(A domineering, career-minded consort vs. a scheming, cold-hearted emperor who becomes love-struck; they aren't each other's first, but he soon dotes on her alone, and gradually turns into a lovesick fool)
She wakes up as Jiang Ruoyao, a five-year-old girl with the same name as her, the treasured pearl of the Duke of Zhenguo's household. She grew up alongside her second elder brother in the military camp.
Her father is the Grand General Who Pacifies the North, commanding 300,000 troops. Her mother is the legitimate daughter of the Grand Tutor, and the Empress Dowager's so-called friend. Her eldest brother is a Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review and was the emperor's companion reader in childhood. Her second brother is a young general who made a name for himself at an early age.
With such a great start and such a noble identity, she should be set for life. Yet in the original story, she is a simple, gentle beauty, hopeless at palace intrigue and all looks with no brains. She enters the palace and dies a tragic death within a year.
As a palace-intrigue novel fan who has read the original, Jiang Ruoyao is determined not only to survive the palace, where people are devoured alive, but also to claim the highest throne. She has the emperor wrapped around her little finger. As for those troublesome women in the harem, anyone who provokes her gets slapped into oblivion.
Zhou Yanchen initially takes an interest in her for her beauty alone. Because of Jiang Ruoyao's family background and the year they spent together as children, he considers her one of his own. But why does he gradually become more and more invested in her, dote on her with fewer and fewer limits, and let her lead him around by the nose?
