This is not directed at you specifically it's just some of ur points made me want to add my own
Also this contains spoilers
My take on it is punish the guilty not the innocent. Like Rose is a victim but she hurt too many innocent people for me to hope she would get a happy ending. Like in the first timeline she killed the fl's entire family. In the second one she tried to ruin political relationships and sent assassins after the queen. But, all of that is rather unnecessary bc she already had the emperors love and a high ranking position. The emperor was literally in the palm of her hand and would've done anything for her. Also, in both timeline's the queens were rather harmless. The fl's sister just being innocent. And the fl would only retaliate if Rose provoked her first.
It would've been cooler and smarter on her part if she teamed up with the queen to take down the people who wronged her. Bc uk girl power and all
I totally agree that it was unnecessary in both timelines. But in the second one fl is smarter and is high alert, because she know what's up. In the second TL after the banquet things start to change, rosemund cant only rely on the emperor's love and trust, that would be stupid, she needs stable and unshakable ground to stand. Anything could happen and make the emperor lose his love for her. She's a gaslighter, she needs to make sure that she is the only one the emperor can trust, and that used to be the case, until the banquet. After the banquet, the comment that the other king/emeperor(? ) made that was in the lines of "she's a reliable empress, dont be stupid and lose her" (i dont remember that well), the emperor started seeing the fl with a new perspective *maybe it isn't that bad that she is the empress*. The dome rosemund built around the emperor was starting to be break, it was a race agaisnt the clock before the dome broke entirely. But at the end it did, it has arleady fallen apart.
I used to hate rose sooooo much, but after reading spoilers, i would had probably done the same shit. Trauma can dehumanize people. If i was her i would had stepped on anyone i had to in order to get revenge or at least to be safe aka gettig the highest satus i could possibly obtain. She's such an evil bitch, but that just goes to show that she is human and a well written chraracter at that. And i can't deny that if the story was told in her POV, i would have had agreed with most of her desions(exept killing the fl's sister, she wasn't a treath at all). Plus she is such a smart and cold-blooded. She's not that different from the fl, they both have reasons to fight until the other one is dead. I have love-hate vibe toward her. Would 100% read a version in her POV. Love this story.(づ￣ ³￣)づ