The Empress Dowager Has No Intention of Returning Power

The day the late emperor died, she was still an eighteen-year-old palace attendant, trembling as she held the six-year-old child emperor in her arms. Ten years later, at the ceremony marking his assumption of personal rule, the young emperor asked her, “Mother, have you ever regretted these past ten years?” She looked at the assembled court officials and smiled faintly. “Regretted what? Raising you to adulthood?”