He is the “Qin dog” reviled on the streets of Handan, a pawn in his mother’s game against the powerful, and a rare commodity Lü Buwei keeps waiting to sell at the right price.
He returned to Qin at nine, took the throne at thirteen, assumed personal rule at twenty-two, and swept across the Six States at thirty-eight. Through thirty years of patience and struggle, Ying Zheng brought the world beneath his feet. He abolished the feudal domains and established commanderies and counties, standardized the written language and the width of carriage axles, and became an emperor for the ages.
Yet once the four seas were united, he sank into an even deeper loneliness. His first love, Gongsun Yu, vanished without a trace; his mother, Zhao Ji, died under house arrest; his childhood friend Chengjiao was killed after a military defeat; and his rival Li Mu died with his name unjustly tarnished. Everyone who reaches the summit climbs there on the bones of those closest and dearest to them.
With Records of the Grand Historian as its foundation and boundless imagination as its wings, this book takes you into Ying Zheng’s inner world: his fear and ambition, his obsession and tenderness, his greatness and flaws. This is a story of power, loneliness, and redemption.
When you possess the whole world, yet discover you have no one to rely on, that is the fate of an emperor.
