The Deposed Empress Gives Her Take on Statecraft from the Cold Palace

The day Shen Qingci received the decree, she stood up on her own. After the eunuch finished reading the edict deposing her, everyone waited for her to kneel and beg for mercy. Instead, she snatched the silver scissors from the eunuch’s belt and, before everyone’s eyes, opened the lining of her phoenix robe. “Give His Majesty a message for me: the daffodils in Fengyi Palace ask if he still remembers who planted them.” The day she was deposed, she walked into the Cold Palace with a smile. The palace servants all said the Cold Palace was where people went to wait for death. But Shen Qingci treated it as the opening move in her second game. On the third day, with no pieces on the board, she used a little palace maid’s osmanthus branches and pebbles to bring the Yongxiang gate guards, the kitchen matrons, and the Imperial Household Office’s account books all into the palm of her hand. A deposed empress entering the Cold Palace was only allowed to bring her personal belongings. But no one said she couldn’t bring her brains.