Shang Wanying opens her eyes and dreams that she abandoned her orphaned husband and child, then died.
Her wonderful son weeps beside her bed. "Mother, I miss you."
Shang Wanying is baffled. She's only eighteen. How could she have a ten-year-old son?
The top scholar of the dynasty is her kept lover, the prime minister's legitimate son is her betrothed, and her son bears the surname of neither man, but of her sworn enemy?
She is a princess of immense rank and power, the late emperor's legitimate daughter and the emperor's younger sister. She considers herself peerlessly beautiful, and doesn't care if her reputation is a little tarnished.
When Xie Yuchi sees her for the first time, he sums her up in eight characters: "Beauty without substance, utterly unremarkable."
With those words, he offends the princess and becomes her sworn enemy.
But her son says her sworn enemy is his real father?
Shang Wanying gives the order to burn Xie Yuchi alive, and he pays her back in bed. Though she was supposed to be unable to bear children, she ends up pregnant!
Xie Sui'an: "Father, I can help clear away the obstacles in your path, but you have to make Mother happy. Otherwise, I can always get a different father. I'm Mother's child either way."
