• Author: Alphatart
• Illustrator: Sumpul
• Series: The Remarried Empress
• Episodes: 1 – 85
• Genre: Fantasy/Romance
• No. of pages: 400
• Dates read: 20.01.21 – 21.11.21
• Star Rating: 4 stars

Plot: Navier Trovi was an Empress perfect in every way — intelligent, courageous, and socially adept. She was kind to her subjects and devoted to her husband. Navier was perfectly content to live the rest of her days as the wise Empress of the Eastern Empire. That is, until her husband brought home a mistress and demanded a divorce. “I accept this divorce… And I request an approval of my remarriage.” In a shocking twist, Navier remarries a King and retains her title and childhood dream as a Queen instead. But just how did everything unfold?

So, at the beginning of the year I created a WebToon account as I had heard so many great things about the site. I read some great comics like Lore Olympus for example and another great one was this one right here!

First of all, I want to highlight the art style. I really liked this art style especially when it came to the scenes with a lot of landscape or scenes with elaborate outfits. All the dresses that Navier wears are designed so beautifully. The use of colour in this comic is amazing, the colour pop with every panel. That being said, sometimes, especially with the male characters, the designs of the human characters either looked great or just didn’t work for me. With the character King Heinrey, for example, his design just seemed super unrealistic which sounds silly to say as its a comic. But there was just something where the designs felt off, it’s like the proportions were weird and didn’t match up. He would have massive shoulders and then a tiny head. And this tended to happen more with the male characters.

The plot itself is the highlight of the comic. The very first episode has the scene in the church where Navier’s husband Sovieshu announces he wants a divorce which Navier accepts alongside announcing her request for marriage to King Heinrey of the Western Kingdom. So that leaves the rest of the season showing what happened to lead to that exact moment and I really enjoyed this element to the story. I liked knowing how it ends but slowly uncovering the truth to the events. And boy is it juicy!

There are some really cracking characters in this series but I want to highlight two in particular. Navier is just wholeheartedly someone you want to root for. In this series you see her go through so much from all sides, accusations, bullying, disrespect. The whole lot! And she handles everything with her head held high. She doesn’t lower herself and thinks of nothing but her subjects. She is easily a character you can get behind which is literally the whole point of the comic you’re supposed to support her and want to see her succeed and I felt that the author did a great job. There were times though, where I wanted to grab her and say “Say something girl! Stand your ground!” but she’s a better person than me.

The other woman I want to highlight is Rashta, the mistress. She is originally a slave who gets the favour of the Emperor and she starts a relationship with him. What I think is interesting about this character is you can understand where she is coming from and that makes her a more nuanced character. She comes from a poor and scary background who wouldn’t take the chance to live as royalty and give yourself a better life. And since you can appreciate that it makes it harder for you to outright hate her because we would all do the same in her position. I think that makes for such an interesting character. The one downside is that the author infantilises her a bit which can get quite annoying. She’s written more child-like than just your bulk standard naive girl which I found to be irritating. I have yet to decide if that’s a specific choice by the author in terms of her character and motivations or just a ploy to show she is not as a great as Navier who is more mature and older.

The romance in this novel is quite interesting. We have this really complicated relationship between Navier and Sovieshu who, we find out, actually grew up together and were betrothed very early on and it actually seemed to be a solid match for some time before the events of the novel. The feelings displayed in this comic between this couple are not straight-forward and are really interesting to explore especially Sovieshu’s own personal motivations. He has you screaming, “What is it you actually want?”. But matching that with this budding relationship between Navier and King Heinrey it’s quite intriguing to read as it’s so different but also complicated in their own right. I just love how the author is not giving us these smooth sailing romances and all the feelings are tangled up in one big mess!

Overall, the story has an incredible plot with interesting characters, dynamic women and the most complicated romance storyline ever. I love it!

FYI: In googling the names of these characters I spoiled myself majorly on some pretty big plot events. Apparently this comic gets updated regularly in Korean and people translate it to English and I did not know and I spoiled it for myself. Devastated! hahaha