MAJOR SPOILERS

the FL is in ancient china, so she doesn't have much freedom to determine her own life, and she's not a super-smart character who can see pits and traps beforehand. She spends most of this book oblivious, and she's a highly UNRELIABLE NARRATOR.

The premise is that our MC is the daughter of the wealthiest man in the city, and she's also the heir of a secret fortune that only she knows about. I feel bad for her cause she has no agency throughout the story and bad things happen to her through circumstances entirely out of her control.

Imagine this: you're a wealthy young mistress who spends your whole life reading fairytale novels and dreams about a marital hero to sweep you off your feet. Then your father engages you to some random scholar you've never met, and now you have to have marry/have s*x with this man. You're married for two years, and just when you're finally falling in love.. the emperor breaks up your marriage, and now your ex-husband is your "uncle." Then you're forced to marry another man you don't know. And two months later, you're pregnant!! Except no one knows who the father is, the emperor intervenes (1st husband says the baby is 4 months, 2nd husband is 2 months, and emperor says 3), and you're branded unmarriable/a sl*t by everyone.

AND if that isn't bad enough....a lot of sh*t happens, and you're finally ready to be with the 1st husband again, except BIG SURPRISE he's been a secret prince all along!! Our MC realizes that not only did she have NO agency going into these marriages, becoming pregnant, and having her reputation ruined--she's also been a pawn in the prince's fight for the throne this whole time.

And that's just the first half of this novel. Things improve, and there is a HE, but A LOT of sh*t happens before we get there.

The ML and the FL definitely both wrong each other, but there was a point in this story where the ML was scum, and I was hoping the FL would be happy alone/find someone else.

At first, the ML marries the FL to use her for political gain. He secretly makes her drink contraceptives that could make her infertile. The FL had no say in any of this, and she's utterly oblivious to the fact that she was being used! Yes, the ML fell in love with her, but what if he didn't?? Would he then be justified in exploiting, drugging, and probably abandoning her? It might be standard for the time, but... yikes

So I'm not surprised that the FL swears never to trust the ML again once everything is revealed. And to make matters worse, the SML tricks the FL into believing the ML was going to destroy her family, so she betrays him and takes the throne away from him, ending with the SML as the emperor (I'm still kinda confused by how the f*ck that happened lol).

When the FL realizes that she was tricked, she secretly takes care of the ML, and then they get back together.

Even though the FL "betrayed" the ML and toppled him from power, it turns out he knew the whole time and went along with it to atone for tricking her and to answer her question, "the nation or me?" It narratively makes sense for them to get back together at that point bc later it's revealed in the epilogue, the SML has absolute power, but he's still yearning for the FL--the ML did what the SML couldn't do, give up power for the sake of love.

I wish we saw more relationship development between the FL/ML to really earn this happy ending. By the end, I'm not 100% sure why they love each other and when because there just weren't enough scenes of them interacting. It could've used some more dog food lol

like the FL faking her death TWICE

What makes the story even more interesting is the mystery of her child's father, which could be either of the two MLs.