The Socially Awkward Emperor and His Slacker Empress

I, Bu Xi, empress of the Great Qi dynasty, am facing the biggest crisis of my career: my emperor-partner, Bei, thinks our harem is too peaceful and that it’s damaging the nation’s prestige!

So this month, the palace’s KPIs are being imposed by royal decree: We have to start fighting!

Gritting his teeth, His Majesty turns over a consort token. “Every concubine has to come fight over me tonight!”

I convene an emergency strategy meeting at Kunning Palace and deliver an impassioned speech: “Whoever wins the emperor’s favor will receive ten thousand taels of gold from me!”

But the next morning, my husband wakes up alone in the imperial bed. Eunuch Laifu trembles as he reports, “The ladies said... they’d rather sleep in than take ten thousand taels of gold.”

Me: “...”

Fine. The staff have all decided to lie flat, so the boss has to get competitive herself. Bei and I quickly adjust our strategy and take the field to demonstrate palace intrigue ourselves: he gives me “poison wine” (bitter melon juice), while I send him a “beauty” (Consort De dressed in women’s clothes).

Just as the two of us are fully in character and battling it out, the neighboring kingdom’s true master of palace intrigue arrives: a green-tea princess. She’s affected, she schemes at every turn, and she’s determined to show us what a professional can do!

Bei and I exchange a glance and instantly reach an understanding.

You want to break up our laid-back retirement home? Not a chance!

The concubines who used to politely yield to one another over who had to attend His Majesty are now united like never before.

Consort Hui uses her mechanical contraptions to make the princess do the splits in public; Consort Li crushes her spirit with her beauty; and Consort Xian’s “love-filled pastries” keep her running to the latrine...

Looking at the princess’s world-weary expression, I finally understand: This alliance of good-for-nothing palace-intrigue amateurs I lead might just be... invincible?