The emperor has ruled for many years, yet his harem has remained empty.
Unable to withstand the ministers’ repeated petitions, the emperor casually sketches an imaginary beauty and laughs mockingly. “Find her.”
The ministers are dumbfounded. How are they supposed to find an imaginary woman?
The Minister of Works is taken aback. There is a woman who looks nine-tenths like the portrait: his own youngest daughter, Liu Si.
He eagerly makes arrangements and sends his daughter into the palace.
Looking at the trembling beauty, the emperor leisurely lifts her chin and studies her closely.
Seeing a chance to make the match, the Minister of Works has his daughter’s engagement called off that very night.
Forced into the palace, Liu Si meets her former fiance from afar on the day of her wedding.
A slender, jade-white hand closes around her wrist.
The emperor’s expression is pleasant, his smile inscrutable. “Who are you looking at, Empress?”
Liu Si lowers her eyes, not daring to answer. For an emperor to take a subject’s fiancee is a breach of virtue, but the emperor did it unintentionally. He simply happened to draw her likeness.
All she can do is sigh at the cruel hand of fate.
After the wedding, Liu Si is dignified and composed, treating the emperor with mutual respect while remaining polite and distant, until word arrives that the man she loves has been transferred away from the capital...
Overcome with worry, she clutches a jade-white hand in her sleep and softly calls her beloved’s name. When she wakes, she is flustered and uneasy.
The emperor sits by the bed, smiling gently. “It’s all right.”
In Liu Si’s eyes, the emperor is magnanimous and tolerant, bright as the moon and without flaw, until she learns that her beloved was transferred away from the capital entirely because of the emperor’s jealousy...
The emperor is as refined as jade and praised as a benevolent ruler, yet after the woman from his portrait appears before him, he can no longer restrain himself.
Even knowing Liu Si’s heart belongs to someone else, he is determined to take both her and her heart.
Beautiful noblewoman vs. scheming emperor
Also known as The Emperor’s Ideal Type
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Theme: Sincerity
