"You... how long has it been since you've had a man?"
"Insolence! Do you know I could have you killed ten thousand times over for saying that?"
"Killed?" Chong Huan laughed. "Between a man and a woman in bed, there's only one way to die. Does Your Majesty know what it is?"
His voice slithered into her body like that of a demon. "To die of pleasure... and ascend to heaven..."
In the ninth month of the fifth year, on the Xinchen day, the king visited Yeqiu. Changxin Jun Chong Huan returned, and the king doted on him so much that she neglected state affairs.
It is more or less a melodramatic story about a princess who, in order to seize the throne, cruelly drives her beloved elder brother to his death. Then, five years after finally taking power, she meets a wickedly alluring scoundrel who looks exactly like her brother. Perhaps her brother never really died, and has returned, corrupted, using his body to seduce her while plotting revenge.
A story combining faux-incest, the substitute trope, a wolfish younger man, and lovers who torment each other.
Five years earlier: A self-disciplined, virtuous, benevolent gentleman * a shameless, lovesick, scheming princess
Five years later: A gorgeous, wicked, nation-toppling male concubine * a wanton, all-powerful tyrant queen
PS: The elder brother is an adoptive brother, not a biological one. This is not a female-dominated society. The setting is a highly fictionalized Spring and Autumn and Warring States period, with no attempt at historical accuracy. The heroine is ruthless, genuinely and utterly ruthless.
Theme: Exposing how feudal autocracy dehumanizes people
