this shitty building, is when he takes a mistress and proclaims her as a queen IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE NOBILITY.
    Its as if he's worried that he will have too many supporters among nobles (which he doesn't btw) and wants to reduce their nos. drastically.

• • And then there's the mistress, a daughter of a Marquis, a real lady. Who, I really can't see getting any benefit from joining this fiasco. I mean the setting of the world is such that she really won't get any benefits and it may even be harmful instead.

• • So her father's a marquis, who obviously isn't as powerful as the FL's father, so why isn't she worried about the duke's retaliation on her family, it isn't as if the ML can protect them. And as long as the duke's around she and her child (if she has one) will probably not survive or live in dire states as the emperor doesn't have the power to depose the most powerful dukes daughter, they won't have a legitimate status either. Next, we also see that the status of illegitimate children are not good and mistress are despised, so after the contract is over and done with, how will she continue to mingle with the nobility, and who will dare to marry someone who is considered the emperor's woman??? Not to mention that the ML is a powerless emperor who can't bring any benefit to her or her family. This is hole no. 3

• • Another absurd thing is when the ML asks the mistress to spy on FL, and I was thinking that why the hell would FL allow a mistress to get close to her, it would have been better to buy out a close maid of FL instead.

A abusive ML who immediately resorts to suicide when he learns the truth from a third party about FL origins. Makes no effort to reach out after dealing FL years of abuse because he's a piece of sh*t who doesnt have guts to deal with FL father so he takes it out on her instead. as*hole drowns in self pity saying that he doesnt deserve to live for what he has done to her instead of making amends.

Also, I get that you hate FL's father, but holy sh*t how dumb must you be to constantly antagonise someone who is much stronger than you in every way possible just because.

How dumb must the palace be to not even do a background check on the QUEEN OF THE COUNTRY BEFORE LETTING HER INTO THE PALACE?! How do you not even know a shred of info of your prospective queen and still be ok with marrying her, political reasons or not?

Palace maids and doctor who "symphatise" with her but do jack sh*t to help FL out

Queen who doesnt even GAF about what's happening to FL even though there is blantant abuse happening in front of her

Aide who obviously should be able to invedtigate everything thats going on but not GAF until the last book

So he never slept with the FL and than later brought another woman claiming she's his possession and also wanting to make her empress. He does this because him and the FL been married for a year, but haven't had a child (mind you this happened on the first year anniversary and he never slept with her). He later leaves to sleep with the woman and the FL is still indifferent.

the contractual lover, the Queen, ML brought in had a sensible and compassionate soul and didn't walk the villainess path.

we gotta threaten her with suicide man, ofc how else should he be redeemed *eye roll*

1. When both FL and ML were indifferent with each others.

2. When both FL and ML slowly opened up.

3. When a tragedy happened; a flood of emotion, resentment and suicide.

It's revealed on chapter 80 to 90

chapter 60+

The woman has bet her 'world' by trusting him, depend on his promise in the past and present while still holding her state that was on verge of insanity, but was repaid by those words.

If I were her, I'd hate him for all my life, i'd curse, i'd do everything I could do to remove the pain he cause, even by dying, i'd do! Because the world I lost is none other than my mother!

Darn, im f*cked up. When the man learns the truth, he lost all his reason to live. While in a state of half crazy coz before always had nightmares of 'her' that he believed died because of him, was truly wanted to die by his hands in the present. She, who he was desperate on looking for, was actually close to him for all the time.

I cried for this man later. I really want to hug him, because he had suffered enough.

And he was too preoccupied with his hatred that he couldn't even discern the true character of his own wife, even missed the very obvious signs of the person he yearned for. This is enough to consider him a failure as a ruler. And in MCs defense, there was nothing much she could do anyways. She was heavily monitored, abused, bound by a spell and couldn't betray her supposed dad in a lifetime bcoz of that spell

The emperor hate and despise the empress as you can see in the description but what more blood boiling is that he the emperor himself brought back a f*cking woman!? And declared she will be the empress and he will make a f*cking successor with her THE f*ck IM ANGRY and of course the bastard emperor is the ML 😤 the empress drank the poison meant for the mistress (the one who the emperor spent the night with or idk tldr) the emperor knows that and make her drank the antidote and then BAM 💥 the emperor didn't know the reason why he always come to the empress room 3 day straight and try to told him a good reason and my f*cking god the FL is also f*cked she's his childhood friend and want him to favor her

the father is the villain so he's sh*t I know the ML need to be wary of her or smth Idk the duke want his grandchild to be a emperor or smth and in order to do that he the duke took the illegitimate child (our fl) and magic her to look like him so can't blame the ML too much

Though I'm waiting on what would happen when he would realize our baby Yve is that girl, right? I'm just hoping that the ML would suffer because Yve is going through too much pain.

I do not think the mother should have died so tragically, like I don't blame the ML for it, I can see why he didn't trust the FL and I feel the way the story describes it, it was almost inevitable for it to happen no matter who our FL betted on having said that the way the entire thing happens it tightly couples the emperor's mistrust and her mother's death narratively so after this point I stopped anticipating their union cause I feel that is way too strong of a correlation for our FL to ever forget or sidestep. Second while I get why the ML does not trust our FL what I would have liked was for him to be the one who allows her to escape with Asher as his final act of keeping his promise, like I don't think how it is done was bad or anything but it would have made me root for them cause even though he has ample reason to mistrust her and that could have resulted him in locking her up but that final act being one of trust instead of hurt would have kept me on the side of romance for I like the angsty moment when he gave the final blow but at the same time the author had done a great job of building the angst that I feel that big moment could have been switched up and instead we explore our ml's mindset of whether he made the right call or not.