Tentative suggestions possibly motivated by expendability!

Stupid evil previous government. Is there a way to present the offer without scaring them too badly -

If she shows up illusioned to look like a birdperson they don't notice the flaws in the illusion for a few minutes and that's long enough to get recommendations, and now she doesn't have to actually do that to go find the recommended birdpersons.

Cool! Ministerial positions are offered.

Most of these birdpeople accept sooner or later but some of them take a lot of talking-into-it.

She will be so earnest and persuasive and demonstrative with the extraworldly powers and enthusiastic about a sovereign birdperson nation if that's still what they feel like they need to do after the transition - and being minister will position them well to pull that off, if they decide to - and they came so highly recommended, the empire will be better off with their guidance -

And eventually Isabella has birdperson advisers who recommend her reading material and start learning to take over the jobs of the middling-to-un-cooperative previous leadership.

This is so much fun - can she import more sisters, Morya will be able to make more sense of this tax code than she can -

More sisters are welcome if they want to come!

She would be delighted to come -

- this is actually a pretty clever way to run your segregated interplanetary society, but about half of it can be tossed out now - here's who will lose out if Isabella does that, and here's why she should probably do it anyway -

"I have the best family."

"They're pretty great!"

"If I go check if anything is on fire again, do I notice anything -"

"...yep -" bounce, loyal birdperson servants trying to smuggle the ex-Empress out of the palace.

"...tempted to go have a talk with them, what if I do that -"

- they make a run for it as soon as they see her.

"...what if I find them before they get to the Empress -"

"They play dumb."

"Do they try it anyway?"

"...not inside an hour but you think they want to."

"Have instructions, Empress?"

"I wanna know why they're doing it -" What happens if she sends Maitimë to find out?

Maitimë reports back that they like her, she was decent to them, and they're worried about how the usurpers will treat her.

"...Could come up with some public way to hold her and make it obvious we're nicer to prisoners than she was."