Chapter 2
The crown prince was choosing a wife.
Long ago, I had intended to betroth my brother’s daughter to him.
That would have won him my brother’s allegiance and made his position as heir unassailable.
I had no such intention now.
He wasn’t good enough for my niece.
Somehow, though, a rumor reached him that I planned to marry her to him.
He rushed over. “Mother, I already have someone I love.”
His beloved was the daughter of a court remonstrator.
The very man who kept demanding that I be deposed.
The girl was beautiful, but there seemed to be something wrong with her eyes. She was forever rolling them.
Especially at me.
Every word I spoke earned me another eye roll.
When I showed my displeasure, the crown prince even tried to soothe me. “Please don’t be angry, Mother. Ah Yao doesn’t mean it. She’s had an eye condition since childhood.”
“If she has an eye condition,” I said kindly, “we must have it treated.”
I found an imperial physician to dose her with bitter medicine every day. Eight large bowls a day, and not a single sweet to wash it down.
After just three days, the eye rolling stopped. She knelt outside my palace gates to thank me.
“Thank you for the medicine, Your Majesty. My hearing and vision are suddenly wonderfully clear. I can even look straight at the sun. I truly need no more medicine.”
Her father stopped impeaching me and calling me a wicked empress, too.
Ah, medicine really could work wonders.
One cure, two patients.
I asked the crown prince again, “Are you certain you won’t marry your cousin? Remember, your uncle commands an army. Marrying her would secure your position as heir.”
He said he would not.
After he returned to his palace, a maid told me he had said all manner of vile things about me to his advisers.
He said I was vicious and scheming, refusing to leave even his marriage alone.
He said my niece did nothing but brandish spears and cudgels. She was more of a man than most men, and the sight of her made him sick.
He also said I wanted him to follow in his father’s footsteps, letting my family become the empress’s powerful relatives for generation after generation—emperors in all but name.
Finally, he spat out another torrent of abuse. Sooner or later, he said, he would have me sliced to pieces and leave my corpse in the wilderness. Only grinding my entire family’s bones to ashes would satisfy his hatred.
My niece Xingyue heard the whole report beside me. “How do you feel about that?” I asked.
“I’d like to punch him twice.”
“And what about your marriage?”
She curled her lip. “Who does he think he is? Even if he wanted to marry me, I wouldn’t marry him! What’s so wonderful about being crown princess? I’d be much happier as a general.”
Here was a Mulan for our army.
What ambition.
I applauded her. “Then you have my permission never to marry anyone. But remember, a marriage is an alliance of interests. If you don’t want to marry, you’ll have to achieve twice as much on your own to establish a secure place for yourself.”
Xingyue immediately knelt. “Relying on a man would be my greatest mistake. Let me make my own way in the world by my own abilities.”
I wrote a special letter to my brother and his wife, telling them not to pressure Xingyue into marriage.
They had no sons. Xingyue was their only daughter.
But a daughter could be better than a son.
If Xingyue had that resolve, I would help her fulfill it.