Work Text:
Sometimes Sicheng wonders if he was really cut out to be a prince. Well, not a prince. The prince. The one and only First Prince of Heaven. The one and only prince, among the hundreds of princes and princesses living in the Palace gates, that lives behind the curtain of his father’s heavy robes and steadfast hands instead of braving the political waves of his people on his own.
The populace believes Sicheng to be a great beauty, sheltered from the defiling eyes of the poor and unworthy. Only the upper nobles know the truth. That the first prince of the empire is nothing but a weak, useless, coward. Sicheng cannot spin threads of lies into woven tapestries of politics like the third prince, cannot master the intricate dance of the sword like the fourteenth prince, cannot trick and charm like the twenty-first prince, nor does he find himself particularly kind and generous like the second prince, his womb-mate, and one of the only kind faces that ever greets Sicheng, despite having been beat out of Sicheng’s coveted position by nothing more than a couple minutes and the fall of the woman that had birthed them. His father’s dynasty has never mourned the dead, for they all die with the dignity and grace of the empire.
The only thing Sicheng is good at is memorizing tea customs, historical embroidery patterns, and empirical traditions, which are all fruitless because his father, the great One and Only Son of Heaven had abolished all such ‘useless impediments’ of war and success the minute he came to power, but even more fruitless because Sicheng is not a woman, no matter how much Sicheng knows life would be easier, if only he was one.
The only thing Sicheng is good at is dancing, not the art of war, but the songs of lavish brothel women and whores. But Sicheng is a prince, and therefore there dare not a person in the kingdom who would call him that very thing. At least, not to his face.
Regardless of what his lesser siblings think, Sicheng is not daft. He hears the whispers crawling through the halls of the imperial palace, scraping their little fingers against the walls of the inner court. Sometimes Sicheng wishes that they would not scrape his heart. He remembers the fifth princess, MingMing, who had crawled into his lap as a child, oblivious to the many ministers and foreign eunuchs that had lined the great hall, her chubby arms grasping at Sicheng’s face. Pretty! The first prince is the prettiest! Prettier than MaMa, prettier than JieJie!
Sicheng had only been a child himself at the time, freshly fourteen years of age, and he remembers how his face had flushed with happiness at his younger sibling’s compliment. Their father, the First Son of Heaven, had looked upon his children with mild disinterest, but his disapproval would later be evident, as Sicheng would never again be able to see MingMing’s smile. The next time he had caught a glimpse of her, it had been five years later, a sliver of her young face around a courtyard pillar, the look of thinly-veiled disgust on her eleven year old countenance, and then the flash of her long braids. Her hair ribbons were light green, the color of tea cakes, with their crimped edges and sweet bean paste fillings. Sicheng recalls that her hair ribbons had the same color five years ago.
He knows that MingMing had been punished for talking to him in public, as were all others. Sicheng’s siblings had and have been punished with harsh words and allowance cuts to their respective palaces. Sicheng’s attendants had and have been punished with canings and repentance kneeling. Suffice to say that everyone knew to keep their distance eventually.
However, Sicheng also understands that this is for his own good, as much as the Emperor can favor him, it is not seen kindly for a king known for his ferocious and merciless skill in battle to favor his most useless son. And thus, it is not good for his siblings and attendants to give him anything more than acknowledgement either, in public, at least.
Such a pity, people whisper across the palace halls. through the glazed ceramic walls and smooth bamboo panels. Such a waste for the first prince to be a cutsleeve.
A useless one at that. Shadows darting around, eyes wandering.
A useless, womanly cutsleeve, it’s a pity that the Second Prince was not born first, he is certainly more deserving.
Sicheng’s mother had been the First Empress, and the Emperor had loved her dearly, as much as a warrior could love a simple woman. Unlike his predecessors, Sicheng’s father did not believe in relationships of convenience, or political desire. The First Son of Heaven was strong and brave, an infallible soldier in the face of enemy troops and empirical nobles alike. He did not need to bed women for power, political or otherwise. The Emperor would take women into his harem at his pleasure, anyone from Duke Yang’s third cousin Mistress Luomei to the street vendor girl that had sold tanghulu at the palace gates had a place in his bed.
The empresses were different, however. Sicheng’s mother along with the second and third empresses had grown up with the Emperor. They had watched him slaughter his siblings and steal his father’s throne, had seen him ravage the plains of their enemies and come back from fights as the sole survivor. These women had taken his bloody pulp of a heart and found it in themselves to take pity on a beast, and fall in love with its sharp teeth and peerless claws. The First Empress had not only been loved, she was the Emperor’s favorite. He had fallen for the sweet way she sang in the dark of the night, her long hair trailing behind her robes, so unlike the other women in the palace with their thick gowns and stiff updos that the First Son of Heaven had thought her a spirit upon first glance. She was free spirited and kind, unable to pluck a flower from the ground without feeling a cold creep of guilt and a soft wash of sorrow. They were both the youngest children of large noble families, yet she was everything he was not. While she had bloomed away the watchful eyes of the aristocracy, he had sharpened his leaves into careful, razored points under the neglect. But he loved her all the same.
Perhaps that is why he could not turn away her delicate son, a failure of a man dressed in feminine beauty and softly timid words, for the child was a mirror of its mother. The young boy was her complement, whilst he was her foil. So his hands, which had crushed many an enemy’s skull, widowed their wifes and slaughtered their children, could not bear to hurt a hair on this child’s head.
But just as he couldn’t harm the child, the Emperor found it difficult to publicly express his affections in turn, and thus doomed the boy to a life of practiced indifference amongst the court, a painful reminder that the First Prince, while lovingly unpunishable and innocent of his so-called crimes, was still undeserving of his title as Son, regardless.
And maybe if Sicheng and his twin brother had not eaten away at their mother’s lifeforce as they entered the world, churning her loving maternal energy to fuel their greedy little hearts, then their father would not be so lenient on Sicheng. After all, his kindness came from his fruitless attempts to see Sicheng in her, to look upon his face and catch a shadow of his long lost wife. But the First Empress was dead all the same, and all Sicheng had of her were stories whispered between old wet nurses and ladies in waitings of the most beautiful woman in the Empire, fairy tales he had his brother had spun in their childhood about a princess so kind that even the sun could not outshine, and a name engraved into smooth jade.
Liu YuHua.
And on the back,
亲爱的 (My darling)
即使你不在，我也会爱你。 (I shall love you even if you are gone.)
○○○○○○○○○○✈︎
思壯。
The name that lives in every mouth in the empire, traveling from the palace to the noble courts, from there into the cities, from the marketplace to the pubs, to the brothels, and even into the mouths of orphans and other street urchins.
Sizhuang, the honorable, deserving prince.
Sicheng, the pitiful, angel-faced cutsleeve.
Sizhuang was brave where Sicheng was kind, he was strong where Sicheng was beautiful, he was assertive where Sicheng was meek. Sizhuang was the soldier, the military strategist, the prospective next emperor. Sizhuang had the favor of all the nation. Sizhuang had the favor of the Emperor, second only to Sicheng. (But of course, the First Son of Heaven couldn’t help it whenever he saw the face of his One True Love in the eyes of his most ‘shameful’ child. It was like a moth to a flame, like an odyssey-man to a beautifully cruel siren, an attraction unbroken by human will.) Sicheng was the dancer, the poet, the courtesan dressed up in a noble prince’s skin. While Sizhuang had gone to sleep dreaming of their father’s affection, Sicheng had laid in bed wishing for their fathers acknowledgement.
But Sizhuang could never bring himself to hate his older brother with whom he shared his existence. Why blame him for circumstances he could not control, and attention he did not want. Sizhuang knew that the delicate First Prince would gladly live out the rest of his life within the walls of the inner palace, safely behind countless stone-faced guards and within the arms of his beloved siblings, all of whom shunned him in public yet loved him in private all the same.
Two sons, forever mirrors of each other, each longing for what the other holds but too afraid to lose what little they have, grasping their respective straws so tightly as to not let anything spill between the cracks of their shaking fingers.