The Long Ballad of Great Sheng

Shen Zhiyi begins at the lowest rung of the women's official service. With her intelligence and courage, she fights her way through the narrow space between the bureaucracy and the imperial harem, exposes the white lotus, solves her family's wrongful case, and drives through reforms. In the end, she becomes the first woman in the Great Sheng Dynasty to wield real power as Grand Secretary, fulfilling her ideal that “women, too, can govern the realm.” The fictional Great Sheng Dynasty is modeled on the Tang and Song systems, with six ministries and nine chief officials. Women may enter government service, but remain constrained by Confucian propriety and family status. The court has a “Women's Office” that recruits talented women, consorts, and noblewomen, allowing them to participate in political affairs, though mostly as decoration. The heroine will break through this system and become history's first female minister with real authority.