Chinese GL

The Chinese imperial court was a deeply hierarchical, misogynistic place. The Chinese imperial court of the popular imagination may, in certain respects, be an even more hierarchical, misogynistic place. This presents certain challenges if you're writing a baihe court intrigue novel, because you probably want the main characters to have at least some agency. From my (not that extensive) reading of court intrigue and court intrigue-adjacent novels, here are four approaches you could take.

( very, very mild and vague possible spoilers for the texts under discussion (see tags) )

Let me know if you have any other examples or any other approaches for female characters in historical settings to gain political power! Or whether you see/categorise them differently.

Opening line I toyed with for this review #1: My teenage edgelord self would have liked this a lot.

Opening line I toyed with for this review #2: This is a story about an entire imperial clan of motherfuckers, and I mean that quite literally.

Dynasty of Beasts (禽兽王朝, pinyin: qinshou wangchao) is the story of Gao Che, sixth prince of the Qi empire, who was raised as a boy for Reasons. Gao Che has two ambitions in life: to become emperor, and to win the heart of her father's empress, the saintly Dugu Yuanzhen, who raised her in her own birth mother's absence.

( major spoilers; discussion of rape, sexual assault, violence, incest, suicide )

I read the Chinese original of the novel on Changpei. The uncensored versions of the sex scenes can be found on the author's Weibo here.