Historical

My husband brought home a young woman.

I waited for her to bow and pay her respects, but she started shouting that “all people are born equal.”

I suggested she become his concubine, and she clung to my husband, demanding “one man, one woman, for one lifetime.”

My husband told me to be more accommodating toward her.

I was silent for a long while.

Then I kicked him straight into the sewage ditch.

“You’re the one who’s born equal to dogs. The two of you can go be a pair of dogs for life!”

I married a pig butcher in my young mistress’s place. On our wedding night, I said, “From now on, you slaughter the pigs and I’ll sell the meat. As husband and wife, we’ll work together and make a good life for ourselves. When we have children, we’ll send them to school and do our best to free them from the fate of becoming butchers.”

Then my rather handsome husband pressed a hand to his forehead and laughed.

My younger sister stole the man I was supposed to marry, and the empress’s public reprimand seemed to destroy what remained of my future.

Then my sworn rival arrived to laugh at me—and I heard the thoughts behind his smug smile.

She could have spared herself all this trouble by marrying me.

So I asked him, in front of everyone, if he would.

The next instant, his face turned scarlet.

My mother was the discarded wife of a marquis, and everyone was waiting to laugh at her.

Yet she refused to give them the satisfaction.

She neither made my father regret casting her out nor won the heart of some handsome man.

She left the capital in disgrace, looking like a homeless cur.

Years later, I was betrothed to the son of an earl’s household.

Noble though his birth was, his endless visits to brothels had left him riddled with disease.

On my wedding day, I sat in the bridal sedan, about to take my own life.

Then horses reared and people shouted outside, throwing the procession into chaos.

The marquis’s discarded wife had returned—to steal the bride.

After ten years by my side, my husband brought home a beauty and announced he would make her empress.

He said, “You have no son, but I need a crown prince.”

“What man under heaven doesn’t have three wives and four concubines?”

“When did you become so jealous, so incapable of tolerating others? You’ve changed. You’ve become hideous.”

That very night, I took my Young General with me and charged out through the city gates without looking back.

After I left, he said with red-rimmed eyes, “Ning Huan, come back.”

Of course I would come back.

Clad in the imperial yellow robes, I led three hundred thousand troops back to the capital, my loyal Young General standing at my side.

“Men, drag the Deposed Emperor and that beauty out and behead them. Hang their heads from the city walls. Let them go to hell and reflect on their disloyalty and lack of filial piety.”

I was once my young mistress’s senior maid.

Simply because the heir cast one extra glance my way, she gave me away and I became his bedchamber maid.

Later, the heir became engaged.

His future wife disliked me, so he gave me to another man.

Later still, he begged me to return.

But by then, I was already the lawful wife of the Chief Grand Secretary.

You are a village girl from the mountains.

By a twist of fate, you save the Crown Prince from an assassination, and you leverage that debt to demand he marry you.

But he disdains your plain looks and gently refuses many times.

You settle for the next best thing and ask him to appoint you as an official.

Since you were five, you’ve decided you will rise above your station in this life.

If you become a consort, you’ll be like Wu Zetian.

If you become an official, you’ll be like Sima Yi.

When the palace announced that I was being elevated to Noble Consort, everyone in my family looked grim.

Everyone understood the principle that great merit can threaten the throne.

My father’s achievements were already so great that there was nothing left to reward him with.

This rank of Noble Consort was a naked warning.

If I wanted to keep my whole family safe, I had to hand the emperor a weakness of mine-something he could hold over me and use to put his mind at ease.

Father, Mother, your daughter is off to be arrogant by imperial command!

Starting today, I’m going to be the most outrageously overbearing little menace in the harem!

My husband, Xiao Ji, is the realm’s celebrated Grand Chancellor.

My elder sister, the Empress Dowager, commands the inner palace.

For years, they have put each other—and the empire—before me.

When they cancel the birthday fireworks I have long awaited, I finally stop asking to be chosen.

I leave the capital with a divorce agreement and build the life I always wanted as a physician in Jiangnan.

Only after I am gone do they realize that devotion cannot excuse neglect.

But regret may have come too late, because I have no intention of returning to the game that broke me.

I had profaned the divine after all.

The aloof, ascetic monk from the altar now stood inside my red-draped bedchamber, tearing off his prayer beads as he clasped my ankle, his Adam’s apple shifting.

“Little Highness, this humble monk has broken his vows.”