戾王嗜妻如命 (Tyrannical Wang/[Prince]’s Beloved Wife) by 昭昭 (Zhao Zhao)
Chinese historical romance published in 2016

Other people’s bad reputation, if not because of themselves, then it’s slandered by others. Jing Wan’s bad reputation wasn’t because of herself, but schemed by her future husband. Jing Wan’s bad reputation wasn’t caused by others, but of his design, only for the sake of marrying the woman he has had eyes on for two lifetimes! One unable to take a bride, one unable to marry. Because he was the number one handsomest man, but she wasn’t the number one beauty. So it was still her who has earned? What the hell?

After marrying, the husband’s close beautiful servant girls didn’t try to crawl onto the bed, but instead served her like an ancestor. The previous stewards didn’t monopolize the power, but instead handed over in great detail all the properties and even the husband’s private funds. So strange no matter how one looks at it! After getting along day and night, she discovered that her husband suffers from a severe case of crazy, please cure!

“Husband, just what do you like about me? I’ll change, just please stop being weird.”

His disease acting up in seconds, telling you with his actions, just how strong his possessive desires towards you are, that’s how much care you must give back.

Alright, for the sake of his disease not becoming more severe, and seeing how there’s no concubines or mistresses or other little demons, Jing Wan rolled up her up sleeves and went all out. – taken from NU 

I’m late with my TBR review because of life and site issues … and I didn’t know which book to review for the April TBR prompt of “No Place Like Home” … but I decided to go with Tyrannical [Prince]’s Beloved Wife because in the end the characters go home. It seems silly but this is a behemoth of a book. A quick estimate is that the book is roughly 2,356,000 words. (There are 1178 sections and the translator had indicated each was usually around 2,000 words. Formally the book has 589 chapters, and 68 extras.) What impressed me was despite how just almost insanely long this book was, I read all of it – I skimmed at most parts of five sections, which is not much at all. (And most of it was just schemes I wasn’t interested in.) There was so much rich history, character development, just an incredibly vibrant world created here.

Our heroine is Luo Jing Wan (LJW), and in the beginning I think it isn’t clear if she’s 14 or 15 years old, but later we learn she’s fifteen. (To be honest I think there might’ve been some changes from the author but I believe this is a web novel so that’s sadly not too out of the ordinary.) In this ancient society the age of majority for girls is 15. She’s a transmigrator, who lived till her 20s in the modern world, then found herself as a fetus in her mother’s stomach. Weird, not a big deal, but … that’s how it is in this story, so her ~9 months let her understand she’s in a totally different world/universe, and is in a historical setting. She keeps a lot of her modern sensibilities, but has been able to adapt to the world she’s in. What’s helpful is her grandmother, who is the matriarch of the family loves her dearly and dotes on her. She grew up outside the capital and has been away from her parents for three years. (They left earlier to go to the capital while she stayed with her grandmother who wasn’t well at the time.) She obviously goes through a lot of growth in the novel – but is already a smart and capable girl from the start.

Our hero is Li Hong Yuan (LHY), the sixth prince in the country. His title and rank is Jin Qin Wang. Jin is the title, Qin Wang is the rank – which is the son of an emperor, so yes he’s an imperial prince. His character experienced a rebirth. He lived till 30 in his previous life and dies, only to find himself back to his nine or ten year old self. This time he manages to avoid a number of the schemes from the evil people around him. He also doesn’t bother curbing his temperament because he knows some terrible truths, and exploits what thin relationship he has with his father to get what he deserves out of it. (His father murdered his mother so …) He truly was a tyrant who did not care about peoples life or death once he became emperor in his past life … and some of that carries into his current life – imagine being 30, the emperor, basically in control of the world, then waking up as a child surrounded by people who pretend to love you but really want to kill you. I don’t think any of us would be serene, kind and loving beings.

It’s not exactly an easy read – I did get a bit annoyed and cringe and how … overly much LHY is, but it make sense. He only loved one person in his past life – LJW, and saw her die in front of his eyes … so this life he’s determined not to let that happen again. She was literally cursed by the heavens and he’s determined to go against the natural order and change her fate. I think that part actually isn’t highlighted enough. It’s also not an excuse for all of his behavior, but it does give him points. Like … dude is willing to suffer the karmic consequences. That’s a heavy burden not many can take.

The book “ends” rather abruptly in my opinion with the birth of their son, but the story continues and picks right back up in the “extras” – and that’s where we see them on till the end of their lives which is not something you often get to see in books. (She’s in her eighties when she dies – granted there’s like a thirty year jump in about a paragraph, but it was nice seeing them all the way till the end. There were also some fun and goofy extras that I enjoyed too, but I don’t want to give too many spoilers.)

The translator kept noting she didn’t really feel the book was much of a romance, but I disagree. She said it’s focused on politics and such, and that’s a big part of it, but the point is everything LHY does is to protect LJW. In fact he doesn’t even care about becoming the emperor – he’s doing it in order to give her the best life and have her become the most powerful and noble woman in the world. So … with that kind of motivation, yes, to me that’s absolutely romance material. He truly loves her to the extreme. Even I at some points was like “😅 dial it back some …” but I actually liked how it wasn’t all smooth – like I don’t like how he makes her isolate people, especially their child, but I understand it. He’s not entirely stable. He’s had to live with a lot of trauma.

There are clearly some supernatural aspects to the book, but it all works for me – just suspend your disbelief and roll with the fun. This book kind of has a little bit of everything. What I appreciated is that most the characters were incredibly well rounded. Even a number of the villains had depth and character development. It was also nice to see people truly get what they deserve. Evil doers were generally punished, and some dealt with cruelly. But they were so awful I was mostly cheering things on.

I liked that there was so much character growth and change – that things weren’t stuck in the track of the past life, and while some things were different others stayed the same. LHY also allows LJW to be herself – he pushes her in both growth and laziness. She becomes a bit of a soft little girl at times because she finally has a backer with absolute strength, and that was nice to see. The opposite of what we usually expect or want for a character, but here it was a positive change because it’s what her family members that loved her wanted to see. She was overly pragmatic and detached for a lot of her life, and she’s finally letting herself feel.

Beyond the excellent plot and characters, the world building is fantastic. There’s a lot of actual history built in, and I want to highlight the amazing work of the translator. Not only did the project literally take her years, but the author seems to have literally lifted sections of historical documents, and I raise a glass to anyone able and willing to translate Classical Chinese. (Heh just typing that out gave me some college memory trauma.)

Tyrannical [Prince]’s Beloved Wife is an excellent book, and the only reason I’m the tiniest bit leery in recommending it is because of the length. I joked if it was in print you could kill someone if you dropped the book on them. But other than that I do want to re-read it at some point too. I actually feel like I learned a lot from reading it too. Oh I hope some of you will consider this book!

Grade: A

You can read the novel here.