After Exile, I Opened a Women’s Court

[Period setting, everyday life, strong female lead, comeback after exile, ensemble cast of women, lighthearted comedy, business and political intrigue, two strong leads caught in a push and pull]

Wen Zhaoshu, the daughter of a disgraced minister, has her family confiscated and is sent into exile. As soon as she arrives at Hanyadu, she sees widows robbed of their fields, orphaned girls sold into servitude, and the life-saving grain meant for fallen soldiers’ families swallowed up by layers of officials until not a single grain remains.

The county office won’t help, the clans bully the weak, and military law recognizes only written documents?

Then she’ll set up three rickety tables in an abandoned fish shop and open an office that stands up for women alone!

Forcing women to remarry? She checks the household registers and wins back their status as independent householders.

Stealing dowries? She verifies the marriage contracts and makes the villains pay back every last coin, with interest.

Falsely claiming military rations? She summons the dead to settle the accounts, forcing the city’s powerful to sign their names in public!

Without an official seal, she’ll use evidence to set the rules.

Without a courtroom, she’ll have women from across the land serve as witnesses.

From a leaky shack to an incorruptible office trusted by women in a hundred cities, Wen Zhaoshu seeks to reclaim far more than justice in a single case.

But when she uncovers her forty-third forged military record, she sees her father’s name at the very bottom of a list of the dead.

It turns out the Wen family’s conviction and the exile of the entire clan were based on a meticulously fabricated set of false accounts from the very beginning.