The Moon in the Palace
Show Notes
The Rakes discuss The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randall. In response to the question what inspires or interests Dai Randall about a time period, she said: “To me, the period of time is not as important as the historical figure or the event itself.” This focus is evident in her the book that imagines the early years of Empress Wu. Known as Mei, she enters the palace as a teenager in 639 and becomes a concubine to Emperor Taizong. She falls in love with one of his son’s Li Zhi. As their lives are dictated by the emperor, they hide their relationship. Join our discussion about how we characterize historical figures, how we define romance, political violence, and happy endings.
Books Mentioned
The Other Boleyn Girl by Phillipa Gregory
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Stormfire by Christine Monson
Works Cited
“Women can be bad Kings too. Cuz Feminism” TikTok by Viola Swamp
2016 Elizabeth Storrs Interview “On Inspiration: Interview with Weina Dai Randel”
2016 Brandi Megan Granett Interview “The Empress: An Interview with Weina Dai Randel”
2016 Jocelyn Eikenburg Interview ““The Moon in the Palace” by Weina Dai Randel – An Interview”
Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History: Female Defiance in Confucian China by Dora Shu-Fang Dien
Transcript
[00:00:00.000] - Beth
Welcome to Reformed Rakes, a historical romance podcast that would promise to make you empress. My name is Beth, and I graduated, and I write at the Substack Ministrations.
[00:00:10.680] - Emma
Congratulations, Beth!
[00:00:11.810] - Emma
Master Beth.
[00:00:13.480] - Beth
Yeah, sorry.
[00:00:15.980] - Emma
I'm Emma a law librarian, writing about justice and romance at the Substack Restorative Romance.
[00:00:20.390] - Beth
Today, we'll be talking about The Moon in the Palace by Weina Dai Randel. In response to the question, what inspires or interests her about a time period, she said, To me, the period of time is not as important as the historical figure or the event itself. This focus is evident in the book that imagines the early years of Empress Wu. Known as Mei, she enters the palace as a teenager in 639 and becomes a concubine to Emperor Taizong. She falls in love with one of his sons, Li Zhi. As their lives are dictated by the Emperor, they hide their relationship. It's clear Dai Randall imagines how Mei becomes Emperor Empress Wu with an empathetic eye. When talking about how she got the idea for the book, Dai Randall talks about taking a class studying Maxine Hong Kingston's, The Woman Warrior and how depressing the chapter "No-Name-Woman" was. She says, "I wanted to show my classmates that not all women had that fate in China. I decided to write stories of Chinese women who succeeded in controlling their destinies and who controlled her destiny better than Empress Wu. But I realized Empress Wu had been misrepresented. To understand her better, we had to start from her earlier years." Even as Dai Randall guides her story with empathy, she never shies away from showing the violence it takes to attain a higher political position.
[00:01:56.040] - Beth
Okay. Before we started... I feel like we always say this. Before we started recording We were talking a little bit, and Emma asked me how I picked this book, and I think I just was going down a Goodreads rabbithole, and Jeannie Lin had reviewed it. And so I just was like, Oh, this could be interesting. So I picked it up. And because in Jeannie Lin's books, she references Emperor's Who. Her books take place 200 years after this era. So if you've been listening to us before, you know we're always looking for books set in different time periods or different countries outside of England, early 1800s.
[00:02:38.080] - Emma
Yeah. I feel like we've been working our way towards a non-romance read for a few months now where we're like, Oh, what's going on over there in historical fiction that is romance adjacent? Because I think both of us read historical fiction that is not romance. I think mostly the historical fiction I read is probably further not romance than The Moon and the Palace, a lot of military history things. But this does feel like it's something where I imagine that people who read these type of books maybe are also historical romance readers. But this is a book that is definitely outside of genre conventions, at least in some ways and other ways not. But I think we're interested in what's going on in stuff that people are reading, even if it's not capital Historical Romance.
[00:03:31.570] - Beth
Yeah. And I think we've been talking a bit, too, about what is genre? How do we define romance? Why couldn't you be defining these other books as romance more strongly? I think this is part of our journey on that as well. Yeah. So I will do... I'm actually very proud of this plot summary because I held back a lot, but it's still long.
[00:03:57.640] - Emma
So much happens in this book. It is both longer than the books. It's not longer than the books we normally read, because we do read some long books. But it's longer than a typical... Definitely longer than an Avon Regency. And also it's like... Because she just time jumps. It's like you only get the action-packed scenes. There's not a lot of downtime.
[00:04:16.370] - Beth
Yeah, and I also focused only on certain relationships. I don't think I include there's a scene where Mei goes back and finds her mom at a monastery. And I didn't even include that because I was like, no time. I'm just focusing on In her relationship with Pheasant and her rival Jewel, mostly. Yeah. Okay, so I will do the plot summary, and then we will jump into our discussion.
[00:04:42.680] - Beth
Tang dynasty, AD 631, the fifth year of Emperor Taizong's reign of peaceful prospect. Mei is the second daughter in her family. Her father dresses and treats her as a boy. A monk visits, saying it's a shame Mei is a boy because “if the child were a girl, with this face, she would eclipse the light of the sun and shine brighter than the moon. She would reign over the kingdom that governs many men. She would mother the emperors of the land but also be emperor in her own name. She would dismantle the house of lies but build the temple of the divine. She would dissolve the kingdom of ghosts but found a dynasty of souls. She would be immortal.” After this prophecy, Mei acts and dresses as a girl.
[00:05:33.260] - Beth
Mei's father is a governor. He dies by tiger attack when Mei is twelve. A magistrate throws Mei, her mother, and her sisters out of their home. The family is forced to rely on the charity of Mei's half-brother, who lives in Chang’an, the capital. From there, she is chosen by the Emperor to be one of the 15 selects who will enter the palace. When her mother warrants her about the cutthroat court life, Mei responds “Oh no, mother…I will be a clever fighter, who not only wins, but also wins with ease.”
[00:06:07.760] - Beth
At court, Mei learns the Emperor must summon a select if she is to see him. A complex hierarchy of the "nine degrees of ladies" organizes who sees him first based off of rank, title, and age. As new selects join each year, Mei and the other selects theorize there must be 300 concubines.
[00:06:28.060] - Beth
A few months in, Mei meets Jewel, who compliments her beauty and intelligence. Flattered, Mei tells Jewel a bit more about herself. Jewel is in her 20s. She tells Mei every year the Emperor accepts a gift on his birthday from the concubines. On his birthday, Jewel reveals she sent a portrait of herself as a gift. Mei gives the Emperor a riddle. She recites it for Jewel and gives her the answer. And Jewel wishes her good luck in getting a summons. It works. Jewel advises Mei about sex with the Emperor. Mei asks Jewel her true history, guessing correctly she had a former relationship with the Emperor. Jewel reveals she was the Most Adored seven years ago, losing her position because someone said something mean about her to the Emperor.
[00:07:14.470] - Beth
Mei falls asleep while they talk and awakes in her room and an hour late for her summons. Then Jewel arrives. Mei realizes Jewel must have stolen her summons, and this catapults her back into the position of being Most Adored.
[00:07:31.340] - Beth
We then meet a few people: Taizi, the Crown Prince who will inherit the throne, then Emperor Taizong's uncle, who helped his brother, the previous Emperor, found the current dynasty. He would have inherited the throne if that Emperor didn't have kids. There isn't much love lost between this uncle and Emperor Taizong. Most importantly, we meet the boy Pheasant, whom Mei interrupts while he's hooking up with another girl in a haste. Deck. When they talk, Mei tells him she already knows that he's the Irish groom. Pheasant allows her to think this.
[00:08:08.480] - Beth
Mei trespasses into the sacred altar house following a shadow. She discovers an assassin has injured the Emperor. She sounds the alarm. After the guards arrive, a few ministers and higher-ups deliberate on whether to torture her for information. The Emperor, still injured, but finally speaks up and promotes her from being a select to a and confirms her story.
[00:08:32.380] - Beth
She moves out of the Yeting Court and starts etiquette training. Mei asks the etiquette teacher when the training will end, and Raine responds when she gets an assignment. Raine is the girl who is hooking up with Pheasant and the Haystack, and there's no love lost between Raine and Mei. Mei hopes to see Pheasant again, and when she does, it's obvious that he likes her. He did not let me trail behind him as custom dictated. Instead, he waited for me to catch up with him, and together we walked side by side. He gives her a tangerine and they have a moment. Someone almost catches them together, so they run away.
[00:09:13.070] - Beth
Mei is assigned to care for the Emperor's wardrobe. Like most of us, she's thrown into the job with little training or idea of what to do. She meets up with Pheasant again. He gives her a Jade silk worm, saying it was his mother's. When she asks why he gives it to her, he says because he likes her. He says his mother died years ago. When Mei says his mother will be mad, it's missing. He mentions that he doesn't see Raine anymore and that she came to him initially. They tease each other a bit, and then Pheasant misses her.
[00:09:43.540] - Beth
The Emperor banishes the Crown Prince to the Western border as he suspects Taizi to be behind the assassination plot. There are rumors that the pure lady, one of the four ladies, was behind it. Mei and Jewel continue their rivalry, and Jewel tries to blackmail Mei into stealing a silkworm from from the Imperial Silkworm workshop, overseen by the Noble Lady. Mei attempts to steal one, but the Noble Lady catches her and Mei reveals the blackmail. The Noble Lady takes pity on her, and they talk court politics in how Jewel has aligned herself with the pure lady. They decide to simply tell the Emperor the truth, and the Noble Lady goes with Mei. Blackmail is about some crowns Jewel stole, so they simply say they are missing.
[00:10:24.750] - Beth
At a polo match, Mei recognizes one of the writers as Pheasant. She realizes he's to groom, rather the Emperor's son Li Zhi. She confronts him and he owns up that the name Pheasant is what his brothers call him. Mei loves Pheasant, but wants to win the Emperor's favor. He tells her his story and holds her in his arms.
[00:10:45.710] - Beth
Mei loses her title in a bet at a polo game. The Emperor threatens his people by having someone murdered in front of them, saying anyone who betrays him will meet the same fate. Mei meets with Pheasant later. He says the Emperor wasn't always violent, and it got worse after his mother, the empress, died. They stayed together until midnight, and when Mei heads back, again, someone runs away.
[00:11:07.940] - Beth
Mei asks Jewel for a favor, saying she owes her since her betrayal. Jewel agrees to give one night with the Emperor on the condition that she will be there as well. When Mei arrives, Jewel has prepared a document that would declare her the new empress. Mei and the Emperor talk, and he gives her the name Mei Nian. As she tries to seduce the Emperor, Pheasant enters the room. He He stares at Mei, a little startled, and then the Emperor leaves with him. Mei tries not to betray herself to Jewel about her relationship with Pheasant by her emotional reaction.
[00:11:39.330] - Beth
At least Mei was able to charm the Emperor that night because after he promotes her to being his personal attendant, and she goes everywhere with him. Mei wants to find her mother since she's discovered her half brother has kicked her out, and the Emperor swears that he will help her find her mother.
[00:11:56.840] - Beth
Mei discovers the person who followed her and Pheasant is Raine, and she knows about their relationship. Mei and Pheasant meet again. She says they need to break it off because it's too risky. She returns the silkworm to him. The Noble Lady and Mei conspired to get rid of Jewel. They find out she went by a previous name, Snow Blossom. Jewel becomes pregnant and will ascend to the role of empress when she has the baby. She ends up miscarrying. Jewel claims someone put poison in her wine that caused the baby to abort.
[00:12:28.710] - Beth
The Noble Lady and Mei discover Jewel had been a concubine to the Emperor's older brother before becoming a concubine to the current Emperor. She keeps a handkerchief as a token of love from the Emperor's older brother. Emperor Taizong killed his older brother, his family, and supporters, and then he kept Jewel for himself.
[00:12:47.270] - Beth
The Noble Lady calls out Jewel in front of the Emperor. In a rage, the Emperor orders her to be beaten. “She thrashed, twisted, trembled, and wallowed on the blood-drenched earth…I should have felt joyous and relieved. My rival for all these years, my worst enemy—the conniving, deceiving Jewel, who had sabotaged my chances and ruined my life—had finally fallen, with no way to return. My face was chilled, my hands numb. Why did it have to be like that? Why so many men and so many clubs?” The Emperor then banishes her from court. Jewel then dies by suicide.
[00:13:25.930] - Beth
Pheasant finds Mei later. He says he will have to leave to study and that Bur has chosen a wife for him and he's accepted. He can no longer see Mei. They sleep together before he leaves. “His grip became tighter. I let him hold me, my eyes closed. I would want nothing more than to rest with him and stay with him, but that was not a fate we could have.”
[00:13:46.660] - Beth
Pheasant marries. While he and me have been separated the previous year, Pheasant had slept with Raine and gotten her pregnant. Instead of being punished for this illicit relationship, the Emperor adds Raine to Pheasant's household because she has a son. Mei is devastated but has to act composed.
[00:14:03.200] - Beth
More happens, but ultimately, the Emperor's two banished sons try and overthrow him. The pure lady is a co-conspirator. The Emperor is not overthrown, so there are punishments all around. Because Pheasant retains loyalty to his father, he is chosen as the Crown Prince. Mei and Pheasant reunite. He tells her, “When I become emperor of the kingdom, you will be the empress. The empress of bright moon.”
[00:14:30.130] - Beth
Kind of like what we were talking about before the plot summary with genre romance. Genre is often about books that are in conversation with each other and responding to previous literature. So I'm always curious what books are influencing the book that I'm reading. And because Dai Randall is not deep in genre romance, she talks about the other literature that influenced her book. So in the Huffington Post from February 2016, she said, “My older siblings had some classic Chinese novels, Dream in the Red Mansion, The Tales of the Three Kingdoms, and some novels about kungfu on their nightstands. I would sneak into their bedrooms and steal their books, read them overnight with a flashlight…” And then in an interview with Elizabeth Storrs, where she asks her, “What or who inspired you to first write? Which authors have influenced you?" Dai Randall responds, "I've dreamed to be an author since I was a kid, so it’s hard to say who inspired me to first write. But I can tell you many fine authors influenced me. Among them are Geradine Brooks, Arthur Golden, Mary Stewart, Anita Diamant, and Ken Follett.”
[00:15:48.570] - Emma
Yeah. I was surprised to see those authors because I was not familiar with, I think, any of those authors. I think maybe I had heard of Mary Stewart before, other than Ken Follett. I know Pillars of the Earth, which I think it was also adapted probably when I was in high school into a mini-series. I think that maybe it was a little bit more popular. Not a little bit more popular, but it has a wider spread cultural footprint than the book for millennials, at least. But the book is great, like art history fodder. I think I read it in college when I was an art history major in a medieval class. So it's about a cathedral in a small English town, and they're building the cathedral. And so it has this great scale of things. I feel like this is a big thing in the '80s, books about cathedrals. It's this big scale, large scale architectural project of who is all the people around it in the town. And so it's very much about the scale of time. The whole book takes place over 50 years. And the thing that anchors the plot is the building of the cathedral, so people die, get married, and leave town.
[00:16:47.950] - Emma
And it's like they're always coming back to the cathedral.
[00:16:49.970] - Beth
I feel like that's a historical fiction thing where it's like the focus is on a place and characters are almost secondary. Sorry, I'm just adding that in there. Keep going.
[00:16:58.600] - Emma
Yeah, I think it's a common It's a familiar trope of construction. Then he revisits the cathedral in later books, but I haven't read those. But it's different moments of conflict in English history. There's definitely a Napoleonic one, which I did not realize. Now I want to read that one. But one thing I noticed in this book, compared to genre romance, is how okay Dai Randall is with time jumps and the scale of time. I was surprised at how young Mei was at the beginning of the book. We don't often read books where people are 13, or if they are, it's for a prologue, and then we jump to them being adults. And this felt different than things like a dual timeline romance or with something that has a flash forward or a flashback. But I thought this actually worked pretty well. And I think almost because it seems like with her thesis of what she wanted to do with Empress Wu. It's almost necessary for the story she wanted to tell. And I thought why it works so well. So there is romance in this book, but like Mei and Pheasant. I wondered, and I'm sure we're going to talk about this, is this a romance or not?
[00:17:59.920] - Emma
Are they questions whether we would consider them a central romance? Are they central enough to make this a romance? She definitely has a romance. But so many of the scenes in the book are not really about their plot. He's incidental, as in everyone else is incidental compared to Mei. It's like, he's important to her place in the palace, but so is Jewel, so is the Noble Lady. I think all these side characters and how they're related to Mei, those relationships are as important. I felt another key part of it does make it feel like a romance is that when Pheasant wasn't there, I never really cared what he was doing. I was like, What's he? I was like, I don't care what he's up to or what he's doing or thinking about. Which, again, maybe this is a holdover of historical romance being so beholden to the dual timeline or the dual perspective structure. Most of what I read is dual perspective. It's very odd for me to read a single perspective book. When I have, I have felt like they feel less like romances. When I read Emily Henry, I'm like, This isn't a women's fiction because it's better than romance.
[00:19:00.170] - Emma
It's a women's fiction because it's not dual perspective, which is, I think, unfair. But that is the thought that I have is that if it's something that's single perspective, it is harder for me to feel like it's a romance. But I think those time jumps where we're getting the important scenes in Mei's life works well for this narrative, even if it maybe is to the detriment of this feeling like a romance novel, which maybe Dai Randall does not consider that a detriment?
[00:19:23.130] - Beth
No. Yeah, I agree with everything you're saying. I feel it's interesting because if you are blending two genres together, like historical romance. We read these a lot. Some of those books would maybe lean more historical, and that's okay. It falls more into that category. And I think it's okay to not care as much about Pheasant or what he's up to, because we are so much more invested in Mei. And also because that is her own ambition. I think she does love Pheasant, but her ambition outweighs her love for him, I think. So I think it's also interesting to portray a love story like that. We always read these books where it's like, you're my end all, be all, I would die for you. And I'm like, I feel like Pheasant would die for Mei, but I don't know if Mei would die for him.
[00:20:09.540] - Emma
That's true. Yeah, it's almost like her romance is her hobby. She's like, this is something I'm doing. And she definitely feels strongly about him. For sure, yeah. The most beautiful passages are about her feelings for Pheasant. But it's like her goal is to stay alive more than anything and also to to gain power. But I think also with the time jumps, it works because Mei is such an outsider, which it was an interesting dynamic. I think it was a clever way to have this work for her audience. I think about this a lot with authors who want to write something outside of a period that is common father for historical fiction. How do you write this for an American audience who doesn't probably know a lot about Empress Wu's life? I had heard of Empress Wu. I think I probably know a little bit more about her because the Jeannie Lin books than the average reader. You're getting their interest and then you're picking it up. What do you explain? What do you not explain? How do you do this without info dumping? I think there's a huge tension in historical fiction, and maybe even less than historical romance, because in historical romance, it's like the world building is always pulling back to this other central plot.
[00:21:21.610] - Emma
Where here, it's like we want... Part of the appeal of this book is all those details of the palace intrigue and the plot. Maybe a third of the book, there is no romance plot. So how do you handle that? I think it works partially because Mei is such an outsider. And so this information gets revealed very slowly over the book because Mei is coming from a province to the capital. She doesn't seem to know as much about the palace politics as the selects do. Then they're also living in a world that's very... The Emperor is like... I almost called him an autodidact, which means you teach yourself. I meant autocrat. He's such an autocrat where it's like, we see how the Emperor controls information—It makes sense when Mei doesn't know. There are things, there are scandals that you have this impulse where you would think, Wouldn't everyone know about that? It's like, Well, no, actually, he's so authoritarian that he removes people from the palace who would know this information about Jewel and him killing his brother and all these scandals. It's like, they come in and they were able to have this cult of personality where the Emperor can do no wrong, has the mandate of God, all these things that just Mei is able to buy And then that onion has to be peeled back.
[00:22:32.840] - Emma
It makes sense that Mei is the surrogate reader in a way of learning this information, and that's very believable. I don't think all historical fiction pulls that off as well. I like that line between info-dumping And also having characters explain things that the other characters probably already know.
[00:22:48.490] - Beth
Yeah, I think Dai Randall actually does a lot of really clever things. There's a scene early on in the book where Mei is... She first enters the palace. She's at the lowest ranking of concubine. But she's had access to reading. Her father treated her like a boy. So she has access to this technology that the other girls don't. So they're good with the court politics, and they know that stuff. But Mei has actually read some books, and she's like, Don't you guys know about the nine Like, there's like a hierarchy, and there's nine steps. And she's the one who's telling them, but that makes sense because they didn't have the same access to that technology that she did. And even later on in the book, when the Emperor takes a shine to Mei again, he does multiple times throughout the book. But this is at the point where she's literally following him around as his personal attendant. And I just never thought of this, but it's so obvious. She saw a map for the first time. Like, she'd heard about them, but she'd never seen one. I love that part.
[00:23:42.960] - Emma
She was like, you're like, oh, yeah, it's so early in the world. (laughter)
[00:23:49.690] - Beth
She was like, oh, behold.
[00:23:51.710] - Emma
A map is something new.
[00:23:52.910] - Beth
And I was like, yeah, actually, that makes a ton of sense. So So, yeah, I feel like definitely, Dai Randall is pulling from lots of different sources. I think, again, what we've landed on, maybe a stronger historical. The other authors, I also don't know as much about them. Arthur Golden. The only thing I know about him is he wrote Memoirs of A Geisha.
[00:24:17.930] - Emma
Oh, okay. I have read that. I didn't even think to Google what he wrote. I was like, Oh, I don't know his name. But I've read Memoirs of A Geisha, which was like... That book was popular way later than it ought to. They adapted that movie and they were like, We're I'm trying to make this very racist book into a movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:35.160] - Beth
Yeah. So, yeah, I find it... And then that she... She said she wove in some classical Chinese literature And I would not have picked up on that. But I love when authors do that, because I feel like too often there's this expectation, probably pushed on from publishing to the author, that a reader must pick up on exactly everything. And I feel like I picked up on everything I needed to understand the plot. But if maybe another reader gets a more enriching experience because they know classical Chinese literature, I think that's awesome. I don't think she's to pander to me who wouldn't know that. Does that make sense?
[00:25:13.040] - Emma
Right. And it would definitely make the story worse if it was hitting you over the head with the references, because that's not how Mei would be thinking about them or talking about them. Maybe it would be appropriate in an author's note. It's similar. I was thinking about Beverly Jenkins demands that she's written about what what Black authors or Black historical authors have to do in their authors' notes of proving things to be true. We've talked before how, well, I love Beverly Jenkins author's notes. Those are so enriching to read. I wish more authors did authors' notes, but also it is fundamentally unfair that she feels the need to write them or publishers make her write them when other authors get to write White romances that don't require them, even though those White romances are often more absurd in their history than Beverly Jenkins's incredibly well-researched books. And it's like, yeah, I feel like the references would be similar. Someone might expect her to explain all these things, and that's like an unfair ask.
[00:26:10.270] - Beth
Yeah, I feel like Jenkins does the same thing where she just includes people and she's not heavy-handed about who this person is. I just know to Google it and it comes up. I will put in the work. But please don't... She's good. She doesn't like info dump.
[00:26:23.130] - Beth
Okay, let's talk a bit about the real life of Empress Wu. I feel like I went...I did a modern amount. She is actually very interesting. So I was typing up notes. I was like, I feel like maybe I'm going too deep here, but who knows? Empress Wu lived during the Tang dynasty, which is from 618 to 907. So that's 218 years. There has been a bit of a reevaluation of Empress Wu. Everything I'm about to talk about is coming from the book Empress Wu Zetian in Fiction and in History: Female Defiance in Confucian China by Dora Shu-Fang Dien. Historians have drawn on three different sources compiled in 947, 1046, and 1047. I think there's these major... After her Death and stuff. And after those years, it's like these are the sources they're pulling from. Shu-Fang Dien notes that these sources are seen as biased because, on the part of the Confucian scholars who compiled them.
[00:27:28.950] - Beth
So she talks more about this. She quotes two other scholars of the Sui and Tang dynasties, and these scholars are Denis Twitchett and Howard Wechsler. And they said, “Everything concerning this remarkable woman is surrounded by doubts, for she stood for everything to which the ideals of the Confucian scholar-official class were opposed—the feminine interference in public affairs, government by arbitrary personal whim, the deliberate exploitation of factionalism, ruthless personal vendettas, political manipulation in complete disregard of ethics and principles.” So from the beginning, the record of her has been biased, hostile, and incomplete. There aren't a lot of facts to pull from, so there's an overreliance on rumor.
[00:28:14.740] - Beth
Shu-Fang Dien says there are as many versions of her life as writers. So she was likely born in 627. Wu's father served in the militia and eventually was promoted to governor general. So her family was wealthy and had ties to other prestigious families by marriage. Her father died in 635 when she was nine. Buddhism had a strong influence on her family and fortune telling, which we see in the book. It's not sure how she gained entrance to the court at 14 and 640, but Shu-Fang Dien believes the theory put forth by another scholar that Emperor Wu had a cousin who became the Emperor's favorite concubine, and the cousin used her influence to get Wu to court.
[00:28:55.910] - Beth
The relationship between Emperor Wu and Emperor Taizong is unclear. And since she had no children by him, it's wondered if they ever consummated their relationship, which is how it's reflected in the book. It said he was delighted by her beauty and intelligence.
[00:29:13.720] - Beth
As seen in the book, who the Crown Prince changes three times and eventually falls to Pheasant. It said he never left his father's bedside when he fell ill. And then this is me quoting from the book. “It is rumored that an incestuous liaison between the young prince and his father’s young consort, four years his senior, was formed at this time.” After his death, all consorts without children were sent to convents." Pheasant sees her... I'm calling him Pheasant. That's obviously not how he's referred to in history. Just a little note to our listeners, but I will pronounce that better than his name. So Pheasant sees her at the convent, and they both weep. His wife, the empress, wanted Wu back because she wanted to distract Pheasant from his current favorite concubine, like at the time.
[00:30:06.470] - Beth
There's a story that's infamous that apparently, Wu smothered her own newborn daughter in order to blame Emperess Wang, like Pheasant's wife. Shu-Fang Dien says this is difficult to verify, but more likely it is that the baby died a crib death or was in a poorly ventilated room with charcoal burners and then filled the room with carbon monoxide.
[00:30:29.960] - Beth
Wu does have more children. Pheasant deposes his current wife as empress, and after much cajoling and sheer will installs Wu as empress in 656. In her ascendance, she destroyed her opponents and elevated her supporters. Quote, “Wu’s supporters were predominantly literati of modest backgrounds, many of whom entered into officialdom via the examination system. They resented the dominance of the entrenched northern aristocrats with their hereditary privileges and hoped to reduce their authority in government.”
[00:31:04.520] - Beth
In 660, Pheasant has a possible stroke. They just list his symptoms and then do a reverse engineering of what it possibly was. So he temporarily handed his duties to Wu. This allowed her to show her administrative skills. He did get better, and they have two more children. They travel to Mount Tai for a religious ceremony, and Wu participates. This is pivotal because it cements her as her husband's equal. Their oldest son, the Crown Prince, unexpectedly died in 675 at the age of 24.
[00:31:39.610] - Beth
Pheasant died in 683, and his last testament states Wu should be regent to their 27-year-old son. That son elevates his father-in-law's family, which is seen as potentially treasonous. So Wu demotes him to the rank of just prince and exiles him from the capital. Installed as the next son, Ruizong. The empress does some political machinations that makes it clear she's moving to claim the throne for herself. Like, she retroactively calls her mother a dowager empress, which is something an Emperor would have. And her mother's... I don't know if she's alive at this point. The book didn't tell me that, but she does something like that, that signals to historians that she was making moves towards the throne.
[00:32:30.650] - Beth
As far as her policies go, she grew the bureaucratic state. An example of this is the 684 Act of Grace, which pushed to hire men of virtue and ability rather than relying on the qualification of birth. The act, quote, “bestowed heavy rewards on the aged, and offered relief to the poor. She promised tax relief to the especially burdened residents in the vicinity of the two capitals and showed her own austerity by reducing the number of servants inside the palace. Certain categories of criminals were pardoned and garrison troops on the borders were permitted to return home to continue their ancestral sacrifices as filial sons.”
[00:33:11.480] - Beth
After this, she does enact a police state. She sends out spies out into the city. And she has this giant urn that's like a modern day suggestion box. But as anyone would guess, this turns very bad very quickly.
[00:33:30.150] - Emma
Was she using it to police people, or people were like, Empress Who Sucks?
[00:33:36.280] - Beth
Her original intention, I think, was if you were of a lower class, you could legit talk to the empress and be like, Hey, I'm having an issue. But most people just use it to police other people. And that's how it devolved into. It was not great.
[00:33:53.160] - Emma
People have always been the same.
[00:33:55.110] - Beth
Yeah, I'm so glad we haven't changed at all. So the empress tried to give the throne to Ruizong in 686, but he declines. A lot of factors in politics later in 690, Emperor Wu ascended the throne. In 698, her previous son, who she kicked out, he comes back to the capital at his brother Ruizong's request. Ruizong still didn't want to be Emperor. Obviously, a lot more happens. And also I left out a lot of the petty stuff that she did. She was a mixed bag. She was your run-of-the-mill political leader. Definitely violent. I just didn't dive as much into it in her bio. But she finally gave up the throne at the age of 78 in the year 705. So Yeah, she was an interesting person. And I think, yeah, she probably has been excessively maligned because she was a woman. But I don't think we should swing so much the other way of being like, oh, yeah, be an Be a dictator, guys. Like a girl boss dictator. I think, the sense I get is we're just trying to strip away some of that earlier framing that was clearly sexist and made her much worse than she actually was, and be more accurate in our assessment of her.
[00:35:25.390] - Beth
So that's some of the history of Empress Wu. And we I wanted to talk a bit about how we adapt this, like a real-life person, to fiction. Dai Randall says in many interviews that she wanted to challenge people's views of Empress Wu, like I've mentioned. From one review, she said, “While I researched, I found out there were not many novels about Empress Wu during recent years. Well, there were a few novels written in [the] 1950s and 1960s, but those novels depicted her in a rather harsh light and criticized her because she didn’t follow Confucian rule that women should serve men. Today, the world has changed so much, and I believe we need a book about her that should look at her in a positive light, as a woman, a daring, intellectual woman as she must have been. And I seriously believed that a woman should write her story.” I have felt like this in the past, so I might be projecting other people. But I feel like when you learn about history, especially in high school, the way it's presented to you is like there's a unified character or perception of a historical figure. That's how it's presented to you.
[00:36:32.820] - Beth
But just real life and what we've been talking about, people have multiple interpretations of other people. Just imagine you have one friend, 10 people all have a different perception of that same friend, and they're all seeing the same behavior. So it's not surprising that we have such wildly diverging interpretations of this person.
[00:36:54.000] - Emma
I've been on a War of the Roses kick lately.
[00:36:56.470] - Beth
Oh, nice.
[00:36:57.750] - Emma
So I've been watching all these bad YouTube documentaries, The War of the Roses. But I watched one guy who made a pretty good documentary about it. He ranked the ten worst English Kings. And in the video, he was like, I'm ranking them based on causing instability amongst English people. He's like, This is a different measure that a lot of historians use because to me, a king should provide stability. If you're going to be a monarch, he should provide stability. I was really surprised that William the Conqueror was on the list because I was like, Oh, obviously, William the Conqueror, there's no England without William the Conqueror. You would think that... I think in American history, it's like George Washington. You're like, Yeah, we don't have presidents without George Washington. And so you just were like, Oh, that's the default of we... This thing doesn't exist without that person. But the historian made the point, or historian/ YouTuber, made the point of, Yeah, William the Conqueror makes England... The thing that we think of it as England now starts partially with William the Conqueror and the combination of the Saxons and the Normans.
[00:37:56.740] - Emma
But he's also literally a conqueror. He's It's causing lots of strife amongst the people who live on this island. I think we see that a little bit with Empress Wu, where how are we measuring her impact? It's like she's doing all these cutthroat things, but she's also like, rooting out corruption in the civil service state, that seems like one of the things that people... Because she's not from a royal family, she gets rid a lot of the nepotism that we see in the book, too, of who's in charge of the civil service while also creating this very robust civil service, which is how China is run for hundreds of years. It's like, yeah, maybe that makes life under this dynasty more enjoyable for someone who's experiencing has to pay taxes or needs services from the government. That's a different question than, Oh, was she killing people in her court? Sometimes those are different answers. You combine them when you're assessing this historical figure, or you land on, Oh, it's complicated.
[00:39:00.090] - Beth
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. What is the metric we're using for defining a successful politician, I guess?
[00:39:09.400] - Emma
Right. I think about this, too. Again, English history, you know more of it. It's all this stuff of the War of the Roses. You think of, how much did any of this affect? This had affected 1,200 people in London. It affected these aristocrats very acutely. But how much is it affecting people in Northumberland or Scotland? It's like, do they really care if a York or Lancaster's on the throne if they're being subjugated by their king? It's like that part of the problem is the autocrat nature of the monarchy. And some kings did things like, I was thinking of Henry VIII and getting rid of the monasteries. It's like that is something that you can trace very literally, the impact on people's lives. But that's not necessarily... A lot of the stuff that we know about of this petty court politics, how much is it actually affecting people? And at what point do we care or not care? Or do we ascribe morality to it?
[00:39:58.960] - Beth
Yeah, it reminds me of that quote by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich of like, Whose history are we telling? Everyone loves to say that "well-behaved women seldom make history" as like a hoorah, don't be well-behaved. But she was... She said it in a paper about these religious this quiet women whose story... She was telling their history.
[00:40:20.070] - Emma
It's not that they don't... They make history as like, get past the threshold of their story being told—
[00:40:26.180] - Beth
Yeah, you were so cool.
[00:40:26.530] - Emma
—You were not making history.
[00:40:27.660] - Beth
We got to tell your history. It's like, who's Whose history do we value? Who? Anyway.
[00:40:33.670] - Emma
Yeah. I guess to get back Empress Wu, I definitely heard of her before. I remember we had definitely a Chinese unit on my World History class in my sophomore year of high school, which is probably the last time that I thought about Chinese history in any substantial way, except for our Jeannie Lin episodes, or at least this long ago Chinese history. I guess my perception of her was definitely she was like, cutthroat and maybe like, shrewish, which I think is pretty common of how she's portrayed. I think I'm also wary girl bossing a female monarch. I was thinking about Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola, which I love that movie. But that movie is definitely about... And that movie is not about the French Revolution. It's about being a teenage girl, which is fine, but also you don't need to girl boss Marie-Antoinette
[00:41:15.430] - Emma
Do you know the TikToker Viola Swamp?
[00:41:18.080] - Beth
Mm-mm. (as in no)
[00:41:19.010] - Emma
She's great. She's a high school English teacher, and she makes great videos about the Tudor period. She loves Elizabeth I. But she just made a video recently about... She's really anti-Mary Stuart, and I think she's a lot of modern media is upset with Elizabeth for killing Mary, Queen of Scots. But it's like Elizabeth delays killing Mary, Queen of Scots and does not want to kill her. It's like she had to kill her because she committed treason and also was really fucking up. The political dynamic between England and France. Her point also was pre-internet. It's like, yes, sometimes monarchs get killed during the revolution. You could think it's sad because she was a mother, but also it's sad that people are starving in France. You can't have empathy for the people who... It's easy to be like, Oh, we shouldn't have done that. We shouldn't have been violent. But they're living in violent times. And also, if you're experiencing violence at the hands of the state, maybe the state receives violence. But everything that I've actually read about Empress Wu, and we don't see in this book, except I read a little bit of history about her because we don't see her as empress yet.
[00:42:19.090] - Emma
They mostly indicate that she's an incredibly competent ruler, whether she's cutthroat or not. It's like that's something we don't see in the Emperor in this book, that he's bad at the core politics.
[00:42:28.390] - Beth
Which is funny because I kind of perused his Wikipedia really quickly. And I think for a long time, he was held up as the standard of Emperor, that people would... Like, future rulers would be like, I got to copy that guy.
[00:42:43.550] - Emma
Yeah. I guess I don't know the historical accuracy of that role, but I think I'm seeing what we're seeing with him.
[00:42:48.610] - Beth
But that could still be her own... That could be Mei's own feelings. Do you know what I mean? She's not seeing the competent ruler. She's seeing the cutthroat man who's in charge of her life that she hardly sees.
[00:43:00.500] - Emma
Right. Yeah. We were saying, it was like, what's his... It was this competency. Again, the personal effect on Mei is different than the political impact on all of China. I read the introduction to this non-fiction book. It was a big overview of her life. And what I got from this distinction about this time period in Chinese history is how big of a gap exists between Emperor Wu's life and the average Chinese woman at this period. I think this is something that we make a lot of in the Regency Victorian period. And when a book is set in the leisure class in the Regency and Victorian period, which historical romances often are, people sometimes it will be characterized as working class, but we very rarely read something that is totally working class romance. There is access to a certain level of privilege in those books. Also the gap between the privileged woman in the Regency Book and even the least privileged woman who could be in a Regency Book is smaller, it seems, than between Empress Wu and the average woman in this period of China. Because the history is so robust here, we see how even the most privileged women in court are subject to incredibly dehumanizing levels of violence and manipulation and subjugation.
[00:44:11.810] - Emma
What Mei's aspiration is, is effectively to be the best treated sex worker in court. And even those women are constantly under threat of violence. And the other options are basically to be totally anonymous, totally subjugated. It's just like, what are you going to be subjugated in the house or in the palace? Those seem to be the options. And the fact that she's the only one in the palace who can read. And then Empress Wu, and I think Dai Randall talks about this a little bit, but she talks about how she wanted to show that there was a different style of another way for a Chinese woman to exist. But Empress Wu seems to be the singular example of this, that she comes up, rules for 45 years, and then that's what we get for so long. Then the history also pointed out what you talked about with the Confucian scholars colored this. I think that happens a lot. I was thinking about Eleanor of Aquitaine, I think, is another female. She's never a single ruler. But the people, the historians immediately after Eleanor of Aquitaine are colored by her sons who didn't like her. And so she's often also characterized as very shrewish and is maybe ascribed with some violence that maybe doesn't make sense for her to have committed.
[00:45:26.190] - Beth
Yeah. And I don't... This happens to historical figures a lot. I think there's just a particular flavor for women in history, what they get branded as. But Edgar Allan Poe, immediately after he died, I think his enemy, I'm going to call him his enemy, was said some horrible things about him. And so it's like there's a lot of things about Edgar Allan Poe that are just not accurate. But immediately after he died, there's rumors that he was an alcoholic, whereas now we recognize he probably had diabetes and would take one drink and then be, seem very drunk, like he had taken a lot of drinks.
[00:46:06.090] - Emma
I don't think I knew that because I think I thought Edgar Allan Poe died in a puddle, like he drowned. Is that not right?
[00:46:10.920] - Beth
I think he just got sick.
[00:46:13.590] - Emma
Oh, I thought he was treated for his apparent intoxication.
[00:46:17.680] - Beth
But like I said, I think it's now common that we think he had diabetes. So probably like something related to that. Anyway, I think that's a theory. I don't want to be like he absolutely did have it. But like, so my whole point- The things, especially if you print the story first, it could become part of history very quickly without a lot of like... Yeah. Like, did we go back? We don't know. Like, that story gets printed, like you said, and it's just, how substantiated is it? You don't know. And then it gets part of that person's story for all time.
[00:46:51.640] - Emma
Yeah. I think it's like people... I think we see this a lot because I think all three of us, including Chels, do a lot of archival research in the history of romance. I think we see that all the time there where people will repeat things that have been cited. And it's like, if you follow the trail, you're like, this is a misquote or this is a mischaracterization. If you go back earlier to source, but then it's hard to undo the story of once things are out there.
[00:47:19.240] - Beth
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:47:20.670] - Emma
Yeah. The other thing I was thinking about, other than Empress Wu's personal way that she's characterized, is this genre of historical historical romance. I think sometimes people call books that we love that are certainly romance levels, more historical romance. But this is definitely on the side of historical historical romance, if it's a romance at all. But I think this genre used to be maybe more popular or less divided between historical fiction and romance. I was thinking of a couple of examples from the mid 20th century. I think a vanguard of the genre is Katherine by Anya Seaton. Then there's also Desiree by Annamaire Selinoux, which is a, I think she's a Swedish author or Danish. It's about a Swedish woman. Katharine is about Katherine Swyneford, who's actually John of Gaunt's mistress. John of Gaunt is the son of Edward III. That's the line that Henry VII descends from by his mother, which is important to the War of the Roses. They historically are considered a very romantic, a romance match. She's his mistress, and they get married, and they legitimize the children. Then Desiree is about Napoleon's first love, who eventually marries one of his generals and becomes Queen of Sweden.
[00:48:27.560] - Emma
Then I think Annamaire Selinoux is actually Danish herself. Then also, I just think it's interesting, Napoleon named one of his horses after his first girlfriend. That's who he was on at Waterloo. These books are from 1951 and 1954, and I think they are considered romances. That's how they're cataloged in everyone's collective memory. But I think stuff that's published now is maybe marketed outside of romance. But I think I was looking at, we were, I was talking to Beth about this before we started the podcast. I think this may be an American-UK divide a little bit based on the respective definitions RWA and RNA, which is the UK's version of RWA. I noticed when I was looking about examples of this, that Philippa Gregory, who I think most people that I talk to, I imagine, would be reticent to call those books romance novels, even if they center on a couple with a romantic love story. But RNA gave The Other Boleyn Girl the year it came out, the Romantic Novel of the Year, which is their version of the RITA. It's not qualified by the historical fiction. It is their romantic novel. It's the main award. I wonder...
[00:49:32.290] - Emma
I mean, it just puts into focus that these genre definitions are not as rigid as some people act like they are. I think sometimes we talk about genre, assuming that everyone that we're speaking to agrees with us, and then they're probably also assuming that we agree with them. And that's sometimes how we have conflict about what the genre is. But yeah, I think just... I don't really have a grand conclusion about what this means for what this book is or what this subgenre's place in romance is. But I just thought it's interesting that it's not always as clear-cut as I think your intuition might be.
[00:50:05.270] - Beth
Well, I think this... I don't think you need a unifying theory right now, because I think genre, as we've talked about in the past, is a lens that you can apply to books. So if I can just apply this lens to books, I can yield multiple readings out of this story, if that makes sense. If I'm going to write scholarship on it. And it's like, if I think of this book, you think of the early historical romance novels from the '70s, '80s? They were huge books that had more politics in it and more history because they were just bigger, too. I'm showing Emma, but no one can see. Like they were this thick. Yeah. Doorstoppers. Yeah. They're doorstoppers. You think of Janet Daly's Calder series. Are those romances? I don't know. Right. So I feel I think there is more blending than we think there is, especially if you look back in time a bit. Could maybe... Yeah. Anyway, I don't know where I was going with that either. But I just think it's okay that we're like, who knows?
[00:51:15.210] - Emma
Yeah. I guess I would just encourage everyone to also be a little bit more like, who knows? It's okay.
[00:51:20.620] - Beth
It's okay if people disagree.
[00:51:24.470] - Emma
I get disheartened when people are like, We have to decide right now. And if you disagree with me, you're wrong. About genre genre labels. It's okay. Nobody's... I really... Some people do think people are harmed. If something gets labeled a romance that they don't think is a romance, it's not a harm. It's not...
[00:51:40.190] - Beth
It's fine. Yeah, it's fine.
[00:51:42.040] - Emma
Do you want to talk about violence?
[00:51:44.840] - Beth
Yeah, let's talk a little bit about violence, which we have talked about.
[00:51:49.820] - Emma
Our blood lust. We do like violent books. I know.
[00:51:52.810] - Beth
We're like, someone got stabbed? Let's read this. I feel like we've read violent books, but I feel this one... We have read politically violent books, too. I don't want to say that we haven't. But yeah, this one, more violent, more political violence. There's one scene I'm going to talk about just to illustrate what I'm talking about. So there's a bunch of these polo games going on, and the Emperor wants to show what happens to traitors. It's soon after an assassination attempt has occurred. So he tells everyone to look at this girl. He pulls this girl that he's just kept. She's an enslaved person. And so he has this girl brought out in front of everyone, and he's like, Hey, everyone, remember what happens to her? This is what happens to people who try to kill me. And he has her trampled by horses. So from Mei's point of view, “I was stunned, and around me, the ministers, the vassals, and the ladies looked shocked as well, their mouths open wide, their eyes glittering with fear. But I understood what the Emperor was doing. I had heard enough stories from Father to know that emperors often showed the fate of one person in order to warn the others. It was called ‘killing a hen in order to frighten the monkeys.’”
[00:53:18.250] - Beth
So I think one thing I thought was interesting about this book with the Violence is, Dai Randall wants to paint Empress Wu as empathetic. Like, which I think empathy can be just, I understand that character's motivations. And I don't even need Empress Wu to be likable in the next book. I think she is more likable in this one. She hasn't done anything truly horrible yet. You know? Yeah. I think her interaction with Jewel is violent, and that she does bring about Jewel' demise. So she is violent in the book, but this is at the start of it. She's not full, you know, ah, she's not a ruler yet, where she's enacting violence.
[00:54:05.560] - Emma
She's empathetic, both to the woman who dies, but I think she's also empathetic to the Emperor. She's like, this had to happen.
[00:54:12.370] - Beth
Yeah, I could see her learning. Like, Oh, he did this.
[00:54:15.820] - Emma
This is a way of ruling. It's like, Yeah, this is very sad. This woman died. It's very harrowing. You're seeing a blood stain of a person on a polo field. But it's like, this is how you rule. Again, to go back to Viola Swamp, who I just I love on TikTok, she always talks about how it's hard to project these moralities onto people when it's like, This is just what was done. It's like, this is... And there are things that are cross the line, but it's hard to... It's like, Yeah, we wouldn't want someone to do that now. Probably people didn't want them to do it then either. But it's like, if someone doesn't become cutthroat and ruthless, they're also not going to have any power or they themselves are going to die. So it's tough. But yeah, I think that's smart, that Dai Randall shows the empathy, both for the woman and also it's like, but this is... Mei doesn't... She doesn't turn inward or think like, Oh, I need to get out of the palace because this could happen to me.
[00:55:07.120] - Beth
She's not like, I'm making my escape. I'm getting out of here. She's figuring out what she needs to do to be successful in this environment.
[00:55:15.020] - Emma
Yeah. And of her success, you talked about how her one violent act in the book is indirect, but it leads to Jewel's death. And this scene really reminded me of, and this is probably the one that upset me the most, but it reminded me of Maud's death in Stormfire. Oh, Who is a character who is plotting Catherine's downfall. And Catherine doesn't necessarily lead to her death directly, or it's also indirect through her actions. But Catherine has this crisis where she's very upset someone has died, but she also was able to recognize she is now safer because Maud is dead. And this is a very weird moment for Catherine because she has thought of herself as above the violence that she is experiencing at Sean's hands. But now Maud's death and her relief at her death puts her in it. She's like, now I have to make decisions that sometimes will result in people's death, or I will have feelings about people's death that is beyond just like, sadness. I am relieved that Maud is dead. I think Mei is in a similar situation to Catherine there, where she's objectively save her because Jewel is dead.
[00:56:17.040] - Emma
But Mei also feels the sadness about this is the way that things are. Jewel said at some point that she and Mei could have been friends, and Mei seems to doubt it. But I think Dai Randall makes it clear that in an infinite number circumstances, probably, yes. There are options in this plot where Jewel aligns herself with Mei. I think, again, we talked about the difference between palace politics versus at-large politics. I think this book really focuses on the palace politics, where It almost feels a little bit like sports teams, arbitrary, but sports teams where someone could die. I don't think we get a sense in the book that one of the ladies being favored by the Emperor is somehow better for the people of China, which I think I actually appreciated. I could see people being frustrated with that because it does feel a little arbitrary and maybe a little esoteric of why is she aligned with the Noble Lady and not the pure lady? It's like the Noble Lady is nice to me, but you can imagine the pure lady is the one who's being... She's being nice to Jewel, and they're just have this...
[00:57:15.860] - Emma
It's like a Big Brother Alliance, a survivor or something where it doesn't actually matter. But I think I get frustrated in historical books. Sometimes people have this impulse where they put their politics into factions that make it easily digestible for American audiences. I see this happen with Tories and wigs a lot, where it's like, Tories are bad because if you're a liberal-minded person in the United States in 2025, you think of like, Oh, they're conservative, they're like Republicans. They're bad. Tories are bad. And then the wigs and Liberals must be good. And so in a 19th century novel, like, Disraeli will be characterized as slimy, and Gladstone will like, swing in at the end and say, Congratulations. Have you thought about being a liberal minister? Which happens in bringing down the Duke, but you'll be done more. But also that plot is also... That's really frustrating because it's reconstructing all these very anti-Semitic tropes about Disraeli. But it's like, neither of these men were friends to the proletariat. It's hard to think of, oh, Gladstone is so much better than Disraeli. Both of them did things that weren't what I consider evil politics. I don't need either of them.
[00:58:28.190] - Emma
I don't need a good side and a bad side. I also wonder how the palace politics play out in the second book, because I think a big part of this book is Mei's transformation from essentially being brainwashed in this cult of personality for the Emperor. It was like she becomes disillusioned with him throughout the book, especially as she realizes how he came into power, which is the story that he had suppressed. We talked about how he suppressed information as an autocrat. So nobody knows where Jewel, that Jewel wants his brother's concubine. And so in the next book, When Mei has a romantic relationship with the Emperor, I wonder how that will play out with that impulse for readers to get an equitable romance where we want there to be a back and forth between Mei and Pheasant, but also she's becoming disillusioned with the role of the Emperor and also maybe feeling like she should have more power. I'm excited to eventually read the second book because I wonder how the stuff that I noticed in this book will play out, again, in a book that maybe has more of a plot that I would think of as a typical romance, but Mei is also probably in a a less romantic position as a heroine.
[00:59:33.170] - Beth
Yeah, we were talking about this. She's Taizong's concubine. She's not his wife, which I think would maybe wrinkle some romance readers. And I like what you're saying. I feel like there is this tendency to flatten people's motivations, and you want to make it very clear, here's the good guy, here's the bad guy. This is where your sympathy should lie, versus this is who you're rooting against, where I feel like that doesn't place a lot of trust in the readers. I think I have empathized or rooted for really terrible characters, but just because I was in their point of view. I don't think you understand how powerful point of view is. If I'm in that person's head and I understand what they're doing, even though when I know they're doing bad things, I want them to win. So you're talking about these different factions. I'm sympathetic to the Noble Lady because she's nice to the characters that I'm with. But easily, we could have written another book from Jewel's perspective, and I would be like, Oh, this evil maid is trying to come after Jewel.
[01:00:41.010] - Emma
Right. Yeah. And Jewel's abuse of the hands of the Emperor, I think would be much more... She's in this position where she wants to be with the Emperor because that's the only way for her to gain any power. But she has been rejected by him and hurt by him. And she watched her former employer die at in his hands. It's like, yeah, I could definitely imagine. Because Jewel is a created character by Dai Randall. You can imagine a romance novel very easily of a heroine who's a concubine in the court along with Emperor Wu, who becomes the romantic protagonist very easily. That feels very much like a romance novel. I think Dai Randall gives that option. But I think if you read this book, aligning without considering what perspective you're in, and you are so closely attached to Mei's point of view because it is a single point of view, it's easy to see people as the one dimensional creatures that Mei is seeing them as. But I think Dai Randall does give more available to those characters than maybe Mei is seeing. As a She needs a girl. She wants people also to be on good or bad terms with herself.
[01:01:49.480] - Emma
She does complicate them a little bit by the end of the book.
[01:01:52.950] - Beth
Yeah. And I will say that readers contain multitudes because I feel like I contain multitudes where I'm in Mei's head and I'm sympathetic like to her, but I also feel a lot for Jewel. And because we have been talking about Jewel already, I'm just going to touch on my point of what Dai Randall said about her. "Jewel is my favorite character from the very beginning, but she was so hard to write, which I will get to later. But no, she was not based on anyone from history or the research I had done, nor was she inspired by anyone I know. But we all know of conniving people littered across history and they usually did not end up very well."
[01:02:30.000] - Beth
"When I started the story, Jewel was supposed to be a friend to Mei, I mean, a real friend like the Noble Lady, and she didn’t die in the middle of the book, and her death would happen later, near the end, which would make her a real victim. But as I plotted the story, I just didn’t feel the tension, the dynamics that was needed to move the rivalry forward. So I wrote the betrayal scene, and then, instantly, everything gained flavor and the subtext of deceit and rivalry just jumped out."
[01:02:55.710] - Beth
"I like the rebranding of Jewel, but then Jewel demanded me to give her more depth since she was more complex and enigmatic. I had to rewrite the bath scene during which she talked about her past. She would tell me a bit about herself and be very frank about it, but she would also word everything differently since she had a hidden motive. I rewrote that scene five times[...]"
[01:03:17.550] - Beth
"I also found the complexity of Jewel's character made it difficult to plot the interactions between her and Mei. Mei knew now what Jewel truly was, and she would try not to tell her what she wanted. But Mei was smart, too, and And she learned that quickly, so she tried to detect Jewel's motives. Each time when they saw each other, a silent duel of eyes began. There were several scenes during which neither of them spoke the truth and both tried to prize them secret from each other." So I mostly quoted that for that last paragraph because it's hard to convey in a plot summary, this tension between these two characters that was often unspoken. But even Mei says this of Jewel, and I think she has this thought after Jewel's death.
[01:04:04.940] - Beth
“In truth, we were similar. Like two sides of a fan, we were at odds with each other, we competed with each other, but our fates similarly rested in the hands of the Emperor—the holder, the commander, the manipulator of our destinies.” I feel like part of this tension is like, they probably would have been friends in any other context.
[01:04:25.780] - Emma
She has this immediate connection with Jewel that she doesn't feel with the other that are her direct competition. She doesn't fully understand what Jewel's role is in the court. They seem to have a genuine connection. Because I also don't think Jewel would have been able to manipulate Mei as she did the first betrayal if they didn't. I guess that's the thing that I could see a reader being frustrated with. I think probably a more typical romance novel would probably land on a little bit more kitschy where like, Mei is like, oh, we should have been friends. Who I should be mad at is the Emperor. I should be mad at Pheasant. I should be mad at the men who have put us in this position. We don't get that big speech. We just get this part where Mei is like, Oh, we actually are similar. It doesn't change that may needed Jewel to die, though, in order to be safe. It doesn't become like, oh, it was the men all along. We don't have those... Mei doesn't have those internal thoughts of like, it was the patriarchy, because that would be very hack made. But I think a reader can be that and be like, Oh, yeah, this is happening to these characters because they are being subjugated and thus have to be enemies with each other.
[01:05:40.860] - Emma
But Mei doesn't need to come to that conclusion in order to have a character arc. She doesn't have to align with the reader. That's the other thing with first-person present works. I think the reader has to do more work to not align totally with the character or not assume that the author wants you to totally align with the character because you are so intimate. But I don't think you have to conclude the same things about Jewel that Mei does while reading this book. You also have your own perspective.
[01:06:10.280] - Beth
Yeah. There's one other relationship I wanted to touch on because this is a romance podcast. Yes. I can talk about Phesant in Mei. So there's one quote I will read, which I think is the theme of their love, and this is Mei thinking, “I know now: love and destiny were two wild horses that could not be curbed. They galloped in different directions and ran down different paths where streams of desire and hope would not converge. To follow one was to betray the other. To make one happy was to break the other’s heart…The only thing we could do was hope for the best, to believe that the horse we chose would find us a safe destination.” So we mentioned this earlier. I just find her highly practical. I find her very ambitious. So it's like, like I said, I think she does love Pheasant. But she throughout the book, there's lots of talks of fortune tellers, and that is true to the history from that book, that non-fiction book I read. Right at the start of the book, there's a fortune teller that comes to Mei's house and basically sees her future as becoming an empress.
[01:07:30.940] - Beth
And I think that's actually smart on Dai Randall's part, because if you didn't know anything about Empress Wu, you literally just picked up this book. You had no context. You didn't know it was based on a real person. You would know that the trajectory of this book is for this person, they're going to be empress. That's the goal. So I thought that was a really smart way to integrate actual feelings of the time, but also to tip to the reader of like, hey, this is the way is going. Yeah. And that's that is what Mei really wants. So it's funny. It's interesting to see that in the lens of romance. How does this play out in their relationship? What actions will she take when it comes to Pheasant? And you said there's a third of the book where they're not even really together. And it's like, that's by choice. She's like, I care more about... It would be very bad for them to be caught together. She's the Emperor's concubine. That's the Crown Prince. There's real threats here. It's not just me being like, I don't like them that much. There's a real threat here.
[01:08:37.350] - Emma
It is weird because we've talked about this before with... I think it comes up a lot in queer romances, where one character would objectively be more punished if the relationship was discovered. That feels like that where it's like, Pheasant is not necessarily thinking about... He probably would be exiled, not necessarily killed. And he doesn't want to be Emperor anyway. So he's like, okay. I I want to hang out with the horses. I can do that anywhere. And so Mei is the one who has to set all the boundaries because she would die if she was discovered. And not that Pheasant doesn't understand those stakes, but I don't think he cares. He doesn't care, but also he does It's this weird dynamic. And I think... I don't think he cares. He's not thinking about it. And because he's not thinking about it, you can interpret that he doesn't care. But also we talked about how he cares more about Mei than may cares about him in some ways, too, where he's pursuing her going after her while she's a little bit more standoffish and a little bit more single-focused on her other goals. But I was thinking, we talked about Jeannie Lin a little bit already, and that's one of the reasons Beth found this book.
[01:09:40.950] - Emma
But I think despite all of Jeannie Lin's research into this time period, in her book, 200 years later, she still gives a very acceptable romance in genre fiction romance. I think you read her couples and you're like, this feels like a couple that an American reader understands. You Even though it's very historically accurate, and I love those books, it feels like a heterosexual historical romance. She unifies history and genre fiction conventions, I think, with great skill. I think because Dai Randall is writing about real people, The needle she's threading is different. The question she's asking of her writing is different. In this book, we're asked to tolerate that Pheasant's ending is that he is a wife and is fathering a child by one of Mei's enemies. He has a child with Raine at the end of the book, or I think she's pregnant at the end of the book.
[01:10:30.110] - Beth
I think that's actually so interesting, and I love that because it's like, he doesn't have the same feelings about Raine that Mei does. And he's just like, maybe he's sad about it. I don't know. But they have a kid together. I love it. This is so messy.
[01:10:43.650] - Emma
So messy. And so I could see a reader's reaction be like, well, that's not really a romance. Phesant clearly doesn't really love her, quote unquote, because he slept with Raine, and he's willing to marry into someone else. Though he's like, I don't really care about my wife, but I have to marry her.
[01:10:57.080] - Beth
Think of the... His father is literally the Emperor with a harem of women. So his idea of what love is is so different from ours.
[01:11:04.270] - Emma
I think hopefully listeners of this podcast would know that to reject this alternative version of romance is not the Reformed Rake's way of going about reading these things. It's like, Mei gets something out of the relationship with Pheasant, and he's getting something out of her. It's a very mutual relationship, even though they have different stakes and different things. And also when they're together, those scenes are very romantically written in the prose. But I think American readers 2025, forget about how much our perception of romantic relationships are products of the moment that we live in. But we see this all the time in historical romance. We see those other people are marrying for property, but we figured it out because our love looks like a big, sweeping, epic romance. And so those characters in those historical romances, we have to understand that if it's satisfying a 2025 impulse, it's possibly being colored by the time that it is written. And something like an alternative doesn't mean that it's less romantic or it has to be less satisfactory.
[01:12:04.330] - Beth
It's not that it's less of a story that's worth being told. I feel like this push, the happily ever after, the tone has to be happy, I think really hampers romance or us defining books as romance? Right.
[01:12:18.160] - Emma
Yeah, the happily ever after. Because I always say that that phrase is a term of art. And that term of art means that the words together means something different than the words individually. So happily ever after, to me, does not necessarily mean that it has to be happy. This happens all the time with language, but people are like, it has to be happy. And it's like, there are romances that I love that I find incredibly romantic that do not end happily. I think Stormfire is an example of that. I think the... I can't remember the name. The one with Strasbourg, the Pogroms, Bed of Spices.
[01:12:50.080] - Beth
Oh, Bed of Spices.
[01:12:50.730] - Emma
Yeah, that book ends so... They're together. They're married. They are thriving in the circumstances that they're trying to achieve, but they have been exiled from their community. It is a It's a tragic story about what has happened in the programs of Strasbourg. It's very, very sad. But it is a happy ever after to me because the couple is together and trying to do their best and has some commitment to each other. But yeah, that tone of happy, I think it does hamper it. But I think a skilled author of historical romance who's curious about what does it mean to set something in history can make something involving love without the assumptions and baselines of 2025 romantic dating and have it still be interesting. I think also you have this assumption. We hate the assumption that readers of romance are self-inserting into the female character's reality. And it's like, Do I want to be a concubine in seventh century China and have to kill people in order to stay alive. No. I don't want this romance. This is not a romance that I find... I'm not fantasizing about this being my life. Do I want to read a story where that happens?
[01:13:58.180] - Emma
Yes. It's interesting. I think that's an expansive way of thinking about things. I find romance to be such an expansive genre. I want the definitions associated with it to also be expansive. I still don't know if I land on this being a romance novel. I think it is probably the closest of something we've done on the podcast where I'm like, I don't know if I would call this a romance novel, primarily because of just Pheasant's lack of presence in the book. I do wonder if I would call the second one a romance novel. I wonder how that will play out when I read it, because I think he's maybe a little bit more present based on their relationship. But I do find Mei and Pheasant's relationship incredibly romantic, again, because they are both getting so much out of each other. I think it's also romantic for Mei to continually go back to him as she has this other goal. I think that's romantic. She's thinking about him when she's like, I have to say I can't go see him anymore. That's classic romance.
[01:14:55.920] - Beth
Exactly. Actually, to your point on if I wonder if the next book will be much more... Because Pheasant is the Emperor, and their relationship will be way more central. So we were talking a bit before. For reading what we would consider typical genre romance, the sequels aren't really sequels in the way that you think of them. It's just like they're tangentially related to each other in some way. So the author, well, sometimes they do set up the next couple, which is something we hate, because then you just lose momentum, I feel like, or you have to read another book to find the moments you like.
[01:15:34.880] - Emma
It's just annoying on reread, I think. That's the problem I have with Elizabeth Hoyt and Lisa Kleypas. I was like, I don't mind it when I'm reading it for the first time, but when I'm like, I want to go back and reread Marrying Winterborne, I'm like, I have to go back and read parts of Cold-Hearted Rake.
[01:15:48.370] - Beth
Yes. But I feel like because this book is, it's setting up more stuff for the next book. So I feel like this relationship feels more like a set up. I feel like she would have just not had a relationship between Mei and Pheasant, and it would have been actually more accurate to the history. But maybe she wanted more buy-in to the relationship earlier. Do you know what I mean? There's multiple reasons why she's doing it this way.
[01:16:15.390] - Emma
I'm interested in what is it like to... If she's going to write a romance, because I guess you think of the empresses and the high-powered concubines in this story, I don't think they would push back on the Emperor at all. That's not dynamic that is characterized at all. But I think in order to make this a satisfactory romance, there has to be some push and pull between Mei and Pheasant a little bit. But also we know that she eventually is going to become empress. She comes into her own personality politically, I imagine in the next book. And so it's like, how does that play out? Where it's like, he's in this position where all of China thinks that he is the mandate of God and he has the option to create this cult of personality, but he is falling in love or is already in love with one of his concubines, but also where she's possibly becoming more adept at the role that he's in.
[01:17:04.100] - Beth
Yeah.
[01:17:05.020] - Emma
So I think that that could be interesting tension because I don't think that... It's an interesting dynamic between the submissive and dominant aspects of Mei's personality. She is, by all cultural standards, is in a submissive position, but we know that she's working her way to become more dominant. How does that flip? Does that flip messy or is it welcomed by Pheasant? Those are the questions I have about the second book that I'm excited to find out what happens.
[01:17:29.060] - Beth
Yes. When I have time to read another 450 (page book).
[01:17:33.590] - Emma
Yes, it is long, but it's propulsive. I finished it much faster than I thought I was going to because I was like, What's going to happen?
[01:17:41.160] - Beth
Yeah, especially the last 100 pages, I just, I think, powered through those because I'm like, okay, what? It's all coming together now. All right. Well, thank you so much for listening to Reformed Rakes. If you’d like bonus content, you can subscribe to our Patreon at Patreon.com/ReformedRakes. You can follow us on Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram for show updates, the username for those platforms is @ReformedRakes, or email us at reformedrakes@gmail.com, we love to hear from our listeners. Please rate and review us on Apple and Spotify, it helps a lot! Thank you again, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you again, and we will see you next time.
