[An obsessive young emperor with a need for control + a bewitching dancer who hunts dragons, sweet on the outside and dark within] [A guide to loving and tormenting each other while playing cat and mouse | Every pawn will turn against its player] [The weaker party wields power + the stronger party gambles with his heart]
She wields tenderness like a blade, while he uses the empire as his chessboard.
When they first meet, she is a dancer in the Princess Royal’s residence, eyes lowered and head bowed, her graceful figure concealing ambitions known to no one. He is a young emperor constrained by his powerful maternal relatives, his grand ambitions stifled by court intrigue. He grants her his exclusive favor night after night, while she counters with three clever games of chess. “The first game wagers that you’ll reclaim command of the imperial army. The second, that I’ll ascend to the empress’s throne. The third...” The emperor and empress have always been blade and sheath, bound to one another. She helps him pacify the barbarians and reform the powerful Yong, while he promises her maternal family wealth and rank and her son the imperial succession. Yet at the height of their power, a rumor of witchcraft and sorcery shatters half a lifetime of affection, strangling it in the white silk of Changle Palace.
Power struggles and tangled passions intertwine, but there is no true love in Changle Palace.
When “virtuous empress” and “mighty ruler” become their sharpest masks, what lies behind the high walls of the Yong palace: an emperor’s love, or two schemers slowly taming each other?
It feels like the story of Wei Zifu and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty
Will the author come back?