Chapter 95. Although the words "cherish and sever ties" are written above the law, they are tantamount to...
Although Shen Yan was talking about her relationship with Gao Zheng, Qi Jingxuan still understood: "You think our family backgrounds are too different, and you're afraid my father and mother will look down on you for not being able to be a good wife. My mother likes you very much and has never looked down on your background."
"Besides... my family background was actually similar to yours, but everything changed because my father became emperor."
He waved his hand hurriedly as he spoke: "But none of that matters. I am just a leisurely prince, not the crown prince. I am not even a candidate. My father has low expectations of me and will not interfere with my marriage. I only need to like my own princess."
"Look at us now, aren't we already married? If he truly didn't like you, even if he agreed to our marriage in the first place, he wouldn't have made me marry you as my principal wife. At most, he would have made you a concubine. Since he agreed, his word is law, so how could he possibly dislike you? Wouldn't that be contradicting himself?"
"So don't worry, Aci. Both Father and Mother have already decided that you are my queen and they won't go back on their word."
Qi Jingxuan was unaware that the Emperor had summoned Shen Yan to the palace and asked her if she was willing to become a concubine of the Prince of Jin. He spoke these words with great conviction, thinking that he could dispel Shen Yan's doubts.
Shen Yan's desire to leave the Prince's residence wasn't due to this particular point, so she didn't mention it. Instead, she looked at Qi Jingxuan and asked, "Is it really true that as long as you like it, it's fine? Can Your Highness truly make your own decisions?"
"certainly!"
Qi Jingxuan made a solemn vow.
"What if His Majesty wants to bestow a concubine upon the Prince in the future? What if His Majesty wants to arrange for the Prince to take a concubine? Does the Prince have the right to choose or refuse?"
Shen Yan asked again.
Qi Jingxuan was taken aback, then suddenly realized, and breathed a sigh of relief, even feeling a little happy: "Aci, are you worried about this? You also want to be with your parents-in-law for life, isn't that right?"
He immediately raised his hand and swore an oath: "I, Qi Jingxuan, swear that for the rest of my life..."
Before he could finish speaking, Shen Yan pressed his raised hand down: "Your Highness, I don't believe in this."
She spoke softly, her expression growing increasingly calm.
Qi Jingxuan was a little anxious: "Then what will it take for you to believe that I've never had the thought of taking a concubine, nor have I ever considered making her a secondary consort? I just want to spend my whole life with you, the two of us are enough. I'm not lying to you, Aci, I really mean it!"
He repeatedly emphasized that he was telling the truth, but it's said that the more he emphasizes it, the more guilty and dishonest he is. But what else can he do besides emphasize these points right now?
Qi Jingxuan was at a loss, when he saw Shen Yan smile again and say, "I believe in Your Highness's sincerity, at least at this moment. But Your Highness, I'm not asking about your sincerity, but rather, if His Majesty has this idea, do you have the right to refuse?"
"Of course! My marriage, my royal residence—I'll decide for myself. I'm not the crown prince, why should my father interfere in these matters?"
He said it subconsciously, his tone very firm.
Shen Yan simply exposed her with a single sentence: "If you could really make the decision, you wouldn't have said that last sentence."
Qi Jingxuan's ability to make decisions was contingent on the emperor's non-interference; once the emperor wanted to interfere, he had no right to refuse.
The emperor might place great importance on her own wishes because of his favoritism towards her. For example, when Qi Jingxuan said he wanted to marry her as his principal wife, the emperor agreed even though he felt her status was somewhat lacking. Shen Yan even thought that the emperor might have agreed because she had asked for a divorce agreement before the marriage, indicating that she would divorce Prince Jin once the matter was over.
She didn't know if the emperor's opinion of her had changed, but he certainly didn't want Shen Yan to take Qi Jingxuan's position as his principal wife back then. This showed that he intended to find a more suitable princess for Qi Jingxuan in terms of status and other aspects. Whether he already had a suitable candidate in mind was unknown, but regardless, that person certainly wouldn't be Shen Yan.
Qi Jingxuan choked up again, and after a long while, he said, "Aci, what you're saying... is all just speculation. When you were analyzing the case, didn't you always say that speculation can only be used to guess and expand the possibilities of things, and cannot be used as a conclusion? In the end, everything still depends on the evidence. How come you want to divorce me now that nothing has happened yet, and you've only thought of this possibility? I've only heard that censors can report on matters based on hearsay, but I've never heard of the Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice being able to judge cases based on hearsay."
Unable to argue with Shen Yan, he resorted to twisted logic, which surprisingly made some sense and made Shen Yan laugh.
But after laughing, her heart grew heavier. Looking out at the vast sky, she murmured, "I've handled many cases over the years, so many. Only a few were solved, most ended up as dead cases, and some... because the perpetrators were high-ranking and powerful, the victims didn't get a good outcome."
“For example, Liu Yuan has been committing all sorts of evil deeds in Yue Ming’s mansion for many years. My father tried many methods but could not do anything about him and was constantly suppressed by him. If it weren’t for Uncle Gao’s transfer there, he would not only have confessed his crimes and accepted punishment, but he would probably have been promoted.”
“But even such difficult cases, with such a wide scope, can be solved and won if the opportunity is right. But there is a type of case… in all my experience, I have never won one, not even once.”
Qi Jingxuan didn't know why she suddenly brought this up, but he still casually asked, "What case?"
"A wife sues her husband and seeks justice."
Shen Yan said.
“In today’s world, whether it’s divorce or amicable separation, women bear far more pressure than men. So unless they are forced to, they generally won’t easily propose a divorce, let alone take it to the authorities. Those who do end up in the authorities are usually driven to desperation and can’t take it anymore.”
“When I first came into contact with the law, I learned that there was a clause on severing ties, and I thought... that it could help women who could not make a living and allow them to leave their husbands’ homes.”
"But later I realized that although the words 'severing ties' are written on the law, they are just a formality."
“A man can abandon his wife with just a letter of divorce, and even the three rules against leaving a wife can easily be exploited. But for a woman to leave her husband, the conditions are extremely harsh. She must prove that her husband has killed or raped her relatives, especially close relatives, before she can be sentenced to a severance of ties.”
“I once met a middle-aged woman who was beaten by her husband for many years because she only had one daughter. One time, the husband was drunk and beat both mother and daughter seriously. In the end, the woman survived, but her daughter died from her injuries.”
"After the woman woke up, she endured the pain and went to the yamen to sue her husband. First, she wanted him to pay for the murder, and second, she wanted the yamen to sever their marital relationship."
"And guess what the authorities said?"
She turned to look at Qi Jingxuan.
Qi Jingxuan shook his head, and Shen Yan said, "The yamen says that for a wife to sue her husband, the husband must have beaten and killed his wife's parents or elders before they can be considered to have severed ties. Siblings are a secondary consideration, but beating and killing children... is not included. Besides... parents have the right to discipline their children. Although the dead child was the woman's child, he was also her husband's child. As a father, her husband had the right to discipline the child. Moreover, the child was not beaten to death at the time; he died on his own after his father 'disciplined' him. At most, the father was not paying attention and hit him a little too hard, which does not count as beating and killing."
"In the end, the magistrate said that the husband had indeed made a mistake in disciplining his children and should be punished with twenty strokes of the cane. However, because he was a scholar with an official title, he was exempted from the caning and was released on the spot."
Shen Yan's tone remained relatively calm until she lowered her eyes slightly, her lips tightened, and her clenched fingertips revealed a hint of her inner emotions.
"That wasn't actually her first time going to the yamen. She'd been twice before, but it was no use. This last time... I took her. I figured the previous magistrate was gone, and the new magistrate might be better, so why not give it another try? Why not give it another try..."
But the result was no different. In the end, the woman went back and hanged herself with a white silk ribbon. She searched through the law books but could not find any reason to say that the magistrate's judgment was wrong.
"So... this scholar didn't receive any punishment in the end?"
Qi Jingxuan asked.
Shen Yan slowly exhaled, pulling her thoughts away from the past: "He was punished, but not for beating his wife and daughter. I later found out that he bribed the examiners during the imperial examinations and reported him. He was stripped of his academic honors, given one hundred strokes of the cane, and sentenced to three thousand years of penal servitude."
That was something Shen Yan had investigated for a long time out of resentment. Although the scholar ultimately met a bad end, she still felt indignant whenever she thought about how he had beaten his wife and daughter without being punished.
“Besides this case, there are many others. I want to try every time I encounter one, but I have never succeeded.”
She glanced at Qi Jingxuan, who was about to say something, and interrupted him again: "I'm not saying this to doubt Your Highness's character, nor to say that Your Highness will definitely treat me badly in the future. What I'm talking about from beginning to end is one thing—power and status."
"The reason why none of the women I met were able to successfully break off their marriages was because, like that woman, their status at home was lower than that of their husbands. If their positions were reversed, with the woman being a scholar and the man an ordinary person, it wouldn't have been so difficult for her to break off the marriages. Perhaps they wouldn't have even gone to the point of breaking off the marriages, and the two of them could have simply discussed a peaceful divorce."
"But in today's world, the Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues are emphasized. The ruler guides the subject, the father guides the son, and the husband guides the wife. No matter how many annotations are added to these ethical principles, they are just like severing ties of righteousness; they are only written to look good, and their actual effect is not great. The unspoken fact is that the ruler is above the subject, the father is above the son, and the husband is above the wife."
"Between the Prince and His Majesty, the relationship is first that of ruler and subject, then that of father and son. In either case, you are the subordinate. If His Majesty makes any request that you are unwilling to make, you can only plead with him to rescind his order. If he insists, you have no room to refuse."
"Let me give you a simple example. What if I have no children in the future, or like my mother, I only have one daughter after more than ten years of marriage? If His Majesty, for the sake of continuing the family line, wants to make you a concubine, how would you refuse? If you cannot refuse, how am I supposed to cope?"
She looked earnestly at Qi Jingxuan, her gaze sincere and resolute: "Your Highness, although I came from a poor family and faced many hardships in my life, my parents and elders always loved and cared for me. I may have suffered mistreatment from others outside, but I have never suffered mistreatment at home. So... indeed, as you said, from the beginning I hoped that my marriage could be like my parents', a lifelong commitment to one person, supporting each other and remaining loving and devoted regardless of poverty or wealth. Even if things didn't go well, I hoped that we could part peacefully after our feelings faded, rather than being trapped in my husband's family and suffering for the rest of my life."
"Therefore, I never thought of marrying into a high-ranking family, and I even crossed such families off my mind from the very beginning. If it weren't for the matter of the Marquis of Cheng'an's mansion that entangled us, I would never have become the Princess of Jin."
"Now that everything is over, it's time for me to leave, otherwise... I'm afraid I won't be able to leave even if I want to later."
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