After the emperor died, I struggled for decades to keep the crumbling Great Zhou afloat.
Everyone in the empire praised my extraordinary life, saying it was worthy of being recorded in the history books.
But only on my deathbed did I learn that the daily medicine my son, whom I had raised with my own hands, served me was slow poison. He had personally sent me to my grave.
And my emperor husband, who had died young, joined his beloved after my death, took the fruits of my labor, and ascended to the throne as Retired Emperor.
“If you hadn’t been so jealous, the three of us wouldn’t have been separated for over a decade. Instead, you got to live in comfort as empress dowager all your life. You really got off easy, you poisonous woman.”
From then on, the world knew only that his beloved had been the Empress Dowager of Great Zhou. No one remembered me.
