Sang Wan and her friend Yumiko met in college and kept in touch after graduation. During a long-awaited trip, the two accidentally fell into the fictional Yuanxu Dynasty.
When they awoke, they had become Princess Zhao and Princess Min of Luoyuan Palace.
Yuanxu was founded on ritual and governed by men. The court was rigidly ordered. Though women could take part in its affairs, they were always regarded as variables outside the established order.
In this strange and vast empire, at first they only wanted to find a way back to the modern world, surviving and preserving their freedom amid wealth and danger.
But the palace allowed no one to remain a bystander.
Political marriages, separation, and the collapse of the political order followed one after another. The old imperial power teetered on the brink, while no new order had yet taken shape.
From friends who once walked side by side in the modern world to princesses with very different fates in a foreign court, they were gradually pushed in different directions by the tides of history, yet remained bound to each other.
As the realm fell into turmoil and the old order crumbled, Sang Wan ascended the throne step by step, becoming Emperor Zhao and ruling Yuanxu.
She rebuilt institutions with reason and reshaped the dynasty with a modern perspective, yet over the long years she drifted ever further from the name "Sang Wan."
When the histories began recording the age of Yuanxu, she finally understood that she had never been the one who changed the times. She was simply the one the times had chosen.
Theme: Over the long passage of time, the world rewrites you into the shape it needs
