In the third year after the death of the late emperor, the Spring Banquet in Chang'an resumed. Shen Zhaoning, a daughter of a declining noble family, was ordered to enter the palace to sort out the old files of her seriously ill aunt. She originally thought that she was just a quiet pawn in the palace. As long as she bowed her head, observed etiquette, and survived three months, she could return to Jiangnan to guard her mother's grave.
But in the gift book that had been sealed for many years, she saw another list of her father's crimes: the "Shuangtai Case" involving three clans was not a battle between loyalists and traitors, but an old account in which a group of women were given names, scapegoated, and forgotten.
In the palace, there are the old concubine who is trapped in her status as the Queen Mother, the widowed sister-in-law of the Hou Mansion who has been awake all her life but cannot leave the palace, the merchant girl who has turned her smile into a sword, the foreign princess who was sent into a marriage contract by her family, and Pei Jibai who studied with Shen Zhaoning when he was young and is now a close minister of the new emperor.
They were suspicious of each other at first and each had their own plans. Some people want to protect their children, some want to regain their names, some just want to survive this winter, and some want to reopen the old accounts in broad daylight.
Shen Zhaoning understood step by step that the strongest wall in the world was not only in the palace, but also in family laws, marriage certificates, chastity memorials, father and brother's reputation and gentle grace. If she only reverses the case for her father, she is still seeking innocence for the man; if she wants to name all the people who have been erased in the old case, she must first learn not to be anyone's shadow.
That night when the spring lanterns were lit again, the city of Chang'an was filled with shadows of flowers. She testified with her own name for the first time before the old one.
Concept: Every important woman has her own desires, dilemmas, misjudgments and costs. They are not natural sisters, nor are they weak and evil women, but people who make different choices in etiquette, family, marriage and power.
