Scheming to Save a Fallen Nation

In a war-torn age after the fall of their kingdom, a princess and the crown prince set out to restore the realm and bring peace to its people.

Dual protagonists, biological siblings, no romance, ensemble cast, female lead takes the throne, protagonists are natives of the setting.

(Blurb complete; first three chapters being revised.)

Older brother Xie Ningyi, younger sister Xie Ningxu

In the tenth year of the Chunzhang reign, a foreign tribe invaded the imperial capital. Xie Ningxu led the Chixiao Guards back to Zhaoming Pavilion. Looking back at the Hall of Merit, a symbol of Daqian's golden age, she gave the order: "In this battle, we may die, but we must not retreat!"

She would rather fight to the death than watch Zhaoming Pavilion be destroyed.

As she lay gravely wounded and near death, Xie Ningyi used explosives to break through the enemy lines and save her.

"Little sister, do you remember what you said back then?"

One day, three years earlier, Xie Ningyi had smiled and said, "Today I heard someone say that the two of us are gifted in both letters and arms. What a pity we were born at the wrong time. If only we'd been born a hundred years earlier."

Born a century earlier, they would have seen Daqian at the height of its prosperity.

But Xie Ningxu disagreed. "What if we were born to turn the tide of a collapsing empire?"

She did long for that golden age, but she would rather build a new era of revival with her own hands.

Her mother named her "Ningxu," hoping she would be like the light of dawn, breaking through the end of an age.

In the first year of Hongxuan, Daqian was restored.

Xie Ningxu began a reign that would last forty-three years, later known as the Hongxuan Era of Good Governance.

Ever since Xie Ningyi was old enough to understand the world, he had been troubled by many things. But his mother told him not to talk back to the emperor.

He couldn't understand why the emperor, despite sitting on the throne, refused to shoulder its responsibilities. He couldn't understand why the people were suffering while the emperor still lived in luxury and excess. He couldn't understand why his Daqian, despite having produced the first empress in history, had an emperor who relentlessly suppressed women's status.

So the day he saw his father tear up his sister's book and scold her, he talked back to the emperor for the first time.

His father called him a "rebellious son" and forbade him and his sister from taking part in court affairs. He stubbornly went his own way, and Daqian declined day by day until it fell.

He and his sister struggled to survive, carefully navigating each step, and ultimately restored Daqian.

He became Daqian's first prince of equal rank with the emperor, and achieved another distinction: the longest-lived prince of equal rank in history to die a natural death.

People joked that his name suited him well: Ningyi meant to assist.

The blurb was screenshotted on January 28, 2023, and saved on Weibo.

A few author ramblings: The dynasty is still Daqian, but several centuries later, so these are the relatives of the female lead in the neighboring story.

I made a cover? I might have the weirdest no-romance story ever, with two people on the cover, haha. But you can tell from the way they're positioned that the younger sister is the empress, hehehe. (Whispering.)

Theme: Never stop striving