What were family affection, warmth, a father’s love, a mother’s love? To me, all of those things were too dazzling, too far beyond reach. They had never appeared in my life, and they never would appear in my dictionary. At the time, however, I still did not understand what it meant to be born into the imperial family. I still had fantasies. I still felt wronged. I still allowed myself to hope for things I should never have expected.
In my dictionary, in everything I understood, there was only scheming, only deceit and calculation, only plots within plots, only princes hungering for power and the throne, only the silent struggle among countless consorts that began with competing for favor and ended with competing over succession.
I had resented, hated, collapsed, and sunk into despair before. But once I understood that no one had the leisure to care about my joy or anger, I stopped struggling. I learned to endure it, and slowly I learned what I wanted as well. Anything obtained through another person’s charity was never truly yours. If I wanted something, I had to fight for it myself. I had to seize it. I had been born into the imperial family, the place the world longed for as the symbol of wealth, power, rank, and luxury, yet also the filthiest, coldest place imaginable.
Unfortunately, ordinary people could see only its dazzling exterior. They could never see the rot inside that was enough to make one sick.
I was the fifth prince of the Hua Dynasty under Emperor Huawen. My name was Feng Xuanyi. From birth, I possessed extraordinary status and rank. Even among members of the imperial clan, even among the princes themselves, my birth was noble enough to inspire envy because my mother was the empress, mistress of the harem.
Unfortunately, though I was a legitimate prince of the highest birth, I could not receive even the simple affection and preference found in an ordinary household. I was neither the eldest son nor the only legitimate son. Above me stood Eldest Brother, the son Mother Empress had awaited and loved most, the legitimate eldest son who had seized every advantage from birth, Feng Xuanzhe. Motherly love would never fall to me. As for fatherly love, with Second Brother, the Crown Prince, already there, how could there ever be any left for me?
There are many things you cannot obtain simply because you fight for them. But there are also things you will certainly never obtain if you refuse to fight. Once I understood that, I learned to live with it. Once I saw everything clearly, I no longer needed to restrain myself with needless scruples.
We were both Mother Empress’s children. We were both princes with a claim to the throne. Eldest Brother could enter and leave the empress’s hall whenever he pleased without restriction, while I could only be raised in the princes’ quarters alongside the other princes and princesses placed nominally under Mother Empress’s care. If I wanted to see her, I had to send word in advance and wait for permission. Even then, every meeting was short. She would exchange a few formal pleasantries, ask about my studies, and send me away.
I once believed this was merely the reserve expected of an empress. I thought her exalted position forced her to behave that way, that distance was the helpless price of standing so high above everyone else. Then one day, Eighth Brother decided he had made a clay figurine and wanted to surprise Mother Empress with it. No matter how I tried to persuade him, no matter how the attendants tried to stop him, once that boy became determined, no one could hold him back. In the blink of an eye, he had dodged everyone and slipped into the empress’s hall. I followed only because I was afraid he would disturb Mother Empress. The clay figurine had a recognizable shape, but it was hardly a gift suited to her status. I knew Mother Empress disliked having her wishes defied, and I feared Eighth Brother, young and reckless as he was, might offend her. Instead, in a single instant, every doubt I had carried and every grievance I had forced myself to swallow finally found an answer.
That was the day I truly learned what disparity meant and what it meant to long for something beyond your reach.
Inside the empress’s hall, Eldest Brother sat shoulder to shoulder with Mother Empress. Something seemed to have upset him, because his face was dark with displeasure. They sat so close together, enjoying a familiarity I had never once been granted, yet Mother Empress showed not the slightest irritation. Instead, she fussed over him anxiously. Because Eldest Brother was sulking and refused to eat, she busied herself having pastries specially prepared, coaxing and cajoling him again and again. Eldest Brother ignored her completely, wearing an ugly expression and refusing to speak, but even then Mother Empress continued smiling at him without a trace of anger. There was none of the stern expression or stiff, distant speech she used during those rare meetings with me.
From that moment onward, I understood that even children born of the same mother could be treated as though they lived in entirely different worlds. At the very least, there was no comparison between Eldest Brother and me.
I was still too childish then. I brooded over it for a long time, unable to understand why the difference between us was so vast. I was cautious, never angered Mother Empress, always respectful, courteous, humble, and restrained. Eldest Brother was the exact opposite, proud, arrogant, willful, and reckless. At the time, I could not understand it and could not see through it, so I remained bitter and dejected. But that period did not last long.
Not long afterward, my tutor taught me the rules of rank and ritual, and I finally understood how irresistible a legitimate eldest son could be to a woman who had spent years at the center of desire, coveted and scrutinized by countless people while coveting an even higher position herself. Strangely enough, a pleasure I could not describe rose inside me at that realization. In Mother Empress’s eyes, it was not that her sons were invisible. It was simply that compared with her sons, power and position were far more tempting. Even Eldest Brother, whom she had cherished in the palm of her hand all these years, was ultimately only a symbol of power and status. In other words, if I truly wanted a mother’s affection, being merely her son would never be enough. If I gained the ability to satisfy her hunger for power and rank, then I would not even need to beg for the things I had once been denied. They would gather around me of their own accord. Why should I refuse such a bargain?
So before I had even learned to recognize every character, I had already learned what it meant to conceal one’s brilliance and bide one’s time, and what it meant for the bird that sticks its head out to be the first one shot. Mediocrity and incompetence were not faults. In the imperial clan, being too outstanding could instead become something absurdly dangerous, especially when you were an unwanted prince who might still grow into an inconvenient obstacle. How I survived each step of those years is something I no longer wish to remember.
My childhood was taut as a drawn bow, flawlessly controlled, without the slightest room for carelessness or error. To everyone else, I was merely a legitimate prince who was ignorant, idle, and destined to remain far from power.
It was a mask. At first, I thought wearing it would suffocate me, torment me, perhaps even drive me mad. Instead, I adapted to it with frightening speed. Before long I could wear it with perfect ease, as though I had been born this way.
Even so, I still did not understand why I had to twist myself into knots just to accommodate everyone else. I did not know who had made that rule, nor why I, of all people, had to obey it.
The throne was a fatal temptation to every prince because none of us could find a convincing reason to abandon a seat that seemed so close, almost within reach. More than that, I wanted to know what expression Mother Empress would wear if I were the one who finally sat upon it.
Would she be shocked? Regretful? Furious? Would she curse me? Shocked that after all her years of planning, the person sitting in the position she had coveted was me. Regretful that she had once treated me with such cold distance. Furious that I had reduced all her years of effort and cultivation to nothing. Cursing me as an unfilial son who had seized the throne and committed the gravest rebellion against her.