The Uncrowned Phoenix

The Uncrowned Phoenix

Su Li, the legitimate daughter of the crown prince of the previous dynasty, survived the bloody night at the Eastern Palace by climbing over a mountain of corpses. From a disgraced daughter confined to the Cold Palace to a grand princess wielding power over the court, she spent twenty years sharpening her claws.

Deep within the palace, the late emperor had forced himself on her mother, her half-brother the emperor regarded her as a thorn in his side, court officials called her “a hen crowing at dawn,” and the imperial clan mocked her: “No husband, no children. In the end, she’ll be a lonely ghost.”

But they forgot that Lü Zhi once ruled as a woman, and Wu Zetian dared to depose the Tang and found the Zhou. The world has never been a game of power reserved for men.

She gathered a band of loyal assassins and backed a new political faction. Every stroke of vermilion ink she added to a memorial concealed a thunderous move. She watched the harem’s intrigues with cold eyes, yet at the crucial moment turned the whole board upside down, showing those who looked down on women that blades can hide beneath rouge and powder.

When Chen Jing, a son born of a concubine with secrets of his own, entered her residence; when the emperor laid a deadly trap beneath the guise of a royal tomb ceremony; when old grudges from twenty years ago knotted together with new conspiracies into an inescapable snare...

Su Li stood beside the phoenix throne, her fingertips brushing the cold scepter. “This realm has never belonged to anyone for the taking. If men can fight for it, why can’t I?”

She never sought wealth or glory. She meant to shatter the shackles that said women must not meddle in politics, and make history remember that a grand princess once carved a bloody path through the halls of power as a woman, living as her own queen.