She is the daughter of a noblewoman of the imperial clan, raised in luxury, yet she has no idea that imperial blood runs through her veins. Nor does she know that the coming upheaval in her household is tied to a shocking secret spanning two generations...
Su Jinli always believed she was the daughter of a father who had placed third in the imperial examinations and a mother who was a noblewoman of the imperial clan. Her father was distant, but her mother doted on her, and she was cherished by her great-aunt, the Empress Dowager, and her grand-uncle, the emperor. She lived in boundless luxury in the capital. That peaceful life was shattered when her father returned with his concubine, Liu, and her children.
Her greedy father, the spiteful concubine, and one insidious plot after another all targeted her mother's tempting dowry. Su Jinli fought to protect her mother, but gradually discovered that her father's malice was far worse than she had imagined, and Liu's hatred went back much further than she knew.
At the same time, the emperor's repeated attempts to undermine the third-place scholar were mysteriously thwarted, while the Empress Dowager's gaze from deep within the palace grew ever more complicated and inscrutable. Buried history slowly came to light: the truth behind the late emperor's deathbed betrothal, the third-place scholar's unspoken origins, and, between her mother, the noblewoman, and Liu, the concubine, a secret that could overturn everyone's fate: an exchange of identities!
And when Su Jinli finally learns that she is of the emperor's blood, she faces more than a struggle within her household. She is caught in a raging storm over the legitimacy of the imperial line, one that reaches from the former court to the imperial harem.
Honor and intrigue intertwine, and true feelings are hard to tell from false ones.
Caught in a vast vortex of fate, how can she protect those closest to her, expose the conspiracy, and reclaim everything that should have been hers in this life turned upside down?
