My Aunt Switched My Mother’s Son for a Freak

My mother and aunt gave birth on the same day. My mother delivered a hideous baby, while my aunt gave birth to a plump, healthy boy. In a fit of rage, my father smashed the baby to death. He divorced my mother, who went mad and became a street beggar, while I went from being the legitimate daughter of a marquis to a chaste woman in a convent.

As my mother lay dying, my aunt held her child and stood on my mother’s corpse, gloating. “This is your child, but he’ll only ever recognize me as his mother.”

That was when I learned that my aunt, a consort of the emperor, had taken a pill to shrink her womb in a bid to win his favor, deforming the fetus in her belly. My father and grandmother had helped her secure the emperor’s favor, even at the cost of my mother’s life. My aunt was rewarded for bearing the emperor’s eldest son and made empress, living in splendor. My father took another concubine, and the whole family lived happily ever after.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day my mother gave birth.