The worst thing I've ever done in my life,
It was when the emperor said he fell in love with me that he believed it.
Until he hugged me and shouted another name when he was drunk——
"Ah Ying."
Only then did I understand,
In the past three years, I have been the only favorite in the harem and the palace.
It's all just stealing other people's things.
Queen Shen Zhiwei was originally the prime minister's legitimate daughter, and she was her only favorite for three years. However, after the emperor got drunk, she discovered that she was just the stand-in for the late Bai Yueguang's "A Ying". After committing suicide in despair, she was reborn and returned to the time when she was sixteen years old - the draft scene. In this life, she decided not to work hard to win favor, not to worry about keeping favor, and not to spend her whole life for the man who never loved her. However, fate was twisting her mind. The more she "fucked up", the harder the emperor pressed her...
Concept: In traditional "stand-in jokes", the female protagonist is often the one being rescued - the male protagonist finally discovers that the "true love" is her, not Bai Yueguang. But this story breaks the mold:
Shen Zhiwei understands that she is a substitute in both lives, and she does not need the male protagonist to "awaken" to prove her worth.
The tragedy of the first life was not that she was "used as a substitute", but that she based her own value on the male protagonist's love. When she discovered that this love was borrowed, her whole world collapsed, because there was no "self" in that world, only "the loved Shen Zhiwei".
Rebirth is not to give her a chance to "be truly loved", but to give her a chance to "live without being loved".