The Sickly Prince's Everyday Love for His Wife

My next historical romance will be Raising a Darling in My Arms. Please add it to your favorites in my column! [The full text has been thoroughly revised. The complete official version is on Jinjiang.] Blurb: Couple: A refined-looking villainous, lovesick prince versus a gentle, healing beauty Pei Yuan is a peerless beauty famed throughout the capital. Her father is the current prime minister, and her paternal aunt is the empress of the Great Liang. For a time, she enjoys unrivaled prestige, and no noble young lady in the capital can compare to her. Empress Pei has no children. Seeing how close the Crown Prince and Pei Yuan have been since childhood, she wishes for him to marry Pei Yuan as his crown princess. Pei Yuan is gentle, soft-hearted, and obedient, so she accepts her aunt's arrangement. When the Crown Prince learns that he will soon marry Pei Yuan, he beams with joy every day. * Si Yan, the Prince of Ying, sends an envoy to the capital with a letter. After reading it, the emperor changes his decree halfway through: Pei Yuan is to marry Si Yan instead. What everyone had thought was a match made in heaven becomes a pair of lovers torn apart. The delicate young noblewoman is about to be sent far away to marry an ambitious vassal prince. Si Yan is the most powerful vassal prince in Great Liang, commanding a million elite cavalrymen. He is peerlessly handsome and refined in appearance, but inside he is a ruthless, merciless, ambitious predator. Everyone in the capital laments Pei Yuan's misfortune. After marrying Si Yan, she will surely be caged like a songbird, imprisoned in the splendid palace of Ying. Only Pei Yuan knows that she has long since, and in secret, held this ambitious prince in her heart. A little scene: At the grand sacrificial ceremony, the new emperor invites the princes of the realm to attend in the capital. At the banquet, Pei Yuan, queen of Ying, is as beautiful as fresh snow, outshining every other woman. But while walking along the palace paths, she loses one of her embroidered shoes because she is young and a little absentminded. Everyone says that Si Yan, ruler of Ying, is cruel and bloodthirsty, and will surely mistreat the little wife he seized by force. As palace attendants pass by, they see the young queen sitting helplessly on a rocky outcrop, while the tall, handsome king gently holds her pale ankle, bends down, and personally pulls on her stocking and puts her shoe back on. Then they hear the usually taciturn king speak in a deep, gentle voice full of affection, softly coaxing his little queen: "Yuan Yuan, be good. Don't be afraid." Later, to spare his beloved wife the pain of homesickness, Si Yan, ruler of Ying, leads his army into the capital and seizes the throne. (1) Marriage first, love later. The heroine's secret crush comes true. The story includes past-life and present-life elements, and the hero will remember his previous life. (2) A fake forced-marriage trope. The hero is lovesick and unhinged, but dotes on the heroine. In reality, this is a lighthearted, silly, sweet romance. (3) The full text has been extensively revised, so pirated versions differ greatly from the official one. Please respect the author's hard work and original creation, and support the official version. P.S. Vassal prince and feudal lord mean the same thing. During the Zhou, Han, and Jin dynasties, they were called princes of the realm; in the Ming dynasty, they were called vassal princes. (The cover character design is authorized by the artist.) [My next historical romance, Raising a Darling in My Arms. Please add it to your favorites in my column!] Couple: An elegant, lovesick regent versus a gentle, sunny amnesiac (1) The opera at the pear garden ends, and a beauty dances lightly with her long sleeves. Gu Qilin picks up the folding fan she has dropped and toys with it in his hand. His fingers are long and elegant, and his bearing is gracious. Everyone in the capital knows that Gu Qilin helped the young emperor ascend the throne and is now the regent with supreme authority. He is outwardly generous but inwardly ruthless, like a smiling tiger. The regent is always composed and self-controlled, yet he develops a possessive desire for the daughter of the Cheng family alone, and forcibly breaks up her engagement. Cheng Xueyi is about to be married. Her groom is the second son of the Minister of Revenue, but before the wedding he takes a woman as a favored concubine, and she is already pregnant. Cheng Xueyi's father also passes away. Misfortune comes one thing after another. Cheng Xueyi hits her head in an accident and loses her memory. Everyone sighs that even a beauty of such incomparable grace cannot escape the cruel twists of fate. She is sure to live a miserable life in the future, confined to a deep and secluded mansion. When the regent takes a wife, however, the wedding ceremony is conducted with unparalleled honor. And Cheng Xueyi, whom everyone pitied, is now sitting in a splendid phoenix carriage, on the verge of becoming the princess whom all will admire. (2) The bandage on Cheng Xueyi's forehead is removed. She catches the unfamiliar, mild scent of agarwood. Gu Qilin holds her on his lap and looks down to check on her. Just awakened, Cheng Xueyi has a slight headache. She looks at Gu Qilin, trying to make sense of things, and calls out haltingly, "Husband?" Gu Qilin's eyes flicker with surprise. He then conceals the deep possessiveness in his gaze and gently calls her by her pet name: "Jiaojiao, you have kept me waiting so long." It is that hesitant call of "Husband" that leads him, in an age when men have wives and concubines by the dozen, to give her a love and devotion reserved for one woman alone, for a lifetime. (3) After they marry, Gu Qilin slips a bracelet around Cheng Xueyi's slender wrist. Like a shackle, she cannot take it off. Only when the red canopy falls each night does the man use a secret key to remove it for her himself. Later, Cheng Xueyi regains her memory. Remembering the man's ruthless methods, she conspires with her childhood sweetheart, the top scholar, to escape. She only wants to get far away, but Gu Qilin catches her with ease and personally cuts off one of the top scholar's legs. The man remains graceful and unhurried as he wipes the blood splattered on the web of his thumb. Once his hand is clean, he grips the beauty's slender, willow-like waist and corners her at the foot of a mottled wall. The gentleness Gu Qilin usually feigns vanishes. A possessive gleam flashes in his eyes. He leans his thin lips beside her ear and asks in a cold, threatening voice, "Jiaojiao, dare to run again?" From the moment he clasped that bracelet around her wrist, Cheng Xueyi has been kept like a cherished treasure in a luxurious, secure golden cage. He protects and pampers her, but she will never escape him in this lifetime. Reading guide: (1) Set in an imaginary Song-Ming era. A sweet forced-marriage romance. The hero is extremely lovesick, intensely passionate and possessive, but remains faithful to his wife. (2) One-on-one, both leads are sexually inexperienced. A melodramatic, sweet romance. Theme: Beautiful love can heal wounds and help people become more positive and hopeful.