The Princess Marries Three Times

Huaining died.

Her imperial brother gave her a cup of poisoned wine, and she died on the day the rebels stormed the imperial city.

The emperor, cornered with nowhere left to turn, pulled her into his arms and cried out in a crazed voice, "No one can take you away from me. No one!"

Then he tipped his head back and drank the poison too.

When Huaining opened her eyes again, she found herself back on the day her father had chosen a husband for her.

Beside the emperor stood her imperial brother, still crown prince at the time, watching Huaining with a smile.

"Whichever one Huaining likes will be your husband," he said, though his smile never reached his eyes.

In a panic, Huaining looked away from her brother and toward the two candidates her father had carefully selected for her, visible beyond the gauzy curtain.

She raised her hand slightly. Her fingertip paused over the man who had been sneaking glances at her from the beginning, then resolutely pointed to the other one.

"Father, I choose him."

In her previous life, for reasons she kept to herself, Huaining chose Ning Lingyuan, the heir to the Duke of Anguo, who had long admired her.

Taking advantage of Ning Lingyuan's affection, Huaining treated him carelessly. Whenever something displeased her, she would send him out of her room. When she wanted him, she summoned him at will and dismissed him just as easily.

Then Huaining accidentally discovered that Ning Lingyuan had once had a childhood sweetheart who looked five parts like her. She realized that he had taken her for someone else's replacement. That was why he didn't care how terribly she treated him.

The spoiled little princess had never suffered such humiliation. Once she learned the truth, she immediately drove Ning Lingyuan out of the princess's residence. Even when he knelt outside the gates until he fainted, she refused to see him.

But later, her father died suddenly of an illness, her brother ascended the throne, and the Duke of Anguo abruptly raised an army in rebellion.

The young man who had once knelt before Huaining, begging for her forgiveness, now led a force of elite soldiers to breach the gates of the capital.

Reborn into her previous life, Huaining decided that, whether it was her brother or Ning Lingyuan, things between them were over.

Reader's Guide:

1. Contains two substitute relationships and a fake-siblings relationship. Please judge for yourself whether these tropes are for you.

2. The heroine has more than one man in both her lives.

3. The heroine will not be put through angst.

4. Readers who only care about the male lead, please do not enter.

Theme: Love yourself before loving someone else