But His Highness Has a Crush on the Empress

At six, he sank into the mire, met someone named Mingyue, and watched her disappear again.

At eight, he saw his dying father, the ruler of all under heaven.

At fifteen, he finally found her again, at the new emperor's wedding.

The Tumubao crisis came, the Son of Heaven went on campaign, and the Oirat besieged the capital. The ministers rallied around him. He knew the throne was a hot potato, but decided to take it anyway. He had to protect this city, because she was inside it.

At twenty-one, he ascended the throne and stemmed the crisis.

He welcomed the retired emperor back. People said that Jingtai's failure to understand political intrigue had brought disaster upon himself, but he could not bear to see her lose her husband.

When the emperor returned, he watched her weep in her husband's arms and said, "It's time to give up this hopeless longing." He had meant to spend his days alone within the palace walls, but when he suddenly turned around, someone stood amid the fading lights. It was his wife. He had never realized how long she had silently walked beside him.

At twenty-nine, he died. The unofficial histories preserve only a few words: "Bole" and "strangled."

He must have felt liberated at last, finally able to go find his wife and children.

She was a physician's daughter, and he rescued her when she fell on hard times.

As if fate had decreed it, they married.

On their wedding night, he drunkenly murmured a woman's name.

She did not envy the woman he loved but could never have. She always felt insignificant in his presence, and was more than content just to stay by his side.

When he became emperor, she stood with him through life and death in the arena of power.

She had thought his heart held only that moon, with no room for her. Little did she expect that, on a night when the east wind brought thousands of blossoms to bloom, she would finally win his gaze as he turned around.

She drank the poisoned wine in his place, knowing that Jianji would accompany him, and made her choice without hesitation.

She never knew their child had died before the oil in the lamp ran dry.

In the fourth year of Jingtai, Crown Prince Jianji died. In the seventh year of Jingtai, Empress Hang died. In the eighth year of Jingtai, the emperor died. That same January, the retired emperor succeeded in restoring himself to the throne and changed the era name to Tianshun. Thus, the Jingtai reign lasted only seven years. The past faded like smoke, carried away by the wind...

Theme: The ruler is a scourge upon all under heaven