My Majesty Your Grace

Ok so I don’t know if this counts as a romance by Chinese genre conventions, but before going into this, you should know that by American metrics, this is NOT in any way shape or form a romance. It’s far more accurately a dark romantic or erotic tragedy. Specifically story is a kind of dark erotic, tragic deconstruction of the imperial romance trope that mainly deals with the reality that anyone an emperor was romantically involved with had to be there whether they liked it or not and the fallout when the person in that position is both highly ambitious and a force of nature. While it’s still fairly idealized in a lot of ways if you think about it, the story is also a far more sober look at what it was like to be queer back in…gosh, would this be the Tang Dynasty? than you typically get. In any event, the initial setup is this: two people who are in a position to carry on a relationship without losing face as long as they stay within the TINIEST and most tenuous sweet spot of acceptability. Although they can nominally be together, they can’t have or even discuss sex the way they want (they *might* be switches, but it’s heavily implied the Emperor is a bottom, which he wouldn’t be allowed to be and is traumatized by an experience related to this, and that the protag is a top) Chen, our lead, also cannot, under any circumstances, be like…enjoying it (he eventually realizes he does and panics) he has to be simply following the emperors orders. The desire for power comes between them. Personal trauma comes between them. They’re two people who are either incredibly attracted to each other or who do genuinely love each other who either way are simply too screwed up and tied up by the society they live in to be able to actually figure out how to love each other. The story also twists the knife by showing in small moments what a force they could be if they were able to work together instead of constantly being at odds.

It’s rough and extremely upsetting, but what I find super interesting about it is a) the story does not work if they’re not gay, it simply does not make sense any other way, you cannot reimagine them as friends or turn one into a woman and b) it isn’t trying to convince you that it’s leads are saints or overly rehabilitate anyone who shouldn’t be and c) Chen doesn’t take the abuse lying down. He goes to a SHOCKING and extremely icky extent getting revenge. I’m so tired of pushovers in this genre, and while the power play between the two is frankly horrifying, as I mentioned, it’s far more raw and interesting to me than that.

SPOILERS!

There seems to be some confusion over the ending, so allow me to explain:

The story is what’s called magical realism – mostly real but with the SMALLEST bit of magic added in. Being Canadian, my immediate point of comparison is the Emily series by LM Montgomery, but a more obvious comparison would be 100 Years of Solitude. Xiao Ding, the emperor, is shown to be very mildly…psychic? He sees the spirit of his first love when he dies far away in battle, and he has another couple of visions throughout the story. Chen DOES die in the end, the confusion seems to be that the very final end is Xiao Ding seeing his spirit as he himself is dying due to poor health from repeated poisoning attempts, and the two of them having possibly an opportunity to see if they can make it work with all their baggage and social conventions left behind them.