After the Fake Princess Was Exposed

[My next book, "So the Crown Princess Doesn’t Love Me After All". Feel free to visit my author page and add it to your favorites~]

Many years ago, an infant princess disappeared from the palace.

Years later, Yuan Xi became that princess.

She was the Crown Prince’s own sister. Ever since she was brought back from among the common people, he had cherished her in the palm of his hand. No one inside or outside the palace dared cross her.

Only Yuan Xi knew she was merely a pawn Wei Yang had planted in the palace to win the emperor’s favor and eliminate his rivals.

The Crown Prince of Beiyi might be the man of countless young women’s dreams, but he would never be hers. His coldness and distance were proof enough.

For years, Yuan Xi had buried her feelings deep in the dust, obediently playing his “little sister” and never crossing the line. Once the time was right, she would leave him.

But before she was ready, someone blocked her way with the imperial phoenix seal. “Where do you think you’re going? Where could you possibly go? One day, these vast lands, these mountains and rivers, lakes and seas, will all belong to me. Even if you flee to the ends of the earth and are crushed to pieces, those will still be my corpse! My ashes!”

Proud and unyielding all his life, with arrogance forged into his very bones, he never bent his knee even when reduced to slavery. The first time he bowed his head was to kiss her.

★ Both leads are virgins; they have mutual crushes; one-on-one romance, no harem.

★ The leads are not related by blood. Their romance begins only after they cease to be siblings.

([1] Written 2020.10.21, revised 2021.12.01; [2] Written 2021.1.24, revised 2021.12.4)

🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸

Blurb for "So the Crown Princess Doesn’t Love Me After All":

Xie Chengzhou did not like his Crown Princess.

She was uneducated and dull, with none of the refinement expected of a noblewoman.

What Xie Chengzhou hated most was that after he rejected her marriage proposal, she had drugged him at the Qujiang Banquet, ruining his childhood-sweetheart bond with his cousin.

So even though Jiang Mei bore him a son and helped him secure his position as heir, Xie Chengzhou felt little affection for her.

When rebel forces stormed the imperial capital,

he even left his heavily pregnant wife behind to save his cousin.

After the rebellion was put down, he ignored how her pregnancy had left her frightened and unable to eat or sleep, insisting on taking his newly widowed cousin as a concubine to make up for the regret of the past.

And Jiang Mei truly did love him with all her heart.

She not only bore his harsh treatment without resentment, but even helped persuade the Empress Dowager to let his cousin enter the palace.

Xie Chengzhou was pleased.

If she continued to be so obedient and understanding, he might even grant her the rank of Consort after he ascended the throne.

Until the day of the Qujiang Banquet.

Ordered by his father, the emperor, to meet this year’s successful candidates in the imperial examinations, Xie Chengzhou saw the top scholar’s face, which looked remarkably like his own.

And his Crown Princess, who normally couldn’t stand socializing, had actually braved the discomfort of pregnancy to come meet that man in secret.

The eyes that had never shed a tear for him were brimming with tears for someone else.

The lips that had never once called him by an intimate name were calling that man “Zhaolang.”

Only then did Xie Chengzhou realize that his Crown Princess had never loved him. She had only liked that his face resembled the man she loved.

And Jiang Mei was not truly uneducated and dull, either.

Her zither playing had once kept the orioles in the heavens circling the rafters for three days.

Her lyrics had once been eagerly imitated by scholars throughout the region.

The short song lyric he had praised so highly had been written by her, once the most celebrated noblewoman in Hedong. It told the unforgettable story of her and the man she loved.

Her dazzling talent and the burning passion of a young woman in love had simply never belonged to him.

*

The moment Jiang Mei was maneuvered into marrying into the Eastern Palace, her heart died completely.

She would no longer care about other people’s misunderstandings or her husband’s coldness.

She never expected that when the two of them could finally go their separate ways, the man who had once looked down on her most would become the one most unwilling to let her go.

She expected even less that the proud, self-possessed Crown Prince, whose arrogance ran to the bone, would one day pin her down in a frenzy and ask over and over:

“Did he kiss you here?”

“Or here?”

Theme: You don’t need to humble yourself to the dust to love someone. Just be yourself.