Road to Empress I has 110 endings. Most of them kill you. A handful let you walk away satisfied. This guide focuses on the endings worth pursuing—the Happy Endings, the Normal Endings that offer narrative closure, and the route-specific conclusions that give each major character their due.
Every ending in the game falls into one of three categories:
Happy Ending (HE): The best possible outcome for that story branch. Wu Yuanzhao survives, achieves her goal, and the narrative resolves positively. These are rare and feel earned.
Normal Ending (NE): A bittersweet or ambiguous conclusion. Wu Yuanzhao lives, but the situation is far from ideal. These are not failures—they are alternative outcomes with their own narrative weight.
Bad Ending (BE): Death, disgrace, or disaster. The vast majority of the 110 endings are BEs. They range from being branded with a hot hairpin in Chapter 1 to elaborate political betrayals in later chapters.
The game marks each ending with its type when you reach it. If you see “BE” on the ending screen, you have hit a dead end. If you see “HE” or “NE,” you have reached a meaningful conclusion.
The most significant and widely discussed Happy Ending in Road to Empress I occurs in Chapter 14 — A Crucible of Life and Death. During the scene titled “Ready to Bail Here?” you are given a choice:
Choosing to leave triggers the HE for this chapter. Wu Yuanzhao walks away from the immediate crisis with her life and agency intact. It is a moment of self-preservation that the game rewards rather than punishes—unusual in a title that normally kills you for trying to escape danger.
If you choose to stay, the follow-up question “Why Stick Around?” branches further. Answering “It is Your Highness” boosts Li Zhi’s affinity by +9 and leads to additional scenes. Answering “It is me” takes you down a different path. Both continue toward Chapter 15, but the Li Zhi response is the one that sets up the strongest position for the remaining chapters.
The ultimate ending of Road to Empress I is reached in Chapter 16, which has six unique openings depending on your Chapter 2 dress selection and the emotion you chose when meeting the Emperor. This means the True Ending is not a single set of choices—it is the culmination of a specific path through the entire game.
Key decision points in Chapter 16:
The True Ending requires you to have maintained a strong relationship with Li Zhi throughout the game, made strategic rather than trusting choices with other characters, and survived the final gauntlet of political manoeuvres.
Li Zhi, the third Emperor of the Sheng Dynasty, is Wu Yuanzhao’s primary romantic and political partner. His best ending requires consistent loyalty choices across multiple chapters:
Li Tai, the Prince of Wei, represents the alternative romantic path. His route requires different choices:
Grand Princess Gaoyang’s storyline is less about romance and more about friendship and redemption. Her best outcomes require:
You do not need to replay the entire game to reach a different ending. The Storyline Map lets you jump to any previously unlocked decision node and pick a different option. Here is the efficient workflow:
This is how most players eventually clear all 110 endings—not by running the game 110 times from scratch, but by systematically flipping choices on the Storyline Map. Start from the endings closest to your current path and work outward.
This is an important mindset shift. In most games, reaching a bad ending feels like failure. In Road to Empress I, Bad Endings are content. They are short vignettes that expand the world, reveal character motivations, and sometimes unlock achievements.
For example:
Treat BEs as collectibles, not failures. The game certainly does.
The sequel, Road to Empress II, expands the ending system dramatically. Where RtE I has 110 endings across 16 chapters, RtE II has over 100 endings distributed across two separate narrative tracks—the main story (returning to the palace) and the side story (fleeing Ganye Temple).
The key structural difference is the dual-track system. The prologue presents a single “Make or Break Choice” that splits the entire game. Choosing to return to the palace locks you into the main story with its own set of endings. Choosing to leave opens the side story with a completely different set. The two tracks do not interact—you can play one to completion, then use the Storyline Map to jump back to the prologue and start the other.
Additionally, RtE II introduces an ending numbering system. Each ending is labelled with a number and flavour text. The character voice notes after each ending are more explicit about pointing you toward the choice that caused the outcome, making it easier to backtrack and flip decisions.
Do not chase the Happy Ending on your first run. Let the story kill you, surprise you, and take you wherever your instincts lead. Your first natural ending will be messy and probably tragic—and that is the authentic Road to Empress experience. Save the systematic HE hunting for your second pass through the Storyline Map, when you understand the court’s rules and can navigate them with intention.
The best endings in this game are not the ones where everything goes right. They are the ones you earned by learning from every time everything went wrong.