Trapped in the Bright Hall

Warning: This is a melodramatic wish-fulfillment story. Empress versus enemy nation's Crown Prince. The female lead destroys the male lead's country. The female lead is a wise ruler. The male lead admires her virtue, yet is torn between his country's enmity and his family's hatred. A conflicted love between two forthright people who can't make up their minds. It is a little cruel and a little true to life. Human feelings are never easy to explain. Happy ending. The opening is a little angsty, but the rest is very, very sweet. "Snow falls thickly on vermilion towers, unable to hide grief and sorrow. Partridges cry blood, cranes gaze up through autumn's third month, white clouds turn to gray dogs. Where now shall I drown myself in wine on the jade terrace, as the slanting moon plays its tune? Swallows part from swallows, trapped on the wrong side of the Bright Hall, and laugh to find their hair turned white." By the world's moral code, Zhou Zuheng is a rare and worthy ruler. But in matters of the heart, she conquered his Northern Qi and killed his closest kin. She should never have shown mercy, yet she kept him by her side, letting him watch as she built a prosperous age without precedent or equal. As a ruler, she is flawless. As the person sharing his bed, she reveals her tenderness only to him. Shen Junqi can't bring himself to act. In the end, he can only surrender to the deep love of a wise ruler. If she is to be the ruler, then he will be her subject, because the age before them shines with a brilliant future. The story of a fallen crown prince who fails to avenge his country and falls into love and the path of righteousness. A hundred years later, the history books praise and condemn them in equal measure. But words are so powerless. They cannot record all the tenderness between them, the love and hatred, the mutual admiration. He wants to seize her by the throat and snap her neck, yet also wants to pick plum blossoms for her. The collision between personal feelings and the world's moral code, the tangled conflict of love and hate. They found their answer over the twenty years they spent rising and falling together. She loved him for a very, very long time, and so did he. Theme: Redemption