The Crown Prince’s Tragedy

In the fourth year of Hongwu, in late spring in Nanjing, sixteen-year-old Crown Prince Zhu Biao married the eldest daughter of Chang Yuchun, the Prince of Kaiping. The parasol trees were newly green, and red candles shone bright. They thought this was simply the beginning of a life of splendor.

She was a fierce daughter of a military family, yet willing to set aside her armor and take up a brush to paint his brows. He was the heir apparent, entangled in state affairs day after day, and only with her could he be an ordinary husband. The year their eldest legitimate son, Xiong Ying, was born, the emperor cradled his grandson and said, "This is my Ming dynasty's eldest legitimate grandson!" At that moment, the Eastern Palace was filled with springtime joy.

But fate has never favored those whose lives are too perfect.

In the winter of Hongwu's eleventh year, Crown Princess Chang died in childbirth at just twenty-five. She left him not only their young son Yun Tong, but also a brow brush that no one would ever again pick up for him.

Later, his second consort, Lady Lü, took up residence in the Eastern Palace. She was gentle and dutiful, bore him a second son, Yun Wen, and kept the household in perfect order. He thought life could go on like that. But whenever the night grew quiet, he still thought of the woman who used to show him her little tiger teeth.

In the fifteenth year of Hongwu, his eldest legitimate grandson, Xiong Ying, died young. In the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu, he returned from inspecting Shaanxi and fell gravely ill. In his final moments, his last thought was still of that late spring, and the trembling eyelashes beneath her wedding veil.

After he died, his father turned white-haired overnight. The Imperial Grandson Yun Wen ascended the throne, and his fourth uncle, the Prince of Yan, raised an army to wage the Jingnan Campaign. The parasol trees in the Eastern Palace remained as dense as ever, but no one remembered that a Crown Prince named Zhu Biao and the two women in his life had once lived, loved, and suffered with all their hearts behind those red walls.

And the brow brush, sealed away in an old case, lay quietly there, bearing witness to a dynasty's journey from springtime blossoms to cold ashes.