A Song of Dazzling Beauty, a Mistaken Marriage: The Clear-Eyed Empress Seizes the Throne

The courtesan and qin player Weiyang wins her way into the Eastern Palace with a performance of “The Startling Swan.” She thinks she has married a soulmate for life in the crown prince, but on their wedding night, she hears something amiss.

To her astonishment, the one who truly won her heart is Shen Zhaohan, the silent, peerless swordsman at the crown prince’s side.

The mistaken marriage is now set in stone, so Weiyang flips the board. Facing the noble clans’ ostracism and assassinations by the old faction, she reveals her uncanny ability to read people through sound. With ears that can detect murderous intent and lies in a person’s tone and heartbeat, she exposes a consort’s fake pregnancy, escapes one deadly trap after another, and rises from the brink of the Cold Palace until she has the royal power struggle beneath her feet.

Then, on the eve of the coronation, inside Kunning Palace, Weiyang blocks the swordsman as he is about to leave the palace. She takes his sword-calloused hand and presses it to the strings. “Can you play the qin?” “No.” “I’ll teach you.” Before the melody can end, the emperor and empress are already at odds.

Four years later, the old melody rises again, and he protects her from an army beneath the snow at the Imperial Ancestral Temple.

Once a pawn, she becomes the player holding the court in her hands. The emperor begs her to look back, but she walks toward the greatest swordsman in the land, the man who broke his sword for her.

This realm is hers to choose!