i know it's dumb but there are two empress, right?

i think empress liza (the one with red hair) is the empress dowager (basically the emperor's mother) and empress ilya is the emperor's wife

You're probably right

But how?

from the other manhwas i've read, the empress dowager is just a title, they dont have as much power as a current empress (but they can have more influence). i think they explained it earlier in this manhwa, the empress dowager looks so young cuz she was a foreign princess taken as hostage and married the old emperor (who's dead now)

true! it was mentioned earlier in the manhwa that empress liza was young when she married the now-deceased former emperor (if i remember correctly, there was a text bubble that said something about how she was made into "a mother of a son older than her", meaning the current emperor is her son only by marriage).

empress dowager titles are usually given to the mother of the reigning emperor, and that's what empress liza is. empress ilya, on the other hand, is the wife of the current emperor, hence she has the title of 'empress' as well.

ooooh now that you mentioned it, i might have read something about that. so, is Iris a solia for the empress dowager?

yes, essentially! i’m not sure what exactly is the purpose of a solia (since empress ilya doesn’t have one—either that or her solia wasn’t mentioned), but i think it’s to help the empress dowager sometimes when it comes to decision-making stuff.