Responses
You’re right and the angle at which she’s sitting is strange. The side eye that Ines gives her implies she’s sitting at the side too. As the host, I at least thought she would be sitting at the head of the group.
In any case, yes, she’s supposed to be there all along according to the novel. It’s just that she was supposed to be chatting with someone else. Carcel and Ines’s moms were also sitting by a window in the novel. So they were some distance from Ines.
Hmmm when the empress come and join the gathering? In the early panel the author show 8 people, and suddenly in the corner there is the empress already sitting down?