The Crown Prince Always Fights for What He Wants

A special recommendation: my upcoming novel Life's Lasting Regrets, a marriage-first, love-later story with a groveling male lead. Please add it to your library! The blurb is at the end.

Blurb for this story:

Everyone in the capital says Shen Mingshu is lucky. Her father is a third-rank minister, and her stepmother is the younger sister of the current empress. Thanks to this connection, she is also quite close to Crown Prince Xiao Yuchen. Some even think she has the advantage of being close to the Crown Prince, and has already stepped halfway into the Eastern Palace. With her family background and her childhood friendship with the Crown Prince, all she has to do is be sensible, and she is sure to become a favored imperial consort one day.

But Shen Mingshu herself keeps her distance from the radiant and noble Crown Prince. Even when they meet at home, she merely greets him properly, polite but aloof.

Xiao Yuchen is of royal blood, noble in character, and skilled in both letters and arms. He was made Crown Prince at birth and is highly valued by the emperor. His position in the Eastern Palace is as steady as a mountain.

At his mother's urging, Xiao Yuchen often visits the Shen residence to look after his younger cousins. He has heard the rumors about their supposed childhood romance, but he disdains them, assuming they are a woman's ploy to latch onto power and secure her future. Nevertheless, he can't help but develop a certain prejudice against Miss Shen.

But later, he discovers that Shen Mingshu is very proper and even goes out of her way to avoid him. At first, he thinks she is playing hard to get, pretending to retreat so she can lure him in. Then one day, he learns from his maternal aunt that Shen Mingshu's maternal grandfather has already arranged a marriage for her in Suzhou.

Upon hearing this, Xiao Yuchen loses all reason and uses his power to force a minister's wife away from her husband!

The male lead at first: Playing hard to get? Hmph, I won't fall for it! You'd better not be harboring any other intentions!

Then the good news: She really doesn't care for him. The bad news: He seems to have fallen for her!

Heroine: Are you all right?

A poised, gentle, cool-headed noblewoman x a seemingly warm gentleman who is secretly a dark and unhinged Crown Prince.

The male lead is a little forceful in pursuing her, then gets his comeuppance and falls hard!

One-on-one romance, both leads are chaste and inexperienced.

Upcoming novel Life's Lasting Regrets. If you're interested, please add it to your library! Here's the blurb:

The twentieth year of Yongping.

An imperial edict binds Xie Wanyan to the unloved Sixth Prince. She has no choice but to hope her husband will be easy to get along with.

Just as she hoped, though they have no love between them, Fu Jingzhao treats her with gentleness and patience. After they marry, they live in harmony, and six months later she becomes pregnant. Their peaceful, happy life gradually wins her heart. She believes her husband has given her his heart, too.

The twenty-second year of Yongping: The emperor dies, and the Sixth Prince ascends the throne in front of the mourning hall. In the first year of Qianxi, he names his legal wife, Xie Wanyan, empress.

The sixth month of the second year of Qianxi: The crown prince dies. As Xie Wanyan holds her child, who is slowly losing its breath, and weeps in anguish, unable to summon a single imperial physician, Fu Jingzhao is by the side of her younger sister, Xie Lening, who has just been brought into the palace. He orders the physicians on duty to do everything they can to save the pregnant Xie Lening.

The fifth month of the third year of Qianxi: Consort Xie Lening dies. The empress asks to leave the palace and practice religious devotion in seclusion, but her request is denied.

The third month of the seventh year of Qianxi: The empress becomes pregnant, and the emperor is overjoyed. In the eleventh month, she gives birth prematurely to the second prince and dies. The emperor is overcome with grief and grants her the posthumous title Empress Chenyu.

As her consciousness faded, Xie Wanyan thought: In this life, she had lost her parents, sisters, children, and husband. It had all been so pointless. She didn't want another life.

Yet when she opened her eyes, she was back in the nineteenth year of Yongping, before the emperor had arranged her marriage to Fu Jingzhao! Just as she thinks there is still time to change everything, the imperial edict arrives at the Xie residence earlier than before. She doesn't know that the man she has tried so hard to avoid risked half his life to obtain it.

The male lead's perspective:

Fu Jingzhao's birth mother is not favored, and the emperor looks down on him as well. Yet this lowly status allows him to lie low in the shadows and outlast everyone. Before claiming the throne, everything he shows the world is false: his lack of desire, his indifference to fame and fortune, his refusal to compete or fight. Only his love for the princess consort the emperor unexpectedly bestowed upon him, whom he had never met before their wedding, is real.

But she doesn't believe in the one true thing he feels.

He knows that one moment of weakness indirectly killed their only child and pushed her to the brink of death. After she dies, he uses his own heart's blood to make them both reborn, hoping to make amends for hurting her. But when he opens his eyes, he sees her married to another man, with a son and a daughter.

He can't accept it, so he uses the same method again, bringing them both back to life once more. But this time, she has memories of her previous life, too! Are they fated never to start over?

No! He refuses to believe it!

At a banquet:

The graceful, dignified empress sits beside him, gentle and charming, yet unable to stop looking at the young general across the hall. The usually calm, composed emperor's expression turns cold. Beneath the table, he grips his empress by the waist and leans close to whisper intimately in her ear. His words, however, send a chill through the room:

"If you look at him one more time, Empress, I won't be able to stop myself from tearing him limb from limb!"

That night, he grips Xie Wanyan's waist, seeming at once to beg and to force her, pleading over and over: "Wanyan, please stop thinking about anyone else, all right? You're mine... You can only be mine..."

A gentle, resilient noblewoman x a restrained, obsessive emperor.

A groveling chase for love. Will he win her back? Keep reading to find out!

Reading guide:

1. The story spans three lifetimes. In all three, the male lead and the second male lead are chaste! My male leads must always be chaste, even emperors!

2. In the first life, both leads are chaste and inexperienced. The male lead has no physical or emotional boundary-crossing relationship with the heroine's younger sister; he has always loved only the heroine, physically and emotionally. There is more to the events in the blurb than meets the eye.

3. In the second life, the heroine is not chaste, but the male lead is. The heroine marries someone else and has a son and a daughter. The heroine has not been reborn, but the male lead has. This life has a tragic ending.

4. In the third life, both leads are chaste and inexperienced, and both have been reborn. The male lead grovels to win his wife back.

5. The male lead does not change. The main story begins in the third life, when both leads have been reborn.

Theme: Love yourself before loving another.