after the wedding lucio actually goes to lizzy at night. lizzy says she wants 2 things in exchange for not going after rose: 1. the next emperor will be her son 2. rose must not get pregnant
during a hunting excursion rose sends assassin's to kill lizzy but lucio takes a poisoned arrow to protect lizzy. lizzy has to run away with lucio and she manages to save him with medicine she packed with her horse after her horse returns to her.
rose makes a duke adopt her so she has a higher status and can marry lucio for reals.
after her adoption, rose tries to remove lizzy as empress by revealing that lizzy was only chosen bc they found out she was infertile during the health check. it turns out lizzy actually isn't infertile, and it was just the emperor's doing. (i have no idea why...)
rose almost starts a war with a neighboring country bc she schemed to kill their emperor and lucio is done with her sh*t. she's thrown into jail.
it turns out that lucio went through a lot of sh*t so he was easily manipulated by rose and relied on her. his mother is actually the former empress' servant but the former empress' was infertile so she adopted lucio and even forced him to kill his own biological mother.
lucio falls for lizzy first! (i hope there's a lot of groveling) apparently he becomes sweet later on. lizzy is exhausted after she gets revenge and wants to leave the palace, but lucio convinces lizzy to stay with him and they have three kids.
neil finds love too.