The novel “To Be Empress” had become quite famous lately. Despite it being a historical romance book full of clichés, it had also addressed more serious topics. Thus, it quickly gained a great number of fans and the increasing popularity soon led to the announcement of another installment in the series.
The story was written from the perspective of a young but intelligent and ambitious noble lady called Seraphina Duremont. Being the eldest daughter of the most influential duke, she became the emperor's wife and was crowned as the empress. Throughout the book she fought against the intrigues of various aristocrats and won her husband's respect and eventually his love. As the story progressed the both of them became closer and the strict emperor turned out to be a doting, pampering lover. The couple worked together to defeat the nobles striving for power and even won the war with a neighboring enemy nation in the process.
But out of everything, the biggest threat to their relationship was the emperor's mistress, Blanche, who caused problems in every single way imaginable. She was the most stereotypical villainess one could imagine. Blanche was a power-hungry, attention-seeking brat that had somehow gained the ruler's favor by acting sweet and loving around him despite actually being a terrible actress. Both Seraphina and the readers quickly realized what kind of person Blanche really was.
At the beginning of the novel, the villainess had only refused to show the heroine respect but after the main characters spent time more together, Blanche began to plot against the empress. Despite only being a concubine she did her best to come between the fated couple. At first, she spread rumors about Seraphina having an affair with some of her male friends, cut the other's dresses or ordered her servant to destroy the other woman's belongings.
But with time it got worse and worse as jealousy poisoned her mind. Blanche tried to steal things that were meant for the heroine and was very open about wanting to become empress herself. Even if she was lacking a noble background or any kind of political education which had made all of that completely impossible. As if this hadn't made her annoying enough, she had often caused scenes at events, mainly to provoke the heroine. But aside from being bratty and arrogant, she was also vile and malicious. It was revealed that she worked together with other nobles, of which some were the emperor's worst enemies, to harm the empress and claim her position.
Still, the emperor protected his lover and cared for her while believing in her innocence. But with every problem, she caused the amount of evidence grew, and he distanced himself more from her. Near the end of the novel, the villainess' actions started to become more extreme as Blanche noticed that she was losing her lover's favor. Eventually, she even hired assassins to kill Seraphina and irreversibly crossed the line when she tried to poison the empress after finding out that the other woman was pregnant.
The heroine barely evaded both threats and finally had enough evidence to reveal the truth to her husband. Thus, the emperor learned about his mistress' evil deeds, ordered her execution and watched her desperate crying for forgiveness and hollow declarations of love without emotions.
Most readers were delighted upon the demise of their most hated character, about which they had complained countless times before. Within the book nobody felt remorse about the villainess' death either. After all the vile woman that had manipulated the emperor and wished for power was dead now and the main characters could become happy together.
However, her personality was not the only thing that had made the villainess so revolting to those around her. Soon after the execution more about Blanche's past was revealed and this information painted an even uglier picture. Blanche had been the daughter of a vicious family that betrayed the country and had been beheaded for their crimes. Blanche had been the only one who had escaped that fate by contacting one of the emperor's enemies.
A marquess had helped her flee in return for her assistance for his vile plan. Without thinking about it Blanche had left her family behind to save her life and was smuggled into the royal palace, where she met the emperor. Her task had been to get closer to the ruler and use her newly obtained influence to support the marquess. In the end she was supposed to poison the emperor which would allow the second prince, who was the main antagonist of the story but hadn't appeared in person yet, to ascend to the throne.
This only clarified what most people had always suspected. The villainess had only been used by others from the start and was never truly loved by anyone except for the emperor, who left her behind after she showed her true colors.
Still, most readers did not feel any sympathy for her as her actions had shown that she herself had also never cared for anyone else. By the end of the first installment, which ended with the main characters living happily ever after, everyone was sure that Blanche had only been a narcissistic woman that had wished to use the emperor from the very beginning.
But that was untrue.
The concerned person herself was the only one that could know what she felt. And Blanche could be very certain about her devotion to her lover, even after she had awoken with the memories of the novel's storyline.
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It felt odd. For a moment she had believed that she had been sitting on grass while holding someone in her arms. A metallic smell filled the air, and she was crying without any sound coming out of her mouth while her throat burned like she had drunk acid.
But then everything faded away.
And this scenery was replaced by a wave of memories. The events of months suddenly crashed onto her, and she could barely breathe as she felt like she was forced into a tight space without air. Her head felt like it was bursting.
It was too much. Too many horrible things were among those memories.
She thought that she might really die this time but only a second later it stopped. As if someone had cut a thread, she felt like she was falling and the impact made her wake up.
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Blanche's eyes flew open, and she shot in an upright position as her fingers grasped the bedsheet. Her gaze darted across the room as she tried her best to fight the rising dread in her stomach.
As the memories inside her head formed a whirl and refused to calm down, she attempted to collect her thoughts to no avail. She was only able to regain a bit of her composure when she focused on slow and steady breathing despite feeling like she was suffocating. Even inhaling was harder than it normally should have been. Her throat felt like she had swallowed burning oil.
Blanche's head was only clear enough to properly form coherent words thoughts after what seemed like an eternity. Still, the memories in her brain didn't seem to fit together. While she remembered her own life as one normally would, she also had memories of a novel called “To Be Empress”, a book in which she herself and nearly every single person she knew had been described. It wasn't a biography but a fictional story that corresponded with the real world too much to just be by accident. The information had been too precise, too detailed for anyone to know. Places and people from inside of the royal palace were mentioned and described. An outsider could never have been aware of any of this.
But what was even more disturbing than that, was the fact that the novel described the future. If Blanche only remembered a book about the incidents up until this day, she would simply have convinced herself that the author gathered enough information to write a terrifyingly exact story. That would have made sense even though there were so many question-marks left in her head. But most of the things in the novel hadn't happened.
At least not yet.
Somehow Blanche was sure that they would occur in the future. The reason for this, besides the overwhelmingly accurate information presented in the novel, was that she couldn't remember reading such a book at all. She hated reading, so she barely picked up a book unless she was dying out of boredom. Why would she have suddenly read a romance novel? If she had done so, she should remember, but she didn't. She was certain that there wasn't any book called “To Be Empress” in the library. At least not one about real people.
If there ever had been such a book, someone would have found it and spread the knowledge of the contents already. The very existence of a future predicting novel would cause an uproar and without a doubt be reported to the emperor. But her lover hadn't mentioned something like that despite always informing Blanche about everything he needed to concern himself with. Surely he would tell her if he knew that her fate was to be beheaded because of his order.
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It took a few minutes but the concubine slowly felt like she was able to differentiate her memories between which ones belonged to her and which ones to the novel. She turned her head and took in her surroundings. She was lying in a grand peach-colored bed with covers in a light shade of lavender. The golden ornaments of the bed frame matched the ones on the white walls of the big chamber. This certainly was the room she remembered. The same room that Blanche had been living in ever since she had met the emperor and moved into the palace over a year ago.
She slowly stood up and walked to one of the windows while trying to keep her shaking legs from giving in. She barely reached her destination and propped herself up on the window sill to keep her balance. One look outside convinced her that this was still the same place where she had fallen asleep last night. She could see the same palace garden below her chambers. Neither the path leading through it nor the trees or bushes had changed which proved that this was reality.
And unfortunately, the property seemed to match the book's description perfectly.
For a short moment Blanche considered that all of this was just a dream but the cold floor below her naked feet and the chilling air around her legs made her doubt that the explanation was this simple. She pinched her hand slightly and the sensation only supported her guess. She turned her head to look at the standing mirror in the corner of the room and walked towards it with unsteady steps. When she reached it, she carefully pressed her hands against the cold surface and observed how her reflection did the same.
Usually, Blanche would use this mirror to dress up or admire her appearance. Her lover always complimented her, so she had been rather proud of it and loved dressing up for him. But right now she only felt shame. She scanned her features and compared them to the words that were used in the novel to describe the villainess. With every aspect that matched the book's narrative, she felt sicker. From her wavy alabaster-colored hair to her light yellow eyes as well as her face and body shape everything was identical. Since both her appearance and her name were quite uncommon, it couldn't have been by chance.
She truly was the villainess from the book.
Right after coming to that conclusion, Blanche tried to convince herself that there was still a logical explanation. If she wasn't dreaming currently, maybe she had dreamed the part about the novel and was now confusing her imagination and reality. But no matter how she looked at it, her memories concerning the book were too concrete. Not once in her life had she had such a complex dream and remembered so many details when she awoke.
Blanche wasn't able to explain how the existence of this novel was possible, but she was certain that it described the people and events of her world. This would also mean that the future that was written in “To Be Empress” would become true. She was the villainess, who would be abandoned by her lover and be executed by his order. The thought of being beheaded made the blood drain from her face, and she began to shiver uncontrollably. At the same time not only fear overcame her, but she also felt a sting in her heart.
Even if the novel's Blanche had seemed like she only cared for power and was unable to develop feelings for anyone except herself, this wasn't true. She didn't even like herself that much and had always paid attention to every single one of her flaws. But aside from being not as proud as in the book, there was another difference that was much more important. She really did love the emperor and imagining him leaving her, and him ordering her execution on top of that, hurt more than anything she had felt in a while.
Even if she had only known him for a little over a year, he was the person that she loved. He was the first and only man she had ever fallen for, and he loved her as well. He cared for Blanche, made her feel adored and gave her warmth while she made sure to return those emotions whenever they spent time with each other. In her presence he could truly be himself, let down his guard and relax. For this reason, he had made her his concubine and allowed her to live in the palace in the first place.
The name of the man Blanche loved this much was Theodore Estien. He was the emperor of Artias and the male main character of “To Be Empress”.
As the original story of the book progressed he had gotten closer to his wife Seraphina Duremont, who was renamed Seraphina Estien after their marriage and got crowned as the empress. The spouses had worked together to defeat their enemies and eventually fell in love with each other. That was why the villainess had attempted to take action to intervene in the book.
Even now jealousy rose inside Blanche and wrenched itself into her heart like a rusty nail when she imagined Theodore and another woman as a couple. And as she went through her memories, she noticed that she had already caused problems because of her envy. The novel had begun at the wedding of Seraphina and Theodore, which had been arranged purely based on political advantages. In the real world this had happened almost a year ago, if Blanche remembered correctly.
From then to this day Blanche hadn't shown Seraphina any kind of respect despite the other woman being the empress. She had even provoked the heroine at every opportunity she got. Directly after the wedding ceremony Blanche had dragged her lover away to make sure that he spent the wedding night with her. She hadn't cared for the guests that might see them or Theodore's repeated promises that he hadn't planned on staying with his wife in the first place. During the week after that, she had only worn black clothes to express her dismay about this marriage which had been extremely disrespectful as well.
But those examples were only the first of the countless offenses she had committed during the past eleven months. And no matter what she had done, Theodore always forgave her quickly when she apologized often enough and told him that she loved him.
In the novel he had forgiven her numerous times as well. He had turned a blind eye to all of her faults until she had tried to harm his pregnant wife and unborn child. That had lead to her execution.
It was obvious that Blanche couldn't let that happen. She didn't want to die. Especially not at the hands of her lover who had ordered the beheading himself.
She frowned while touching her neck lightly with her fingertips. Her mirror image made the same gesture and stared back at her with a mentally absent gaze. It hurt and touching her own skin felt strange. This wasn't just a dream. It had been a premonition.
Without a doubt Blanche needed to evade her demise, but she was unsure how she could accomplish this. Would it be enough to simply refrain from trying to poison Seraphina? This was the deed she had been convicted for after all. But maybe it wouldn't change much if she committed one offense less.
Ultimately she was the villainess of the novel, the one fated to be an obstacle on the lovers' path to their happy end. That obstacle always needed to be removed.
Maybe she wasn't able to avoid her doom since it was an important part of the story. Maybe she would always hinder the protagonists and be killed no matter what she did. Maybe she wasn't even able to change the story at all because the novel enforced its correct course.
Blanche desperately hoped that this wasn't the case. She wanted to live and to survive she would have to change a big part of the story. She could not become the main characters' enemy under any circumstances. This meant that she had to stay away from the novel's most important events and that she could not try to prevent the romance between Seraphina and Theodore. She couldn't interfere with their relationship at all, even if she could already feel her rising jealousy when thinking about the couple.
And that wasn't everything. Blanche also needed to stay far away from the intrigues that would soon surround the spouses. A small portion of those schemes only consisted of rumors or insults hidden behind the sweet words of other nobles which she could avoid easily by ignoring them. But there also were fights for power within the royal family. She couldn't evade those. These political intrigues were already connected to her.
The person that had taken her in for two years after her family's death and brought her into the palace to make her gain the emperor's favor was Marquess Julien Sefare. From her own memories Blanche only knew that Sefare wished to obtain a greater influence through her which was why he wanted her to become Theodore's lover and eventually the empress. Inside the novel, however, this plan was revealed to be way more elaborate.
Marquess Sefare was a good friend of the Duke of Vasquez, one of the three dukes in Artias. While Seraphina's father, the Duke of Duremont, supported the current emperor, Duke Vasquez and his family backed the dowager empress.
The dowager empress was the deceased former emperor's wife and Theodore's mother but favored her younger son, the second prince. She wanted her second son to become the ruler and had plotted against the main characters throughout the whole book.
That woman and her son were the primary antagonists of the novel, but they never appeared physically in the first installment. After all they had been put in confinement in a palace at the other end of the capital. Theodore had placed them there six years ago after an assassination attempt on him following his coronation was linked to them. Despite the lack of their presence, the dowager empress and the prince still harmed the protagonists by operating through their followers, including Marquess Sefare.
The novel had revealed that Sefare's real goal wasn't gaining influence by using Blanche but to eliminate Theodore by making her poison the emperor. That would make the second prince the next in the throne's succession. Obviously Blanche couldn't play along with that. She needed to ensure her own and her lover's safety as much as she could. If Theodore ever got hurt because of her, she would never be able to forgive herself. So she needed to stop helping Sefare immediately. She wouldn't write him any letters anymore, nor would she talk to him in general. This could cause some huge problems though.
No one kept a useless pawn in their game. If Blanche decided to openly cut her ties to Sefare, he would surely plot to get rid of her. Sefare would need her to disappear to prevent her from telling Theodore about his involvement in such intrigues, and he would probably target her life.
Still, Blanche had to stick to her choice. She needed to stop assisting the emperor's enemies for Theodore's and her own sake. Maybe she could avoid Sefare's revenge if she got the protection of some influential people.
In the best-case scenario the emperor would continue to shield her. After all he was in love with her right now and had only begun to dislike her in the novel because she had acted like a power-hungry, arrogant brat. If she behaved well, she could probably maintain his favor, and he would keep her safe. And even if he would become infatuated with Seraphina, Theodore wouldn't wish harm onto her as long as she didn't hurt anyone close to him. So Blanche should be safe around him, shouldn't she?
The thought of losing her partner's love pained Blanche, but she would have to swallow her own feelings to survive until the novel's finale. Maybe she could avoid being the villainess by becoming unimportant. In books there were countless background characters, who weren't doing much besides existing and only served as extras to make the setting seem realistic. It should be possible to become one of those characters. Blanche would simply appear next to Theodore and behave like a reserved person to become invisible to the other nobles. Then she would still be able to spend time with her lover and maintain his favor, at least partly. He would protect her and if she stayed away from any power-hungry people, it would be fine.
That should be enough to secure her survival.
Right?
Blanche was content with her plan and yet a little voice in the backside of her head told her to refrain from feeling too safe. She tried to cheer herself up and met her own gaze in the mirror. She forced herself to smile and show some confidence, only to fail miserably. Her doubts didn't vanish and the fake grin on her lips wouldn't fool anyone.