I love that you bring up that consorts are not necessarily a mistress or lover. One thing I want to say about that though is that while it seems to be expected for the emperor to take in concubines for political reasons such as marriage based alliances, he's not supposed to ignore the empress when he does take in a concubine. He basically forced all the work onto the fl without giving her any of the political influence she should have as the empress -- basically treating her like a vassal instead of as a partner. By ignoring her he failed to uphold the basic agreement between an emperor and empress and thus made it harder for her to do all of the work she had to do as empress. By ignoring her he also removed her ability to deal with the concubine that he brought in. I'm sure he would know to some extent how a woman scorned by the emperor would be treated due to his mother, though I doubt he would have known it would be as bad as it was for her since she is the empress and his mother was a concubine. I think his treatment of her should not only be considered failing as a husband but also failing as a monarch.
Also I totally agree with you on the fact that his interest in the fl is 100% in character for him and he didn't do a sudden 180, but I also think he is gradually changing as a result of his interactions (getting rejected) by the fl. He was really selfish at the start but as he's grown to like her he's been slowly considering her feelings more (though not to the point that he would let her leave) at a speed that seems pretty realistic in proportion to the speed his feelings are growing. He's also starting to feel worse and worse about how he treated her in the past and is feeling regret about taking the saintess in as a concubine.
Everything you said is so true I wish I would've considered this at the time of writing it, while he may not have done a complete and sudden change, he's still changing because he's facing different circumstances he's never experienced
I keep thinking back to when he told her "maybe one day I'll feel remorse" and I can't wait until he realizes his actual feelings and is able to feel that I'm gonna jump with joy
CW: many words! Sorry!! <3
*I suggest you read this if you think this is the typical "fl stays with cheating ml" type of story*
All these ppl talkin about how he has a "sudden interest" or how he's "keeping his side chick with him while pursuing the fl", don't understand the characters or the type of world they're living in. First off, aisha or wtv her name is, she's not his lover currently. She was invited to be a consort because in the original story, she's a "saintess" sent from another world and the emperor found her interesting. Additionally, a consort isn't always a lover or mistress, it's the companion or spouse of a monarch. In this story, its common for the reigning monarch to invite consorts so that they can help the empress with her duties. He never laid a hand on aisha because in that point in the story, he hadn't developed anything for her besides curiosity. Secondly, the emperor was never portrayed as a good or redeeming person, he killed his family to rise to the thrown and only invited aisha to live with him because he saw how selfish and fake she was and thought she'd be fun to have around. This isn't one of those stories where the ml does a complete 180 randomly just for the lolsies, he's still the same person he was in the original, it's the FL's actions that attract him to her. His interest in her may seem sudden but the romantic interest wasn't. At first he was intrigued by her sudden change in personality, going from desperate and timid to firm and demanding to leave him, but ofc he couldn't let her go because her duties as empress would be left empty. Anyway he does eventually fall in love with her, like how he was supposed to with aisha, it just so happens that aisha bored him after he found someone he enjoyed having around more. He's still not a good buy but the point was never for him to change. Btw everything ive said is in the story so im not just makin stuff up! Hope this helped!!