Bold as Hua: The Princess Takes the Throne, and Her Ministers Bow

Jing Hua has died once.

In her previous life, she pursued Xie Jiqing for five years, going from princess to discarded wife, then from discarded wife to mistress.

Her twins were taken from her. Her son was left unable to walk, and her daughter was reduced to a plaything.

She was forced into a political marriage with Daliang, and in the end, she died beneath a flurry of blades.

After death, her soul took refuge in her mother’s blood-jade bangle for a full thousand years.

During that millennium, she watched an empress subdue the court, a female general defeat a hundred thousand enemies, and a businesswoman grow richer than a kingdom. She carved their strategies into the depths of her soul, piece by piece.

When she opens her eyes again, she has returned to the night before she is cast aside.

This time, the foolish princess who lost her head over love is dead.

She conceals the twins in her belly and accepts her barren fief in Lingnan.

In everyone’s eyes, she is a discarded wife fallen on hard times. Little do they know that she is digging canals, opening schools and workshops, building horse farms and starting a banking business, bringing every lesson from the last thousand years to bear on this desolate land.

The people call her “Master Qingyu” and kneel to her as if she were a goddess.

The elegant head of the Xie family battles her representative in court as if their lives depended on it, and finds himself developing a grudging admiration for his opponent. He exhausts every means to investigate, until his secret guards lay a report on his desk.

At the Princess of Lingnan’s residence, his former wife sits under the lamplight, holding two children who look just like him while poring over account books.

That night, the usually unflappable Lord Xie loses his composure for the first time in his life.

Much later, he corners her in the Imperial Hall, barely containing the madness that has smoldered inside him for a thousand years. “Your Highness, you’ve kept me in the dark so cruelly.”

Jing Hua looks up, recalling the sight of him dying in the snow with her old clothes in his arms in her previous life, and smiles faintly.

“Lord Xie looks rather resentful.”

[Strong female lead + political intrigue + groveling redemption + intense emotional push and pull]