In the eleventh year of Zhenguan, fourteen-year-old Wu Ruyi knelt in front of the Tai Chi Hall.
Emperor Li Shimin solemnly asked, "What do you want from the Wu family when you enter the palace?"
In the silence of the whole hall, she raised her head and said the words that made the historian tremble:
"My daughter is willing to imitate Empress Changsun - not to be a virtuous shadow beside the emperor, but to be the lamp bearer of this thousands of miles of country."
On that day, the emperor walked away, but the prophecy that "Li Xing will be replaced by Wu" was like poisonous ivy wrapping around the harem.
From the cold eyes of Cai Ren to Taizong, from the withered bones of Qingdeng in Ganye Temple to the desperate counterattack after returning to the palace.
It took her seven years to learn to lie dormant, and three years to create a shocking situation.
When everyone thought that what she wanted was nothing more than the Queen's Phoenix Crown, she was standing at the highest point of the Daming Palace, overlooking the Chang'an Spark:
"They all say women should be vines."
"But what I want to do—is the tree that can split thunder."
This is the most authentic growth epic of a generation of queens: about how ambition ignites from sparks to prairie fire, and about how a woman can crown herself in a man's world of machinations.
