The solution to their issue is so easy

I think Rishar would get assassinated by mother if she knew they were planning too get married ngl

Maybe, but he knows all this dirt about her. He's been in the room while she's been plotting all of these illegal plots. She's abused him, and I'm assuming abusing royals is illegal. He just needs to come out as an Omega and then have her executed on his testimony.

That's just not a very good story. It's not very dramatic. It's easy and ties up all the loose ends nicely. This is why I'm not a writer, lol.

I do like all the suspense and drama that's being created by this author. They're doing a great job.

I don’t think you understand what the stakes are in this story.

The central conflict is the House of Herace and their power.

Rishar and Etienne CAN’T marry due to them. The marriage has to be acknowledged by the Emperor and nobility to avoid any insurrections.

Rishar doesn’t want to become Emperor and had planned his life to be the Sword of the Empire to Etienne.

Etienne doesn’t really care for the throne but he has to aspire to it because of his mother Leona and her family, the House of Herace. They will not be satisfied with Etienne becoming Empress because the Empress doesn’t have absolute power. Leona is the current Empress, remember. The only way is to get that power is to have Etienne as Emperor and they have to hide Etienne’s subgender to get there.

And say if they did get married, Leona and the House of Herace would not hesitate to kill Rishar as soon as they find out. You are forgetting that the House of Herace has been slowly killing off the Emperor’s relatives to make sure Etienne inherits the throne. The only reason Rishar is alive because he is under the direct protection of the Emperor and his loyalists, the Imperalists. And from the story is telling you, most of the nobility are loyal to Leona. And I don’t doubt that they would kill Etienne as well if his subgender is revealed and just take the Throne outright.

You undid everything you just said when you pointed out "The only reason Rishar is alive because he is under the direct protection of the Emperor and his loyalists, the Imperalists."

Yup... And if you add in him being married to the actual Prince, who they could get pregnant almost immediately, a lot more people are going to support him.

I didn't say this in my first comment, but it seems like it would be really easy for our Prince to just kill his mother. The only reason he's not killing her is because this is a Korean story and Confucianism would be so wildly against killing your mother that it would make him an irredeemable character and the eyes of the Korean audience. In an actual Western setting, which this is supposed to be, he would have just poisoned her already lol.

He would have gotten away with it too because no one would deeply investigate a known poisoner being poisoned, plus the emperor would not have investigated it very deeply. It's already been shown that her family doesn't like her so would be very easy for the prince to negotiate with her family after she was dead.

But as I said in my other comments, this is why I'm not a writer. This whole story could be wrapped up neatly in a bow but it would be very boring lol. I'm not actually criticizing the writer, I just wanted to yell at a cloud about how unrealistic this is because the solution is so easy if you remove all the self-imposed restraints the author has put on themselves.