I Will Not Speak with the King of Chu

An alternate Spring and Autumn period.

Transmigrate into a book, but it's a tragic romance.

A royal princess, but in the Eastern Zhou dynasty.

Ji Yi decides she'll go back and confront the author in person, if she can ever get back at all.

Her father loves her stepmother and plans to strip her younger brother of his position as crown prince. In the original story, this leads to Ji Yi marrying the ruler of Song...

Duke Xiang of Song?

Ji Yi feels like the sky is falling.

The ruler of Chu, Cheng Wang, who once defeated Song and crushed Duke Xiang's bid for supremacy, has been reborn...

The tyrant who killed his brother to seize the throne, defeated Song, established his hegemony, then was forced to his death by his own son in his later years, has decided to start over.

This time, everyone will do as he says!

The realm! Hegemony! The royal princess!

Everything is his! All of it!

But when he arrives in Chengzhou, things take a turn for the absurd.

Mi Yun: "Gods above! Where have you sent me? No, wait, am I remembering wrong? Wasn't this different in my last life?"

Controlled by the plot, Ji Yi is married off to Song, where she discovers that her husband is a genuinely honest man who only ever says three things:

"Whatever my lady says."

"If my lady thinks it's right, then it's right."

"My lady can decide everything."

Ji Yi: "Then I'll take power for myself!"

According to the people of Song, the ruler's wife is a woman who refuses to sit quietly and is consumed by ambition. She controls the country's domestic affairs and slaughters the royal family and ministers.

She's a demoness!

In the countryside of Song, children sing a rhyme: "The Xia fell to Mei Xi. The eternal Shang came to an end with Lady of You Su. Glorious Zhou was destroyed by Bao Si. Song will fall just as the three dynasties did, ruined by a third woman, the ruler's wife on her high terrace."

Her honest husband, a useless ruler who spends all day pretending not to hear, learns of this and smacks one person across the face, then turns around and smacks another.

"Insult me if you like, but don't you dare insult my wife."

Only then does Ji Yi give him a second look.

His name is...

Song Zifu, right?

As Zhou's rule declines and the feudal lords fight for supremacy, Song's hegemony is on the verge of being established under Ji Yi's rule. The village rhyme changes, and now says Song will produce a sage king who gathers the realm back together.

That must be Ji Yi.

Unless the author has another fit...

The author realizes they can't control her and actually plans to write her out...

Oh no...

Theme: Even after transmigrating into a tragic novel, keep striving to live.