The Marquis in Black

Ruthless, razor-sharp Censor-in-Chief x reserved, steady, refined Crown Prince

Also known as: I Took the Frail Beauty Role, Then Ran Wild in Court

She was supposed to be playing the part of a frail beauty: born poor, orphaned, and afflicted with an incurable illness.

Fortunately, she looked remarkably like the County Marquis’s only son, and the marquis’s wife happened to notice her. Finding her strangely familiar, the woman took her in and raised her as her own daughter.

She should have quietly married as the marquis’s daughter and lived as a beautiful ornament.

But no one could have expected the County Marquis’s good-for-nothing only son to die. His wife was left without support and plunged into grief. The marquis wanted to divorce her, and even his adopted daughter was to be thrown out of the house.

To survive, she had no choice but to steel herself and tell the marquis:

“Treat me as your only son. I’ll take the exams for the honors he could never earn.”

From that day on, she was no longer the marquis’s adopted daughter of mysterious origins, much less a pretty ornament. She became the young master of the marquis’s household: Xu Xing.

To stay alive, she studied night and day with desperate determination. Fortunately, Heaven seemed to be on her side.

The year he came of age, the young man rode in splendid clothes with the spring breeze at his back, becoming the celebrated third-place graduate in the imperial examinations.

Given a new lease on life, she chose the courtesy name Henglan for herself.

Xu Henglan got a taste of the advantages of being a man, and from then on she never looked back. She attached herself to the powerful officials at court, cultivated connections on every side, and thrived in officialdom.

She stopped at nothing to rise through the ranks, earning herself a notorious reputation at court.

Her old classmates accused her of currying favor with the powerful. The Censorate impeached her for reckless conduct and disrupting the established order through reform. Her fellow officials slandered her behind her back, accusing her of building factions and harboring treasonous ambitions. In the streets, people called her the “Iron-Faced Censor,” a woman who cared for no one, not even her own family.

Petitions to impeach her piled up like mountains, yet Xu Henglan continued to climb the ranks. Her retainers crowded her doorstep, and new graduates competed to become her pupils...

Who could have guessed that the Crown Prince, who had always addressed her respectfully as “Teacher,” would pursue her? In the cramped palace chambers, their heated breaths mingled.

“Do you really need me to say it? Is Teacher pretending to be a woman, or...”

Crown Prince Ji Zhongxu should never have had anything to do with the young and promising Censor-in-Chief. But a cup of poisoned wine at the Qujiang Banquet completely changed both their fates. Xu Henglan, then still a Supervising Censor in the Palace, made her name in a single battle, while Ji Zhongxu, who had never been connected to the throne, was pushed into the position of Crown Prince.

He took a blade for Xu Henglan and half-coerced her into joining his faction.

Was it really all about seizing power? Or was it because of some youthful feelings that could not be spoken aloud?

After they parted at the Qujiang Banquet, Ji Zhongxu’s heart was thrown into turmoil. All he knew was that he wanted to walk the road ahead with Xu Henglan.

So when he saw Xu Henglan’s resignation, he felt as if the sky had fallen. With her resignation in hand, he went to the Xu residence and asked:

“Can’t you... stay?”

The heroine has someone she has always cherished. The hero finds out later, and there will be a little angst, but don’t worry, it has a happy ending!

Teacher and student in the early stages, with the heroine as the hero’s teacher.

The author tries to give both leads their moments to shine, and both of them grow.

The main plot follows the heroine as she levels up in officialdom, alongside the hero’s careful courtship and the heroine’s conflicted nature, so the romance starts off a little slow.

Because of the constraints of the setting, the characters may not be very open-minded and can be rather conservative.

There’s a little angst later on, and some of the other characters will suffer too.

Although the setting is fictional, the civil service system is based on the Song dynasty. Its system was quite complicated, so I’ve simplified it here. Please feel free to point out anything I may have missed.

!!! This story is entirely fictional and absolutely does not allude to any real events or people.

Note: The poems written by the characters in this story, as well as those marked “original” at the end, were written by the author, not polished or generated by AI. Writing them takes effort, so if you wish to use them, please credit the author.

Theme: Education changes your destiny.