What happens to Sovieshu in The Remarried Empress? He keeps the throne and loses everything else

Disney+ and Hulu premiere The Remarried Empress on November 4 with four episodes, then release two every Wednesday through the finale on November 25. Ju Ji-hoon plays Emperor Sovieshu opposite Shin Min-a as Empress Navier, with Lee Jong-suk as Heinrey and Lee Se-young as Rashta. Director Cho Su-won is adapting a story millions of readers already know the end of: Alphatart's web novel ran on Naver from 2018 to 2020, and the webtoon drawn by Sumpul began in 2019.

Ten episodes is not a lot of room for the novel's eight volumes, so the drama may cut corners. The book, though, is very clear about where Sovieshu ends up. Spoilers for the novel from here.

The divorce he thought was temporary

Sovieshu has a secret he's kept since childhood. As children, he and Navier ate cookies his mother had laced with an abortion drug meant for his father's favorite concubine, and he grew up believing it left Navier unable to have children. He never told her.

So when his concubine Rashta gets pregnant, he builds a plan around it. He'll divorce Navier, make Rashta empress long enough for her child to be born legitimate, divorce Rashta and remarry Navier. Navier agrees to the divorce on one condition: that she be allowed to marry Heinrey, the prince of the Western Kingdom, which she requests moments after it's granted.

Sovieshu's plan had exactly one weak point. It needed Navier to wait for him.

Everything he loses

The rest of the novel takes things away from Sovieshu one at a time:

• Navier: She marries Heinrey and has a daughter, Lari. Sovieshu keeps an old promise anyway and sends her a jewel called the Fairy's Tear after the birth.
• Rashta: A paternity test says her daughter Glorym isn't his, and their marriage collapses. Rashta ends up on trial and dies, and Sovieshu later admits his part in how she was corrupted at court.
• Glorym: The test was rigged by Duke Ergi, who held a childhood grudge against him. By the time Sovieshu learns that, Glorym has been smuggled out of the palace and he believes she died in a bandit attack.
• His mind: When Navier falls into a coma after an attack in the West, Sovieshu starts hallucinating, falls from a window and slips into a coma of his own. He wakes believing he's still the crown prince and asks Navier to take him as her secret lover.

Glorym turns out to be alive. Fourteen years later, she meets Sovieshu as an adult, accepts him as her father and turns down his throne because she wants to be a knight. They agree to keep their distance so her life stays her own.

The throne he keeps

Sovieshu refuses to take a third wife, which leaves the Eastern Empire without an heir of his blood who wants it. He names Lari, Navier and Heinrey's daughter, as his successor. Because he's no longer stable enough to rule, Duke Trovi acts as the empire's de facto ruler in the meantime.

Navier writes him a letter. She hopes he rules well. She can't wish him a happy life.

Sovieshu keeps the crown. The empire goes to the daughter of the man his ex-wife married instead of waiting for him.

The second chance

Alphatart did eventually give him a way out, in a side story called "Sovieshu's Regression." An old Sovieshu spends three or four hours a day talking to Navier's portrait. A pocket watch left to him by the dean of the magic academy sends him back to the days before the divorce, and this time he stops it.

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He tells Rashta the truth, moves her to a guarded mansion out of her old enslaver's reach and tells Navier he loves her. She thinks he's lost his mind, until she finds him crying in his sleep and begging her not to leave. Ten years later in that timeline, they're happily married.

The drama has ten episodes to get Sovieshu from the throne room to the window. Whether it ever reaches the pocket watch is up to Disney+, but the main story only gives him a crown, and it took magic to give him anything else.

Previously we wrote: Who does Hina end up with in Ao no Hako? She's already turned down the one boy who asked