We need to talk about Rashta

The Remarried Empress is probably one of the most well known romance fantasy comics on Webtoon with 4.4 million subscribers at the time of this writing. The comic’s basic plot is as follows, Empress Navier’s husband brings home a mistress name Rashta and Navier’s marriage rapidly falls apart but she is still able to achieve her ‘girlhood dream’ of being an Empress by marrying the Emperor of a neighboring kingdom immediately after the divorce is finalized. Much of the comic concerns itself with the events leading up to the divorce, and then the fallout after Navier remarries.

It’s a rather long comic, currently with more than 200 episodes translated into English, and it is adapted from a Korean web novel of the same name that apparently is also incredibly popular. 

What interests me most about this comic though is it’s treatment of the series primary antagonist, Rashta and how she is contrasted with Navier. This contrast begins immediately and serves to set Rashta up as the sort of character that the audience is meant to view as a crazed man-stealing buffoon who can never live up to Navier who is painted as a flawless paragon that all women should aspire to be. As a way to make the fandom demonize Rashta and root for Navier it works incredibly well, so much so that a common nickname for Rashta is ‘Trashta’. I’d argue though that much of what is used to illustrate Rashta as being an antagonist finds its routes in classism before just veering into straight up sexism.

In The Remarried Empress, Navier exists at the top of the social hierarchy. She was born into a noble family, and from an incredibly early age was groomed to be a refined and intelligent woman who would be worthy of becoming her kingdom’s empress. By contrast, Rashta was sold into slavery by her own father which placed her at the bottom of the kingdom's social hierarchy and prevented her from so much as learning how to read. During her time as a slave Rashta ‘fell in love’ with one of her owners, which while seemingly portrayed as a genuine romance the power imbalance between slave and master harkens to mind the era in the American south were female slaves were often forced to submit to their master’s sexual advances one way or another.

Rashta subsequently becomes pregnant with her first child, and is subsequently blamed by her master’s family for ‘seducing’ their son. Shortly after giving birth to this child Rashta is told that he is dead, and quickly becomes pregnant with her second child. Fearing for this child’s life and unable to count on the master she’s been sleeping with for protection, Rashta runs away from her life of slavery only to be quickly stumbled upon by Navier’s husband, the nation’s emperor. The emperor is immediately attracted to Rashta and takes her home to be his new mistress, once again trapping Rashta in a relationship with an incredibly skewed power dynamic and not much in the way of consent.

The rest of the series has Rashta constantly compared to Navier and reinforces the idea that no matter what Rashta does she’ll never be as good as Navier. This, coupled with threats of blackmail from her former owners, her pregnancy with another man’s child, and a fear of falling out of the Emperor’s favor cause Rashta to preform actions that are undeniably heinous such as arranging executions and shifting blame off of herself and onto others. 

While Rashta is undeniably a villain, I would argue that at her core everything Rashta does hails from a place of fear and insecurity. She knows that her opulent life is wholly dependent on one man continuing to desire her sexually, and also increasingly becomes aware that no matter what she does the emperor’s true affections will always belong to Navier. A woman who Rashta can never hope to compete with, as Navier was literally given every opportunity that Rashta never had.

For all that she is praised as a kind and benevolent ruler, Navier never seems to recognize the disparity between her and Rashta’ s positions in court. Thus Navier and her followers only seem to regard Rashta as a man stealing whore, and often seem to go out of their way to undermine her. Notably when Navier’s own brother attempts to slip Rashta an ‘abortive drug’ in an attempt to have her miscarry and lose her chance to give birth to ‘the emperor’s heir’.

Classism, sexism, and victim blaming all seem to be at the heart of how Rashta’s character develops in the narrative. Her inability to cope with these societal pressures and insdiquacues is arguably why she begins to behave in increasingly sadistic and manic manner which ultimately cultivate in her imprisonment and subsequent suicide. In a way, it is only in death that Rashta finally manages to escape a society that has both completely failed her and transformed her into one of the most reviled villains in Korean webcomics.

What do you think about Rashta? Why do you think she acts the way she does in The Remarried Empress? Let me know in the comments!