The Imperial Princess: Princess Changping

Synopsis of The Princess’s Flower: Princess Changping: In the seventeenth year of the Chongzhen reign, flames of war swept across the capital. The noble Princess Changping, Zhu Meichuo, was about to marry her newly chosen consort, Zhou Xianzong, when Li Zicheng’s troops stormed the city. As the imperial palace fell, Emperor Chongzhen raised his sword to preserve the royal family’s dignity, but mistakenly killed Princess Zhaoren. Changping survived, though not before losing an arm and enduring the horrors of the massacre. Risking their lives, Zhou Xianzong and his loyal servant rescued her from a sea of corpses and flames and hid her in the cellar of the Zhou residence. But in those chaotic times, no one could be trusted. A servant betrayed them, and the rebel king’s pursuers arrived. Zhou Xianzong had no choice but to disguise Changping as his “cousin” and send her to a convent for refuge. There, she took the veil and lived as a nun, though she could not conceal her grief over the fall of her country and the destruction of her family. When the Qing court entered the pass, the danger grew. Changping’s whereabouts were exposed again, and she fell into Qing hands. Under threat and persuasion, she mistakenly believed Zhou Xianzong had betrayed her. Overwhelmed with grief and rage, she bargained for a moment’s respite, agreeing on the condition that Chongzhen and the royal family who died with him be buried with the honors due to the imperial family. At last, she was sent to a convent. When they met again at the convent, she learned that Zhou Xianzong had already been imprisoned by the Qing for protecting her, and that the supposed betrayal had all been a misunderstanding. Zhou Xianzong wept and begged on his knees, until the Qing court granted them two days together as husband and wife. In the Zhou family’s villa, beneath dim red wedding candles, the lovers who had suffered so much were finally wed. Yet on their wedding night, they both hanged themselves, honoring their original vow to “die together for the state.” Their tragic song of love and principle became the origin of The Princess’s Flower, which has been sung through the ages. The anguish of love and hate, family and country, is etched into their very bones, and their devotion is soaked in tears. Their story is the last glow of the setting sun over the Ming Dynasty, and a testament to the unbending backbone of the Han people amid chaos.