A universally adored heroine, 1V4.
Four men spend their lives devoted to one woman, while the empress sits alone on the throne. (The male leads do not marry the heroine, take her into a harem, or receive any formal status.)
Though the heroine transmigrates, she can't make milk tea, soap, or gunpowder, and she can't recite poetry. She adapts to life in ancient times. Giving her a transmigration backstory is meant to give her the ambition to vie for the throne, because one's perspective determines how high one can rise. In the modern world, the heroine already had ability, skill, and ambition. Why shouldn't she fight for the realm? And of course, she doesn't care about chastity.
She crawled out of a pile of corpses, so she doesn't believe in fate.
Lin Zhao is someone who should never have existed at the end of the old Han dynasty. A woman, she entered the court as an official, raised an army in Chenyang, became emperor, and changed the country's name to Yan, crushing the whole realm beneath her feet.
Four men stand by her side:
A loyal servant of the Han royal house who refuses to serve her after the dynasty changes, all bluster and denial, a prickly scholar;
A sickly strategist who spends his whole life living as if in a drunken haze, a fragile beauty;
A fierce general who trades half a flatbread for a lifetime of protection, a younger man;
A silent personal guard, steady as a mountain, a loyal dog.
She takes the throne and looks back. There's no one behind her.
"Emperor Mingwu wielded a blade all her life and never once looked back."
