Royalty

Princess Chu Yuan has always taken whatever catches her eye, including the chaste young monk Yujingzi.

When his endless refusals finally wear her down, she casts him aside for a bold hostage prince—only to be haunted by dreams of a possessive snake-tailed god.

The truth is worse: Yujingzi is the divine serpent who has protected Great Sheng for years, and his coy resistance was never rejection at all.

Now the princess who loved and left him must survive his wounded devotion, win his forgiveness, and decide whether she can spend her life with the one creature she fears most.

I am the youngest princess of Baojun Palace, raised to seem innocent while my elder sister bargains with a ruthless eunuch and my elder brother plots for our survival.

Our mother was framed and killed, our palace became a prison, and every smile I wear becomes a weapon against the emperor who abandoned us.

As love, revenge, and a battle for the throne close around our family, the secrets everyone hides prove far more dangerous than my supposed naivety.

I may be the family’s little fool, but I will decide which hearts are saved—and which debts are paid.

At the age when palace maids are meant to leave, Ah Li asks the imperial guard she loves to marry her—only to discover that he is the emperor, and that she is merely a substitute for his cherished Consort Rong.

After he keeps her trapped in the palace and sacrifices her to protect his favorite, Ah Li quietly accepts a marriage arranged as an act of spite.

Her new husband, General Wei Yuan, can see the floating comments that have distorted everyone’s story, and he offers her something the emperor never did: honesty and protection.

When the emperor tries to steal her back, Wei Yuan defies the throne, forcing every supposed lead in this romance to face the truth.

At seven, Jinxi is sold to the Marquis of Martial Valor’s household and trained to become a dowry concubine for its formidable legitimate daughter.

Knowing that one wrong move could cost her life, the transmigrated girl hides her intelligence and searches for a way out.

Her chance comes in the innocent Ninth Prince, but every kindness in the marquis’s household carries a price.

As Jinxi rises from purchased pawn to legitimate daughter and princess consort, she discovers that the ruthless women around her are neither as simple nor as heartless as they first appeared.

On his deathbed, the late emperor entrusted me with his heir—and had me bound and dragged back overnight to assist the new emperor.

Isolated and alone, the new emperor glared through bloodshot eyes, snapping at anyone who came near like a wolf cub.

“Better that I betray the world than let the world betray me!”

My eyes lit up.

The new emperor, later: “On second thought, the world hasn’t wronged me quite that badly.”

When I was eight, a lame Daoist wandered into our village.

Mother took pity on him and poured him a cup of water.

He declared that of the three of us siblings, one would become the supreme sovereign, one would become the mother of the realm, and one would stand in a doorway and sell her smiles.

My elder brother had studied since childhood, so naturally he was destined to become the supreme sovereign.

My little sister was beautiful, so naturally she would become the mother of the realm.

And naturally, the one fated to sell her smiles from a doorway had to be me.

My eldest sister hated what she called pampered wives more than anything.

At a palace banquet, she sneered at the empress.

“A true strong female lead would have seized the throne and made herself empress regnant long ago.

Strip away the fine words, and the empress is still just a pampered wife who climbed to power through a man, isn’t she?”

One remark from her condemned the entire Song family.

On the day our estate was confiscated, Prince Chen offered my eldest sister a hand.

If she would only beg for mercy, every woman of the Song household could be spared enslavement.

Instead, she lifted her chin and declared, “Even if every woman in my family is made a slave, I will never beg a man for pity like some pampered wife!”

Prince Chen stormed away in fury, and our entire family was exiled into bondage.

On the road north, my second brother risked his life and led men to free us.

My sister only scoffed.

“Only pampered wives need men to save them!”

She deliberately raised the alarm, and my brother died beneath a storm of arrows.

Yet that very display of “independence” caught the eye of a prince from an enemy kingdom.

When he wanted to take me as a concubine, I had no choice but to agree if I wanted to live.

My sister said, “I’m marrying him for love.

If you become his concubine, you’re nothing but a pampered wife fighting another woman for a man’s favor!”

She ordered me to kill myself.

I had endured enough.

I lunged at her, determined that we would die together.

When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day the Song estate was seized.

Prince Chen was holding out his hand to my sister.

She looked at him with disdain.

“I will never be a pampered wife who depends on a man!”

As disappointment crossed his face, I reached out and caught hold of his belt.

“She doesn’t know a good thing when she sees it, Your Highness.

Perhaps you might take a look at me instead.”

Xie Chengze transmigrates into a novel about a powerful minister, becoming its vicious villain – the Second Prince, a man who murders his own brothers, treats human life as worthless, and ultimately dies when the powerful minister Shen Yuan drives a sword through his heart.

To escape that fate, Xie Chengze resolves to keep his head down and stay far away from the struggle for the throne. Whenever matters of state come up, he has only three answers: “Dunno. Ask the Crown Prince!” “Dunno. Ask Shen Yuan!” and “Dunno. Ask the Eldest Prince!”

Yet the looks Shen Yuan and the princes give him only grow more dangerous – and in every possible sense of the word.

–

After killing Xie Chengze with a single thrust of his sword, Shen Yuan opens his eyes to find himself ten years in the past.

In his previous life, the Second Prince flouted the law, brought ruin upon the country and misery upon its people, and threw the imperial court into chaos for nearly a decade. This time, Shen Yuan intends to uproot his faction as early as possible and restore peace and order to the realm.

Instead, he watches the once-vicious man devote himself to the common people, transform a wilderness into a land of abundance with his own hands, and usher in an age of peace and prosperity.

He has endless tenderness for the world – yet before Shen Yuan alone, he refuses to bow his head or bend his back.

While the concubines of the harem fought for favor, the Empress was wondering when the emperor would finally die.

The emperor and I had been married since our youth, but ours was a match arranged without either of us having any say.

After all these years, we had only ever treated each other with distant courtesy.

And as my son grew older by the day, I found myself hoping more and more that His Majesty might depart this world sooner rather than later-if only so all my years of diligently managing his harem would not have been in vain.

I am the Empress.

The Emperor wished to take my maid as a concubine, claiming that any child she bore would be recorded under my name.

Later, the imperial physician informed me that I had been pregnant for a month.

I said to the Emperor, “In consideration of your many years without an heir, I shall have this child recorded under your name.”