Hate Lee Se-young's Rashta in The Remarried Empress? Here's how the webtoon writes her death

The Remarried Empress premiered on Disney+ (Hulu in the US) on November 4, 2026, with four episodes, and adds two every Wednesday until the November 25 finale. It's based on Alphatart's web novel and the Naver webtoon adapted from it, which has nearly three billion views. Shin Min-a plays Empress Navier, Ju Ji-hoon is Emperor Sovieshu, and Lee Jong-suk is Heinrey, crown prince of the Western Kingdom. Lee Se-young plays Rashta, a runaway slave Sovieshu rescues from a trap on a hunt. She moves into the palace and asks Navier if she can call her "older sister."

If that line made you want to throw the remote, Lee Se-young will take it as a compliment.

"I hope viewers respond, 'I want to kill her, but I feel sorry and I understand,'" Lee told Sports Kyunghyang.

She played Rashta as "childlike" and as "someone who desires intensely in order to survive." Her plan for the character was simple: "Because she needed to have purity, I tried to reveal 'pure evil.'"

The webtoon is a lot less interested in understanding her.

How Rashta gets the crown

Rashta gets pregnant, and Sovieshu divorces Navier so he can make Rashta empress. He plans to bring Navier back once things settle. Instead, she accepts the divorce and, in the same breath, asks for approval to remarry. The groom is Heinrey. Navier leaves for the Western Kingdom, and Rashta gets the throne.

She also gets the bills that come with it.

What she does with the throne

Rashta spends like someone who has never had money, because she hasn't. She borrows from Duke Ergy, who is quietly working against the Eastern Empire. When she can't pay him back, she signs a key port over to him, which turns into a diplomatic scandal.

Her charity work doesn't help. The donations she makes as empress turn out to be paid with a check registered to Navier, and the press gets the story.

Every scandal so far is survivable. The next one isn't.

The paternity test

Rashta's daughter, Glorym, is the reason Sovieshu threw away his marriage: she's supposed to be his heir. A paternity test at the temple shows she isn't his. Her father is Alan, Rashta's former lover.

With the heir gone, nothing protects Rashta anymore. She's charged with treason and with embezzling from the empire's treasury. Her marriage to Sovieshu is annulled, her title is stripped, and she's sentenced to spend the rest of her life locked in a tower.

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How Rashta dies

The life sentence lasts three days.

Someone leaves a pill at the door of her cell, and Rashta takes it. The webtoon never says who left it. Fans' favorite suspect is Artina, but the story leaves that door open.

Before she dies, Rashta goes back over her choices, and her last regret is about the woman she spent the story replacing: she wishes Navier had accepted her. She never sees her children again.

Sovieshu takes her death badly, and his own ending isn't much better. He's left alone, his reputation in ruins, and likely infertile himself. Glorym doesn't stay with him either: she's taken by bandits, who make it look as if she died, and one of them raises her.

That leaves Sovieshu without an heir, the exact problem he divorced Navier to solve. He names his successor anyway: Navier's daughter, a princess of the Western Kingdom.

Previously we wrote: Royal Nemesis is the latest K-drama ruined by the chaebol villain trope