The Concubine's Daughter Strikes Back: From Household and Palace Schemes to Ruling the Realm

At the Situ residence in Northern Qi, Yang Yan, the legitimate daughter, orders her half-sister Yang Yan to kneel on shards of porcelain and serve her tea.

Blood runs from Yang Yan's palms, but she looks up with a radiant smile. “Sister is right to teach me a lesson.”

That very night, the jade screen treasured by Yang Yan, her most beloved possession, inexplicably shatters into pieces.

For three years, Yang Yan had been hiding grains of salt in every inlaid seam.

At the spring purification banquet, Yang Yan pushes her into the water. Yang Yan retaliates by snatching the jade pendant from her sister's waist.

The token of the late empress Liu Wuyou, the “Phoenix Concealment Order,” rises to the surface. Everyone is aghast.

Her stepmother, Hua Zhilan, prepares to invoke the family laws. Yang Yan says in a trembling voice, “I am willing to enter the palace in my sister's place!”

Envoys of the Prince of Runan and the Prince of Zhao meet secretly with Empress Jia Feng, and the Rebellion of the Eight Princes begins...

They have no idea that this is the moment Yang Yan has been waiting for: the shift from household infighting to palace intrigue.

The wicked empress Jia Feng is executed, and Consort Shu Yang Yan is elevated to empress. The princes all submit to her authority.

But before the throne can be secured, the ambitious Prince of Hejian covets the imperial seat and deposes the empress.

On the day she is deposed, Yang Yan burns her finery in the cold palace and flees to Luoyang with the emperor.

Three months later, as Yecheng is besieged, Prince Yuwen Ying of Hejian discovers in terror that the former empress he once trampled underfoot is now clad in armor, sword in hand, standing before an army of thousands.

Behind her, three hundred thousand soldiers cry out in unison, “Long live Her Majesty the Empress!”

Yuwen Ying's former followers defect one after another, and the royal banner on the city wall crashes to the ground.

As he is dragged to the execution ground, Yang Yan speaks in a voice only the two of them can hear:

“Prince of Hejian, you have great ambition but little ability. You should never have laid a hand on my husband's realm.”

Northern Qi falls, and Yang Yan becomes empress of the new dynasty, the mother of all under heaven