Forced to Raise a Child: The Empress Dowager Turns Around and Marries the Regent

[The ending is terrible. Don’t read.] On the last day of the late emperor’s life, he ordered Yin Shu to enter the palace and become empress. Poor Yin Shu: the late emperor died on the very night she arrived, leaving his young son to succeed him. From then on, Yin Shu’s life became all about raising a child. Just two days into her new life as a nanny, the young general Xiao arrived at the palace with the late emperor’s edict and became regent. Yin Shu felt a little guilty. When Xiao Chengjun left, he had asked her to wait for him, but she had been forced into the palace instead... becoming the youngest empress dowager in the Great Zhou, at just seventeen. “The Yin family has no desire to interfere in the succession to the throne,” Yin Shu said, turning down the old ministers’ suggestion that she rule from behind the curtain. “The women of the harem are one big family,” she said, successfully fooling the late emperor’s bloodthirsty consorts by playing dumb. “Your Majesty’s mother will help you cling to someone powerful.” Yin Shu took her adopted son and clung to the leg of her old flame, now the regent. Clinging to someone powerful was wonderful. She didn’t have to do anything, just live the leisurely life of an empress dowager. That thought had barely lasted two days when the regent was poisoned by a spell and his life hung in the balance. Yin Shu rose to her feet: ruling from behind the curtain, interfering in court affairs, keeping the consorts in line, plotting against the princes... “I’ll spend my whole life protecting the people I care about. The Yin family, for instance, and... the regent.”