Your Highness, the Crown Princess Has Fled with Your Child

The Chronicles of the Vermilion Palace: The Xiangwu Volume

The ninefold palace in heaven draws two very different judgments:

The young lords toss down their brushes and sigh: “She has the talent to govern a nation and the strength to secure its borders, yet her jade beauty is tainted by the mortal world.”

The ladies clutch their fans and complain: “She shatters the rules of the boudoir with a silver spear. This calamity of beauty could topple the realm.”

Yet on one matter, the northern and southern courts agree: she leaves a trail of romantic debts.

The Crown Prince, who holds the realm steady, commands the Eastern Palace, pacifies the northern frontier, and cuts down three thousand blooms of romance.

But he cannot rein in his own Crown Princess's dazzling splendor.

The commander of the Black Armor Guards blushes as he presents the kite she shot down.

The governor of Yucheng's official boat always happens to dock at the ferry where she goes for a spring outing.

The northern nomad cavalry rides beneath the moon, just to give her a newly tempered dagger.

Prince Qi Shu rubs his temples and flings down his seventh impeachment memorial.

Meanwhile, our Lady Xiangwu gallops past the spring embankment in red, astride a white horse.

Her red lips part: “Heaven and earth can bear witness. Shen Zan is only enjoying the mountains and rivers.”

As her wide sleeves flutter, the Crown Prince in his jade belt and python robe rides after her.

But there she is beneath a peach tree, one pale hand resting on her slightly rounded belly.

Her eyes glimmer, and with half a stroke of her silver spear, she sends blossoms swirling down from the sky.

(Period romance + sweet love + happy ending + strong heroine and hero + the hero's long road to winning her back)