(Changed the genre, sorry!)
◎ A possessive, wily, realistic elder princess x a proud, sharp-edged idealist minister who is forced to abase himself
◎ Twenty-year age gap / half-teacher, half-student relationship
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When Cui Lingji is six, her family is convicted of a crime and stripped of everything. The women are sent into the palace service. She and her mother depend on each other for twelve years, but then a powerful person's misfortune drags them in too, and her mother's life hangs in the balance.
Hearing that the current elder princess lives a dissolute life, she takes a desperate gamble and kneels in the long street the princess must pass through on her way to an audience at court.
As the princess's magnificent procession arrives, Cui Lingji bows deeply, deliberately baring her jade-white neck, her voice plaintive.
"Please save my life, Your Highness. Please take pity on me."
In the utter silence, a palace attendant dressed in fine silks steps forward and lifts her chin to show her face to the person in the carriage. After a long pause, a single word finally comes from afar: "Granted."
That night, her mother still dies. As promised, Cui Lingji becomes the elder princess's bedmate.
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"Your treasonous ambition can only be fulfilled by me. Your thorn-covered ideals can only be realized by me. In this vast world, with no one but me, where else could you turn, where else could you go?"
"Since you came before me in the street that day, fate itself must have meant for us to be this way. You'd best remember it day and night:"
"In life, you belong to me. In death, your soul will lie beside my tomb."
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1. One-on-one pairing, happy ending, twenty-year age gap, older-woman romance. The elder princess is not sexually pure; Cui Lingji is.
2. An alternate ancient setting with a patriarchal background. The author's ancient-setting kink is taking power from patriarchy, and the princess ultimately ascends the throne.
Moral: Sovereign and subject, like wife and wife.
