My Sister’s Story
How an unwanted marriage led to the fall of a dynasty
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
When I was a young girl in my fifteenth year, the Li Emperor died of illness, quickly followed with the murder of the crown prince, and the installment of Ouyang Zhen, the only son of the politically ambitious Eldest Princess, as the new emperor.
At that time I did not immediately realize the political ramifications of this event. My father, surnamed Liu, was a trusted general of the Emperor, rich enough to have several wives, of which my mother was the second in seniority, and Fanqing’s mother was first, the Madame of the household. Fanqing, my eldest sister, was my role model and closest childhood friend.
She was adopted, the orphan of the Madame’s elder sister. Her father had also been a member of the imperial court, but when he became a threat to the Eldest Princess, she had him killed. Fanqing had only been an infant when her family home was raided and slaughtered, leaving only herself and her wet nurse. However, this story was a secret only known to our family.
I grew up seeing Fanqing as my true sister. We only had an age difference of a year, so we were close friends. She was everything a daughter of an aristocratic family should be: eloquent, skilled in the arts, poised, and beautiful. When our father praised her above his biological children, my mother’s malice would grow. By the time of the Li Emperor’s death, even Fanqing was aware of what was being said behind her back, the sibling jealousy, and so she began to distance herself from me.
This is something that I truly regret, the first step in the wrong direction. Fanqing had been careful from birth, carrying the secret of her identity and the weight of her unwanted presence, so she stopped sharing her thoughts and affairs with me, and I, instead of reassuring her of my unwavering love, let my mother’s venomous whispers pull me away.
After the news broke of Ouyang Zhen’s ascension to the throne, our family was invited to a palace ceremony for his coronation, for which the daughters of the aristocratic families such as ours prepared a variety of musical and dance performances. Fanqing, always diligent in practice, was the best musician of all of us, and when she sang and played the guzheng to a song she composed herself, the young emperor fell in love.
Within a week the palace sent a caravan to our residence asking for her hand in marriage. The emperor was young and unmarried, and with our father’s high position, Fanqing would be directly promoted to empress. This news sent my mother into a temper — that insufferable girl, she said to me, and not even the true eldest daughter. Fanqing too was angered. She did not personally hate the young emperor, but she hated his mother for the slaughter of her birth family, and initially refused to marry him.
However, our father held a second secret, and that was his own political ambitions. With Ouyang Zhen’s unrightful claim to the throne, tensions had risen in the court, and our father, as well as other members of the court, took that to his advantage. Plans for a coup brewed, and this marriage was strategic. He would have an arm in the inner courts, and Fanqing was not his blood daughter, so he did not worry about the ruined marriage when his coup succeeded.
Fanqing turned to me for a desperate last attempt at support, and I turned away. I was weak, and wanted many things: for her to have a prosperous marriage, for her to stay loyal to her birth family, for my mother’s and father’s wishes to be granted. I could not offer her my advice, so I let her be suaded by our father.
She married the emperor. In time, she grew to love him. I saw it in her letters home. “Sister,” she wrote in her first letter, “I failed as a wife on the night of our marriage. In the bedroom, I could only think of the blood in his family’s hands, and I vomited. Luckily His Majesty was graceful and saw that I was unwell, so he did not force me any further.”
In another letter: “Sister, the other day I could not get ahold of myself, so I asked him if he remembered the family of my mother’s elder sister, and as much as I pressed he could only recall that the reason had never been found. I do not want to believe him, but it seems he has no knowledge of his mother’s doings. Do you know he never even wanted to become emperor?”
In some letters she aggrieved his mother’s control over him. She found a human connection in him: when the parents who raised her had used her as a political pawn, when I had allowed our sisterly bond to go cold, Ouyang Zhen had loved her for her artistry and brain, had given her space when she needed it, and only asked for her devotion in return. As her love for her husband grew, her dedication to the cause grew shaky.
Finally the day of the coup was settled: the first anniversary of the coronation. All the royal family would be present, so it was the best opportunity to orchestrate an assassination. Our father and the Madame sent countless reminders to Fanqing of her duty to her birth family and to the coup, the fifteen-year-long blood debt, and the year of unrightful rule. Her year of strategic marriage. Fanqing sent me a final letter: “Sister, my greatest wish is that there could be another way.” But I could not help her.
That night, Fanqing fretted herself until she fainted and the emperor called in a doctor to look at her. Even on the day of the coup she could not bear to play her promised role. The emperor’s parents were given poisoned wines. They had no personal food testers, but the emperor did, so for him they needed another method. That was why Fanqing had been slipped a sharp dagger, which she hid in her sleeves.
When Fanqing and her husband crossed their arms to drink their wine, the emperor’s parents began to find difficulty breathing. It was here that my sister, who was everything she was raised to be, as alarm began to rise and the emperor began to turn his head towards the coughs of his dying parents, stabbed the man she loved and then turned the knife on herself.
Perhaps it was because the emperor was raised like her, an exemplary soul with scheming parents, that husband and wife found a connection within each other. And why, in his last moments, instead of anger, the emperor used his failing strength to plead for her life, that yesterday the doctor had discovered that she was pregnant, but it was already too late.
That day I lost my sister and my closest friend.
All of that is long past. When I think of those times, I remember my sister’s good nature, the trust she extended to me even when I was not there for her. The times our family forced her along her role. The choices in time that could have stopped her death. Even now our family shakes their heads, unable to understand her foolish choice. She only had to kill him, and then she would be free of the man she so hated. She could have remarried. But I see it differently. I see a girl who grappled with her duty to her family and her unwillingness to part with her husband, and who in the end took the only path she had to hold onto both.
