Politics

I am a princess.

I think everyone around me has something wrong with them.

On my last night in the palace, Xiao Zhao got drunk and took me to bed.

The next morning, I slipped a palace maid into his bed to take my place.

Four years later, a little girl held my husband’s hand and called him Uncle in her sweet little voice.

His eyes reddened.

“Ah Jie, how can she call me Uncle?”

he asked, aggrieved.

I smiled.

“But she really is my husband’s daughter.

What else should she call you?”

I was the legitimate daughter of an old noble house, carefully raised to become the crown prince’s wife.

Then a woman arrived on a mission to win his love, and he demanded that our betrothal be broken.

Everyone expected me to fight for him.

Instead, I removed my hairpins, left my face bare, and calmly asked His Majesty to grant the couple their wish.

That night, I left the capital.

Three years later, their passionate devotion had turned to resentment.

When the weary crown prince met me on my return and called me Zhang’er, I knew my opportunity had come.

On the night of the empress’s funeral, His Majesty and I spent the entire night together in a side hall.

Everyone in the capital called me shameless.

After all, the empress was my own aunt, and His Majesty was her husband—my uncle by marriage.

Before that, I had been meant to marry the crown prince.

But Yuan Xiujin did not like me.

He despised my coarse origins, sneered at the Meng family’s rustic ways, and thought us unworthy of the Eastern Palace.

As if I thought any better of him.

Father and son, yet so different.

Yuan Xiujin let a woman lead him by the nose.

Yuan Zhaoyu already held the empire in his hand.

Since he would not let me become his crown princess, I would simply have to become his father’s consort instead.

After marrying the notoriously tyrannical emperor, I accidentally swapped bodies with him.

But the exchange wasn’t quite permanent.

By day, he dismissed officials.

By night, I rescued them.

He punished the consorts.

I soothed the beauties.

And he still had the nerve to snap at me.

“Which hand did you touch her with?”

Honestly.

Without me, this country would fall apart sooner or later.

I was a spy.

While posing as a courtesan to deceive a man, I ran into my polished, scholarly foster brother.

His eyes held a dangerous gleam.

“Short of money?”

“What business is it of yours?”

He gave a cold laugh.

“I’ll make it my business for the rest of your life.”

On the day I ascended the throne, I discovered that I could hear objects speak.

The Dragon Throne was a chatterbox, and a scalding bowl from the imperial kitchens screamed in my hands.

When I dropped it, only I could hear the shattered pieces lamenting their fate.

Prince Xiang’s heir was every noble young lady’s dream—and the emperor’s favorite candidate for the throne.

I slipped a little something into his soup to secure my future.

Unfortunately, my sister and three other ladies had the same idea.

One bowl later, he dropped dead at the imperial banquet, and all five of us became suspects.

I swore on my father’s life that I hadn’t killed him.

The trouble was, every suspect had a secret—and I wanted far more than a handsome husband.

Everyone calls Xie Qingwei the finest nobleman in Shengdu, and Jiang Zhiyu has perfected every virtue expected of a woman to win his family’s approval.

Then a vision shows her the miserable future awaiting her as his wife.

Determined to escape, she points to the impoverished Xue Shao and declares him the man she loves.

But securing a better marriage is only the beginning: in a world that gives women so few choices, Zhiyu may have to find a higher place of her own.

During the palace coup, I saved more than forty members of the Jiang household.

Afterward, the emperor asked what reward I wished for.

I knelt before him.

“This commoner wishes to enter the palace.”

The moment I spoke, the bright fire in the eyes of the Jiang family’s second son, standing beside His Majesty, died to ash.