A Princess Who Doesn't Want to Reclaim Her Kingdom Isn't a Good Princess

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Two powerful leads, both yandere, terrible people with genuine feelings

A princess seeking to restore her kingdom x a powerful minister of the new dynasty

The year Chu Tinglan, princess of Great Jing, found Li Min, the son of a military governor, he was nine years old, covered in injuries, and looked like an abandoned dog.

She was six, the most exalted princess in the land.

Chu Tinglan named him A Zhi, brought him back to the palace, treated his wounds, and told him, "I'll protect you from now on."

Ten years later, Li Min became Chu Tinglan's fiancé. She thought she had truly protected him for his whole life.

Until the night of the palace coup, when Li Min personally fed a poisonous parasite into Chu Tinglan's mouth and imprisoned her in a side courtyard.

"Your Highness, you have to stay alive. Only then can you hate me."

Over the next three years, Chu Tinglan had the immortality technique Li Min wanted tattooed onto her body, bit by bit. All she wanted was to restore her kingdom, establish a new capital, and avenge herself one day.

Chu Tinglan ventured deep into the martial world, gathered the surviving soldiers, and found the members of the Chu clan scattered across the land. With a single sword, she defeated ten thousand enemies and made straight for the capital.

When Chu Tinglan entered the palace once more, she looked up and saw Li Min dressed in red.

She heard him call out, "I welcome Your Majesty to the throne."

It took Chu Tinglan a long time to understand that the little bird she had picked up all those years ago had never been a little bird at all.

And Chu Tinglan was no longer the innocent princess she had once been.

After ascending the throne, Chu Tinglan imprisoned Li Min in the Western Court, forcing him to watch as she painstakingly settled the blood debts of the past.

Li Min stared at Chu Tinglan's disheveled collar, momentarily lost in thought.

"Every last one of these things is payback for what you did to me."

Seeing his expression, Chu Tinglan punched him hard in the face. "Like what you see, you pervert?"

Li Min wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, reached up to hook a finger in Chu Tinglan's lapel, and smiled. "Your Majesty, pull it down a little more and I'll let you hit me twice more."

The food Li Min ate most often growing up was candied hawthorn, and the food he wanted to eat least was also candied hawthorn.

Because whenever candied hawthorn appeared, it meant there was someone in his mother's room.

At times like that, Li Min would sit outside the door, watching people come and go. This was the most prosperous part of the capital, where the rich and powerful flocked.

He always saved the candied hawthorn for his mother, who usually came out with a few new bruises.

Later, his mother died, and the candied hawthorn disappeared.

Li Min became a lowly servant who poured tea and carried water, living each day for a bite to eat and one less beating.

He struggled through life until he was nine, by which time his trousers were far too short.

One day, Li Min heard that the princess would be passing through the alley. He spent all his copper coins to hire someone to beat him until his head was bleeding, then lay in wait at the narrowest part of the alley.

Snow began to fall. The carriage stopped.

The six-year-old Princess Changning stepped down. Her white fox-fur cloak brushed the muddy ground as she walked toward him, her face full of concern. Li Min opened his eyes and saw a red mark between her brows.

He thought he was looking at a Bodhisattva, a little Bodhisattva from a temple.

From then on, Li Min wanted the Bodhisattva to save him, and him alone.

Even if the Bodhisattva had to leave, she could only belong to him. All he wanted was to cling to her, day and night.

Theme: Independence, resilience, and striving for a better life