Story summary
Dynasty background: The fictional dynasty "Zhaohua Dynasty", the founding emperor established the country with force. After a hundred years, the court formed two major factions, "Qingliu" and "Powerful Ministers". The emperor Xiao Yan was frail and suspicious, the prince Xiao Jing was kind but powerless, and the eldest princess Xiao Mingzhu lived among the people in her early years and was adopted by the government as her adopted daughter Su Ruoxue.
Core main line:
1. Rise from a poor family: Lin Mobai, a poor scholar, is the top scholar in high school and is forced to marry Su Ruoxue (actually the eldest princess), the adopted daughter of the Duke of Guo. The two are estranged on the surface but secretly join forces to fight against the powerful minister Zuo Xiang Gu Yanzhi.
2. Identity reversal: Su Ruoxue gradually revealed her identity as the eldest princess in the power struggle, and worked with Lin Mobai to expose the late emperor's edict and turn the tide.
3. Powerful game: Lin Mobai was promoted step by step from the seventh rank editor. He took advantage of the imperial examination fraud case, the border army salary case and other incidents to break up the alliance between Qingliu and powerful ministers, and finally became the chief assistant, co-ruling the court with Su Ruoxue.
Key conflicts:
- Gu Yanzhi, the left prime minister, controlled the government and colluded with the vassal king to plot rebellion.
- The prince Xiao Jing was falsely accused of treason, and Su Ruoxue was almost killed to protect his identity as the crown prince.
- Lin Mobai was deeply involved in the whirlpool of party strife and was framed and imprisoned many times. He relied on Su Ruoxue's secret plan to avert danger.
Emotional context:
- Lin Mobai and Su Ruoxue went from being an alliance of interests to being dependent on each other for life and death, and their emotional lines ran through the power struggle.
- Su Ruoxue struggled between revenge and governing the country, and finally chose to assist Lin Mobai as the eldest princess.
- Villain characters such as Su Ruoli, the legitimate daughter of the Duke of Guo, and Gu Chengxuan, the son of the left prime minister, were destroyed due to jealousy and ambition.
Purpose: The struggle for imperial power