All the Dogs I Raised Went Mad

I changed the title a little, sob.

Jiang Chengxiu was born high above everyone else. She was a princess of the Sheng Kingdom, a treasured daughter of the imperial house, proud and carefree. Even a glance from her lowered eyes seemed to pity the common people.

She had kept many dogs.

He alone was a mad dog.

After only two years in the army, he had gained command of the troops and asked her foolish, incompetent younger brother, the emperor, for her hand in marriage.

And all because she had kept him like a pet for a while back then.

What gave him the right to marry her? His lowly bloodline?

So Jiang Chengxiu made him strip, carved away the brand of the Princess's residence from his body, and humiliated him.

He had lowered his head then, blood streaming down, looking just like a quiet dog.

Then he rebelled.

He seized her family's tiger tally, took her family's realm, and nearly beheaded her foolish younger brother.

She praised Young Master Yulou's superb skill on the qin, so he broke the man's fingers.

She praised her adviser for his rich, melodious voice, so he poured something down the man's throat and made him hoarse.

He imprisoned her in the imperial harem and made her a Noble Consort, holding her day and night as he called her, "My beloved consort."

Tsk. A mad dog.

How pitiful. Just a stray, too wild to tame.

She toyed with her fingertips as she watched the humiliated hostage boy, wickedness in her eyes.

"I need to raise another dog, one even crazier than him... a dog."

She would take back the realm.

After Jiang Chengxiu was forced to swear that she would not meddle in her younger brother's rule, she stopped caring about cats, dogs, and playthings, living freely and on her own terms.

She could calmly watch the empire rot from within, her cinnabar-painted fingertips idly toying as she gazed down at the capital. The city blazed with lights, reeking of decadent excess. She was a treasured daughter of the imperial house, high above the world, and all under heaven were her subjects.

Then, in a single day, the kingdom fell.

Her former lover, the pet who had once forced himself upon her and crushed her pride, was now the new emperor's trusted chancellor. He submitted a memorial denouncing her as a calamity-bringing temptress who should be executed at once, her head cut off.

Yet in private, he held her close, his proud and rugged bearing crumbling as he spoke in a hoarse voice.

"...I'll protect you."

Then there was the refined and peerless young nobleman, moonlit and wine-warm, bright as a clear sky after rain, with sword-like brows and starry eyes. He made her a promise.

"The world is filthy. I'll leave with you and roam the jianghu."

The white-wolf-like young general was brimming with youthful spirit. His lowered eyes held a drunken glimmer, his gaze flashed with a young man's pride, and he carried a realm's worth of mountains and rivers on his shoulders as he told her:

"He's a stray, too wild to tame. Look at me... I'm a wolf, and I bow only to you."

And the emperor of lowly birth, even after rising to the highest seat, still looked as wretchedly eager for her pity as ever. He cried out her name, barely able to catch his breath.

"Princess... Princess..."

She watched the mad dog tear into them, laughing from her lofty seat.

She climbed to the highest seat and became a true phoenix.

The heroine begins as someone lost in decadent luxury, but later devotes herself to her cause and competes with the dog-emperor hero for the throne. She witnesses the people's suffering and grows into a true empress who loves her people. The injuries of the heroine's male favorites, whom the hero maims in the blurb, can be healed. I don't like it when other people are made stepping stones for the hero's romance.

The heroine is someone the hero grovels to win over. Don't read if that's not your thing. Groveling-dog romance, raising-a-dog romance, female non-virgin/male virgin, the hero is abused, male rivalry, a love triangle. The hero treats his rivals viciously, with extremely cruel methods.

Lazy, devastatingly cool princess X obsessive, mad-dog, cold-blooded rebel emperor

Theme: Take the throne.