Has the Substitute Prince Consort Been Sent to the Crematorium Today?

[Important: The main story is written in third person.]

I am the only princess of Great Qi, nobly born and revered beyond compare. Everyone says I've done every wicked thing imaginable: I'm mad, rude, and debauched. Even Xiao Heng, the consort I forced into the mud after ruining his marriage prospects, wants to escape me.

In the first year after Xiao Heng became my consort, he injured himself on our wedding day to preserve his chastity, then lay in bed in a vegetative state.

In the second year, Xiao Heng pretended to be possessed by a Daoist priest, had a demon sealed in a bridal sedan chair, and took in a new concubine, leaving me at the center of a scandal.

In the third year, Xiao Heng didn't need to pull any more stunts.

The imperial decree of divorce that I had personally begged for finally let him return to his true love, just as she came back.

But Xiao Heng abandoned his usual gentle manner. His eyes bloodshot, he trapped me halfway along the road, cast a gloomy glance at the new favorite at my side, and ground out, "What, isn't this face of mine, identical to my twin brother's, enough for Your Highness to toy with and abuse?"

I smiled. My new favorite was at my side, and my beloved was dead. How could the two be compared? Besides...

One was a male concubine, a "demon" Xiao Heng had specifically "begged" for in a bridal sedan chair to seduce me and serve as his substitute, so he could escape his position as consort.

The other was Xiao Heng's twin brother, the man he had stood in for, with the same face as him: my true love, returned from the dead.

"Whatever there was between me and my consort was nothing but a game of substitutes. We indulged ourselves for fun. How could you take it seriously?"

#How laughable that he not only took it seriously, but regretted it and wanted me back#

#My consort is sick, very sick. He was only a substitute, yet he actually thought I could love him.

#A substitute's substitute, a clown's clown.

* An entirely fictional country, with heaps of invented details. Extremely melodramatic, with a dark and unhealthy romance.

* The male lead's thought process is something else, and he's got issues. The female lead is playing the villainess (hated by all | adored by all). The characters are imperfect. The blurb is from the female lead's perspective, with foreshadowing.

* The male lead was forcibly taken as a substitute, a cruel couple through and through. He is a substitute for his dead twin brother, who will come back to life. The new favorite is a male concubine whom he invited in himself, then offered up as a substitute for himself: he's scheming, gentle, and manipulative. Other characters are still undecided. A story of rival men fighting for her, with reader polls on who she ends up with.

* Forced taking (yes), taking by force (not necessarily), marriage first (yes), love later (not necessarily), male rivals + substitutes + melodramatic regret-and-pursuit (definitely!!)

* The first draft was an unfinished 10,000-word short story I prepared long ago to try my hand at Zhihu. It was in first person, and I'm revising it into third person now.

* If people might criticize me, feel free to criticize the characters. Any criticism of the author will bounce back, bounce back, bounce back, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!

* Blurb archived on 2024.7.23, with a screenshot saved on Weibo

Theme: Never live in the past