After I Failed to Help the Crown Prince Win the Succession

For a courtier, taking part in the struggle for the throne is a matter of life and death.

Picking the wrong side in the succession struggle means putting one foot in the gates of hell.

And if the person who wins and ascends the throne is your former lover, with whom things ended badly, then you might as well have one foot before the King of Hell himself.

Jiang Tingyun was that unlucky.

Calling them former lovers would be a stretch. They’d done little more than hold hands and exchange sweet nothings when they were young and foolish.

How did they part on bad terms?

Though her father, Duke Qingguo, wielded great power over the Ministry of Revenue, her family was naturally aligned with the Crown Prince as his maternal relatives. Jiang Tingyun was a disliked concubine-born daughter, and the Third Princess, who had ambitions for the throne, naturally wouldn’t marry someone so useless.

When the Third Princess was eighteen, she chose the daughter of the Minister of Personnel, a senior member of the Grand Secretariat, as her principal consort.

When Jiang Tingyun was nineteen, her father arranged her engagement to the daughter of a fifth-rank assistant official, saying the family was humble but would make a good match for a simple life.

Without some unexpected turn of events, it seemed the two would never cross paths again.

But the four-year struggle for the throne was filled with shocking twists. The Crown Prince was deposed and reinstated twice, but in the end, he was defeated by the Third Princess and cut his own throat outside Yangwu Gate.

The winners became kings, the losers were branded traitors. They said the Third Princess was ruthless and vengeful, and sure enough, she purged everyone connected to the Crown Prince: confiscating estates, exiling people, and executing them. For seven whole days, a steady stream of blood turned the entire execution ground red.

Duke Qingguo Jiang Wenyuan had been the Crown Prince’s right-hand man, so he could not escape the purge. The entire Jiang family was thrown in prison. On the night before their execution, her father took a single dose of deadly poison and killed himself, then divided the remaining poison among her, her legitimate brothers, and their principal wife, saying in his final instruction that they should at least leave their bodies intact.

Watching her legitimate brothers and their principal wife fall one after another before her eyes, Jiang Tingyun clutched the poison and sat dazed all night.

The next day, she was dragged to the execution platform. The executioner sprayed wine and raised his blade.

Just as the blade was about to fall, an imperial decree arrived.

The first official decree issued by the Third Princess after ascending the throne:

Jiang Tingyun, daughter of Duke Qingguo, is to be spared the death penalty and sent to the palace’s Yeting Bureau as a servant.

A series about love and enmity. Alternate history, same-sex marriage is legal, and people of all genders can serve as officials. The protagonists are not perfect.

P.S. Rest assured, both heroines’ engagements are nominal only.

Theme: Be sincere in matters of the heart.