缚春情 (Bound by Spring Love) by 任欢游
Historical romance webnovel completed on January 21, 2025

The Jiang and Song families had been on good terms for generations, and Song Wan was betrothed to Jiang Xingjian before she was even born. The two were childhood sweethearts, but she was confined to the inner quarters of the house, and all her learning in her life was merely preparation for becoming a wife in the Jiang family.
The young man, dressed in fine clothes and riding a spirited horse, had lofty ambitions. Before he even reached adulthood, he went to the border to make his mark.
Before his departure, Jiang Xingjian personally put a white jade hairpin in her hair. With just one sentence, “wait for me,” Song Wan’s heart was touched. Even though he died on the battlefield, she insisted on marrying into the Chengyang Marquis’s mansion while hugging his memorial tablet.
She kept the boy hidden in her heart and remained a widow for six years, only to wait for Jiang Xingjian to return to the capital with his beloved.
The young man’s beloved was eccentric in her words and unpredictable with her actions. She made ice and firearms in the summer, helping the Marquis’s mansion rise to prominence.
Song Wan watched as he embraced the girl, showering her with boundless affection. She also watched as he personally snatched the power to manage the household from her hands, all for the sake of winning a smile from his beauty.
No noble family would divorce a woman, so Song Wan abandoned everything and left the Marquis’s mansion, only to be entangled by a rebellious and unruly man.
But Jiang Xingjian suddenly realized his mistake. Jiang Xingjian: Song shi was mine in life and will be mine in death. Even her ghost will be mine.
Shen Qianyu: You go find your dead ghost, I want my A’Wan…

​The prompt for this month was “Vintage” and honestly I (other than going by publication date) don’t know what in cnovel world would be “vintage.” Everything I read is “old school” in that it’s a historical setting. (Look, the escapism is real.) But I felt the book I read just before this last one fits perfectly, because it has a transmigrator as one of the major characters, and she definitely starts out as the antagonist. (I actually felt she was more the actual protagonist of the book, but the author had a premise in mind and insisted on following it despite not really wanting to … I’m also annoyed because I just finished another book by her but this one was … not good.) Anyway, what I felt specifically “vintage” about it, was the setting of the book is an ancient very conservative society. What was interesting also was generally in novels the transmigrator is the protagonist, and their innovations lead to success and winning. But here the transmigrator couldn’t fit in, didn’t understand things, and caused endless trouble.

So our heroine is Song Wan. I had a little bit of trouble with her because she’s a perfect matron of her society. Which of course is really hard for those of us with modern day sensibilities to understand. There was also a bit of a question as to the timeline. Sadly my notes I took while reading the book disappeared, and I can’t be bothered to try to dig up the details… but she’s anywhere from like 18-22 when the book starts. (He left when she was 12 I believe, and was missing for six years … unless it means he left, then she came of age, and got married, and was a widow for six years – so that would be different. It’s not a big deal what her age is though – however I think it’s that she’s 18 … based on other issues/the fact that her age later isn’t an issue and the hero was in his early 20s…) So anyway, despite all the bullshit and fuckery, Song Wan is willing to try to live a good life with her husband Jiang Xingjian. There’s the childhood affection, and also she fully expected him to take concubines so while of course she isn’t happy about Lin Jiayue (this random woman he comes back with), she’s willing to accept it. But he treats her like shit, his family is shit to her, and everything is a mess.

She endures over and over, but realizes it’s ruining her life, the Jiang family is barrelling towards ruin, and everyone is using societal rules to control not just her, but the people she loves through her. So as the book says, she breaks free. Even so, Song Wang is still largely a rule follower. She’s not out to try to change society or opinions. However she doesn’t abase herself and won’t look down on herself because of what happened to her, despite the attitude of others. (Note, this is clearly one of those societies where they consider you married even if you’re just engaged and the ceremony never happened. So despite the fact that everyone knows this guy left when she was 12, and died at some point after, so clearly she’s never gone through the ceremony or had sex, she’s got no choice but to live with his family. Breaking the engagement would cause extreme shame to her family, and she’d still be considered a “fallen” or “tainted” woman. Yes of course we think it’s ridiculous and stupid, but I don’t make the rules. What I liked is that Song Wan is very intelligent. It’s not that she can’t see a lot of the “rules” are bullshit, but that’s just how society is, and you can’t function outside of it, so she makes the best of her situation. She also does stop caring about some things, realizing what’s important is that her beloved family members are well. And that sometimes even family isn’t on your side and you truly have to look out for yourself.

Shen Qianyu is the hero. (I think we’re all pretty clear on the fact that Jiang Xingjian, her trash ass ex, is not hero material.) I really liked him. He’s an utter mess, which you don’t normally see in a hero. He’s of course got the requisite tragic backstory, a lot of it is glossed over though. He was named crown prince at a young age, but he’s the second prince. The only reason he was named crown prince is that the oldest prince is the empress’s son, and there was a rival nation that demanded a hostage – one of extremely high status. Had the first prince been named crown prince, he would’ve had to be a hostage – so it fell to Shen Qianyu whose mother I believe was simply a palace maid. Nobody cared about him. He was horrifically abused while a hostage, and was sent back about a decade later, crippled and near death. Everyone assumed he’d die basically any minute, and never considered him a factor. Because of that, Qianyu was able to move around secretly … but he actually wasn’t successful in truly building his own base because he could never reach the upper echelons of society, and thus never connect to the people who were the true power players. He often disguises himself, so he and Song Wan interacted a number of times before she learned his true identity. (In fact she originally thought he was a eunuch, which is why she was willing to speak to him, despite finding it not entirely proper.) She gives him advice a few times, thinking he would “convey it to his master” – the Crown Prince – and at one point he thinks of her as his teacher. He catches feelings pretty quickly, but doesn’t realize it until a bit later. Even so, he falls hard and falls fast, and is happy to love her despite knowing she doesn’t feel as strongly about him (yet). Because he never really had any sort of education Shen Qianyu isn’t constrained by the extreme rules and etiquette of the society, so he’s a nice balance and foil to Song Wan.

While I really liked both our hero and heroine, it was the various secondary characters that got my attention. (In fact at one point I definitely know I wrote the note “I think the author forgot about our protagonists …”) but one is Jiang Yan, Song Wan’s brother-in-law. He’s Jiang Xingjian’s younger half brother. They have the same father but different mothers. Xingjian’s mother is the legitimate wife, Yan’s mother is a concubine. (Remember having concubines is not just socially acceptable but even expected in this time. And a wife that doesn’t tolerate her husband having concubines is known as jealous and it’s literally one of the grounds for divorce. For the era women generally can’t divorce their husbands, they can only be divorced, and it brings not only the woman shame, but her entire family, and affects the marriages of all the women. It’s so unfair …) ANYWAY. Jiang Yan would be the protagonist in another book, upon rebirth. (Which he isn’t here, I’m just saying he deserves a second chance.) He has some dark undertones, but mostly suppressed them, because he wants to be a gentleman for Song Wan. He doesn’t want her attention or even anything from her – it’s just that when he was a child, she was the only person who showed him kindness. And it was only once! (She basically lived as a hermit shut in her courtyard in the manor since she was “a widow.”) But she told him to be a gentleman. And it’s what he strives for his entire life. He doesn’t want anyone to know of his affections for her because it’d bring her harm. He truly literally just wants to love her from afar, and for her to live the best life. He helps her a number of times quietly from the background. I just loved this complicated character. He’s also crucial because he was friends with the hero. In fact Shen Qianyu  (of course disguised as someone else) made fun of Jiang Yan. But became interested in Song Wan because of all Jiang Yan was doing for her in secret. (There’s more but I won’t spoil it, because you might read it, or it might show up in the drama.)

While I called him the trash ass ex… which he is, in his defense, Jiang Xingjian didn’t know that Song Wan had married into his family/his memorial tablet. He had only been in communication with his older sister while missing and presumed dead (which yes I’m judging him for that), and she didn’t tell him. His sister – Jiang Man -was one of the biggest antagonists of the books, and she was against the Song family. She ruins her own family because she’s awful and shortsighted. The reason she messed with her brother’s marriage? Song Wan’s aunt is an imperial consort with a nine year old son. Jiang Man had her eyes on the top of her head and insisted on social climbing, so in the book it says she “seduced” the emperor, becomes an imperial concubine, and has a son of her own – that prince is 3-5 when the book starts. I felt it was ridiculous she did all this for such a small child/set herself up for failure … but that was also kinda the point. Jiang Man lied to her brother and said it was the Song family that killed their father, because she didn’t want her brother to have any good feelings for the Song family, or his wife, because she’s competing for the throne for her young son. She’s truly a terrible person. (I was so angry and didn’t feel that bad for Xingjian because he never investigated anything. He just listened to his sister. Which on the one hand I get, that’s his sister who he’d always listened to. But on the other hand, BRO!)

I’ve kinda some to expect this in cnovels, but this book went hard on the “characters change, things aren’t as they seem.” For example, the horrible transmigrator Lin Jiayue actually basically becomes one of the biggest supports at the end. (Although the real end of the book is a bit strange and detached …) But! Song Wan’s father, for example. Like I couldn’t quite get a feel for him for a long time – whether he actually loved her or not, or truly cared for her. Jiang Xingjian wasn’t all bad either. And there’s a character I hated pretty much the whole time and yet they died a more noble and heroic death than the emperor. (Granted it’s a low bar in this case but … that’s still the emperor.) Based on the blurb I also knew Song Wan definitely separates herself from the Jiang family, so even though she had no thought of it at the beginning, I waited for it to happen. And felt that that was the *real* start of things.

What was lovely about this book is there were a number of the most unassuming, or even looked down on individuals that made major contributions at just the right moment. Also really nice was Shen Qianyu had the perfect harem. He basically found a group of misfits, and offered them a way out of their terrible situations. All of them were asked first if they were willing to enter his harem. The biggest public aspect was that each woman had the public reputation of being incredibly virtuous. (And they really were…) Plus he never touches them, I don’t think he interacts with them at all – but he was paving the way for Song Wan to enter his harem. (How could a divorced woman be worthy of the Crown Prince??!) So after all these women “nobody would ever want” are stuffed into the harem (they kinda trick the empress into doing it/she acts out of spite), who would pay attention to Song Wan (and a daughter of a general) later quietly entering? And at that point Song Wan actually lives the life of a “normal regular married couple” with him – a marriage “like the common people” not nobles. And then during the day she hangs out with this lovely group of girls who know they have no chance at favor, so there’s no competition or infighting. They’re happy to be in a safe space where they aren’t restrained or restricted, and have a bunch of friends to chat with and keep each other company. It was such a delight.

I liked the book enough to pick up another one by the author after finishing it. I’ll also be very curious as to the drama adaptation. Who is cast, what they’ll bring from the book (if anything), the changes, so on an so forth. I’ll also be looking for other books by the author as well. She definitely gets you emotionally invested. While I felt it was weak in the end, there actually was nice romance and character development.

Grade: C-