Well, they came yesterday, and I gotta give them a thumbs down. It all comes down to quality control, or lack thereof. Three of 9 clips came bent. The plating on the bottom edge of the nib section, just above the threads, was rough on all. This ranged from barely noticeable, to obvious. Two of three fountain nibs were incompletely plated.
The design of the pen is actually quite nice. The detailing is shallower than on the emperor, but is nice and clean. I have the junior Emperor, and the Empress is full sized. It's just a bit larger than the Roman Harvest / Cambridge.
The bottom tube is very small, and will leave a lot of meat on the pen. I would normally love this, but the cap will have very little material left when finished. This may cause issues with matching the color of the cap and body when reverse painting acrylics.
One other thing that caught my eye was the bottom section of the cap being made of plastic. I'm not talking about the threaded insert, but the visible piece it's pressed into.
Considering that the Emperor cost about $60 now, this could have been an inexpensive alternative if not for the quality control problems.