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Little_Dorrit10 октября 2023 г.When I return to my rooms I hold the rosewood ruyi in my hands and wonder: is this what I gave up love for? For the title of Consort to an emperor and a carved rosewood sceptre? For the bowing of the courtiers as I pass them and heavy robes of silk in a yellow shade not too close to the Imperial yellow that Fuca may now wear as Empress?
327- Little_Dorrit9 октября 2023 г.
Shu Fang pouts. “I’d like to be chosen,” she insists. “Think of living in the Forbidden City. The clothes and the jewels… and being married to a prince or even the Emperor…”
“Such a romantic,” sighs my mother. “You’ve no idea what it means to be an Imperial bride. The rivalries, the gossip, the expectations. Never seeing your family again. Never leaving the Forbidden City again.”343 - Little_Dorrit10 октября 2023 г.Читать далее
If I thought I was lonely before, now I know the true meaning of the word. Where once we women all lived together and there was at least some company whether you wished for it or not, now we are isolated even from each other. Our palanquins clustered together one last time as we travelled through the vast stretches of the Outer Court on that first day when we entered the Forbidden City as the new Emperor’s ladies, before one after another disappeared into a different gateway. Each of us has been assigned to a grand palace of our own, our meals will be taken alone unless we are called on to attend a formal banquet.
221 - Little_Dorrit10 октября 2023 г.
I was forgetting that I and the other ladies here are only concubines, not deemed worthy of anything more than a perfunctory ritual, our husband’s presence not even required, our assent assumed.
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