Chapter 342 Finale (Not part of the main text)
(This is all rambling; you can read it or not.)
Actually, I wrote this article because I happened to read Meng Man's "Wu Zetian" and "Princess Taiping and Her Era". After reading them, I was filled with emotion, but also felt a little regretful.
While they were delighted by the emergence of the first female emperor, they also regretted that Princess Taiping did not inherit the throne, and that there were no more female emperors in later generations, so the status of women never improved significantly.
So, in a moment of excitement, I wanted to write a story about a woman ascending the throne and becoming empress in a patriarchal era, hoping to make up for the regrets that were not achieved in reality and to fulfill my utopian fantasy.
Therefore, the background of this article, as well as many details, are based on the Tang Dynasty.
The reason I didn't use it directly is that history is already fascinating enough, and I can't write anything more fascinating than history.
However, many of the female protagonist's actions are modeled after Wu Zetian.
I really like Wu Zetian, but not just because she was the first female emperor.
What I admire is her relentless pursuit of power.
In pursuit of power, she was capable of killing many people, doing many things that we traditionally consider to be the work of bad people, and many other things that are worthy of criticism.
But I found it very human, full of complex human nature, and extremely real.
So I also want to write a female protagonist like that.
She would stop at nothing to gain power.
She is aloof, cold-blooded, selfish, and only cares about herself.
She also indulged in pleasure and admired beauty. In her later years, she feared aging, death, and the loss of power.
She was not "perfect, innocent, or righteous." Like other emperors, she killed her father, wife, and children, and even many people considered good by the world...
She might even be more ruthless than men, because to seize power from men, you have to be more ruthless than them.
Therefore, she was not a good person; she was just an emperor!
While writing this article, I saw a comment from someone who said that this is what it's like for a woman to become an empress. She's no different from a man. She can use anyone for her own benefit. She's cold and ruthless. This is not what I imagined.
This is something I really can't understand.
What was an emperor like?
Why are male emperors and female emperors different?
Why can't an empress be cold-blooded, ruthless, and exploit others?
I don't like to define people by gender, or that men must be a certain way, or women must be a certain way...
Does a woman who becomes emperor have to be "womanly"?
I don't think so.
Therefore, she was an emperor, possessing the great achievements of an emperor, as well as the cold-blooded selfishness and other common flaws of all emperors.
It doesn't make a difference just because she's a woman.
Just like Wu Zetian, she heavily relied on cruel officials, and framing others became rampant. She allowed her male favorites to interfere in politics, and she purged members of the imperial family and court officials. She was extremely cruel to her sons and seemed to have no "maternal love" at all.
But this does not negate her achievements or her greatness.
In fact, in my original idea, the female lead should have been even more ruthless.
Liu Jinzhang, Li Yuanyou, Shen Churong... all of them will die because of her suspicions.
However, as I wrote, fearing that people might not be able to accept it, I kept a slightly more heartwarming version.
Therefore, this article has always been positioned as a lighthearted, enjoyable read, not a political intrigue story.
One reason is that my brain simply can't write sophisticated political intrigue stories. It's already very difficult to ensure that the logic doesn't have any obvious flaws.
The second reason is that historical power struggles, especially in the Tang Dynasty, were really simple: palace coups, palace coups, palace coups, rebellions, uprisings...
Writing about history in a haphazard way makes it seem more like "playing house."
So I can only write what I feel good about.
The setting before the ascension to the throne in this story is basically exactly the same as the outline I initially drafted.
Except for one thing, the original plan was that after the female lead was made crown prince, Liu Jinzhang would secretly take Chen Yanqing to find the old emperor.
After learning the truth, the old emperor took advantage of the abdication ceremony to demote the female protagonist to a commoner and imprison her.
After escaping, the female protagonist leads a large army back to fight her way back.
Then, before the old emperor died, he cried and begged the female lead to spare Chen Yanqing's life and make him the imperial consort to ensure the continuation of the Li family bloodline. Otherwise, he would not give her the imperial seal and the edict of succession, and would make her bear the crime of treason for the rest of her life.
The female lead agreed, and after ascending the throne by imperial decree, she immediately imprisoned Chen Yanqing in a water dungeon, torturing him day and night, making it impossible for him to die even if he wanted to.
Ha ha ha ha!
However, as he wrote, he portrayed the old emperor as too weak, making him completely incapable of winning over the female lead, so he gave up on the project.
The events after my ascension to the throne are basically something I know a few hours earlier than you all every day, and I'll just write down whatever comes to mind.
I write very slowly and like to revise as I write, so I often see a lot of typos and repetitive paragraphs. Thank you to everyone in the comments section for correcting my mistakes.
This book had poor sales from the start and didn't make any money. I was constantly torn between wanting to give up on it and not being able to.
As I wrote, I felt reluctant to stop, always feeling that I still had to be responsible for the characters I created.
However, I did want to finish it a long time ago, but because I was greedy for the 600 yuan full attendance bonus this month, I forced myself to work on it for more than half a month, which left me exhausted.
Then the Crown Prince died of illness, and the Second Prince's ascension to the throne was planned long ago.
Actually, you can tell from the way the two people are written.
The crown prince was a good man, but all good things die young.
Although this is a novel, I still want to show everyone a more "real" life of the emperor.
Her life wasn't all smooth sailing; there were regrets, separations and deaths, and things that even as an emperor, she couldn't control.
This includes the loss of a child in middle age.
She would also grieve and be heartbroken over the death of her beloved son, her temperament would change drastically, her suspicion would reach its peak, and she would kill without cause.
Actually, the initial idea was to set the female lead up to be like the Martial Emperor, dying in her eighties, since her physical condition was good enough to easily live to that age.
The only problem is that the time she "gave birth" was written too early. If she had died in her eighties, Li Ganxu would have ascended the throne in his fifties.
She is too old, which would hinder her from implementing her new policies after ascending the throne.
So, to balance things out, he wrote that he died in his sixties.
However, people can view Lee Gan-wook as a continuation of the female lead.
In fact, both Lee Gyun-won and Lee Gyun-wook are continuations of the female lead; they both embody the female lead's traits.
It could be said that the female protagonist split herself into two versions of herself.
Another point is that the names of the female characters in this article are relatively neutral. I once saw someone say that for a long time, boys have been named with names like "Xiang," "Qiang," "Gang," "Yong," etc., which express high expectations for them, while girls have many names like "Wan," "Shu," "Xian," "Hui," etc., which are considered "weak" or even have a disciplinary connotation. I was greatly shocked by this and decided to take the lead in naming all the female characters properly to change the stereotype!
I estimate I'll be writing two more short side stories, so stay tuned if you're interested.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude once again to all my friends, including "饿xxx", "撬x", "补xxxx", "Mxxxxxxxxxxxx", "燕xx", "不xxxxxx", and "求xxxxxxxxx", for their generous donations. Without your support, I might not have been able to persevere.
Seeing your gifts and comments is the most worthwhile time for me to write novels, and it's also the motivation that keeps me going.
(Actually, I really wanted to write a lot more chapters in a fit of rage when everyone gave me tips, but unfortunately, my abilities are limited. I can only write this many words a day at most. Sorry.)
Finally, I sincerely hope that although the story has ended, the world within the novel can continue...
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