Only Two Years into Becoming a Noble Consort, How Did I Become Empress?

(A Qing dynasty setting with a native-born heroine. This is an alternate-history novel and does not follow real history. The leads are not each other's first partners. They gradually come to understand one another, and after he ascends the throne, he favors her alone.)

Yunxi is the legitimate daughter of the Niohuru clan, raised in comfort from childhood. She never imagined that one imperial decree from Emperor Qianlong would assign her to Prince Jia, Yongyan, as his secondary consort!

On one side is the frail Princess Consort, who keeps a watchful eye on her every day; on the other is a whole roomful of beautiful concubines vying to outshine one another. Yunxi knows her place. She follows the rules and decides to lie flat. To her surprise, not only does her father-in-law praise her highly, but Prince Jia has begun looking at her in a rather different way...

Yunxi thinks she'll spend her whole life as a prince's secondary consort. But while she's lying flat, Emperor Qianlong abdicates, her prince becomes emperor, and she becomes a Noble Consort. Less than two years later, the Empress dies of sheer frustration, and Yunxi finds herself lying flat all the way into the position of Empress... Years later, Yunxi looks at the three little rascals beside her and feels her vision go dark. “I really didn't want to be Empress or have children in the first place!”