A melodramatic four-way love affair.
A beautiful, scheming young empress dowager x a possessive, gloomy, mad-dog eunuch seal-holder x a sickly, cunning young emperor x a charming, tender former emperor.
Gui Qiu had known since childhood that beauty was a gentle blade. It could save people, and it could kill them.
Thanks to her beauty, she rose from dancing girl to empress of Great Yong in just two years, earning supreme honor and glory.
Because of her beauty, though, Suolan was trampled under Great Yong's iron cavalry. Amid clouds of swirling yellow dust, she became a princess of a fallen nation, exiled in a foreign land.
In the ninth year of Qing Qi, the court of Great Yong was thrown into turmoil when the emperor died unexpectedly. The new emperor was only eighteen, and Gui Qiu, not yet twenty, went from empress of Great Yong to empress dowager.
*
Gui Qiu had the looks of a femme fatale and the manner of a seductive vixen. When the late emperor announced his intention to make her empress, the officials protested vehemently, declaring that she had bewitched the emperor and was unfit to be empress.
Only Si Heng, the powerful seal-holder who ruled the court, merely raised his eyes and smiled lightly. "I think making this woman empress is a fine idea."
Si Heng was notorious for being a mad dog. At his words, the hall fell silent, and not a single official dared to object.
In the dead of night, when no one knew, Si Heng would often arrive with snow and wind clinging to him, push open the doors to Gui Qiu's bedchamber, part the gauzy curtains, and climb into her bed.
"Sweet girl, is he better, or am I?" He took hold of one of Gui Qiu's legs, his hoarse voice whispering in her ear.
"Godfather..." Gui Qiu panted. "Be gentle."
*
The young emperor, Wei Lianyu, had been frail since childhood. Countless renowned doctors had predicted that he would not live long and would die before the age of sixteen.
Wei Lianyu had thought so himself.
But, as it happened, when he was sixteen, his nominal father, Emperor Wei Fuque, fell in love with a dancer and insisted on making her empress despite everyone's opposition.
The first time Wei Lianyu met Gui Qiu, he knelt and offered her tea as etiquette demanded, politely calling her Mother Empress, though inwardly he felt nothing but disdain.
But when he looked up, he saw the young woman, only a few years older than him, resting her chin in her hand as she gazed at him. Their eyes met, and spring bloomed across the land.
For the sake of those eyes, he did not die on the night of his birthday that year.
So, before Wei Fuque's memorial tablet in the imperial ancestral hall, the young emperor, who had always presented himself as frail, bared his sharp fangs at his stepmother for the first time.
"What Father could give you, I can give you too."
He held out his arms and trapped Gui Qiu between his embrace and Wei Fuque's memorial tablet.
Her eyes were red from crying, and hot tears sank into Gui Qiu's neck as he begged in a low voice, "Mother Empress, love me. Please, love me."
*
With a powerful eunuch seal-holder who climbed into her bed at every opportunity, and a young emperor who had coveted her for years and wanted to take his father's wife, Gui Qiu thought her life was already colorful enough.
But one night, her late husband, Emperor Wei Fuque, who should have been dead, came back to life.
"Qingqing, why are you looking at me like that?"
On the bed, he pulled her into his arms, slipped his fingers beneath her loose silk robe, and asked with a smile, "Could it be that those two are more to your liking than I am?"
1. The heroine's personal storyline is about revenge, but at its core this is still a wildly melodramatic romance about multiple people in love, not a story about a strong female lead.
2. Everyone has an unrequited crush on someone. The heroine is the only one who isn't a virgin, and every character is crazy.
3. They are not blood-related. "Adopted daughter" and "godfather" are just taboo roleplay terms the author likes. Wei Lianyu and Wei Fuque are not biological father and son.
Theme: Develop a healthy view of love.
