The Crown Prince

Everyone knew that the Crown Prince was a troublemaking lordling. Even the Emperor had to admit that much.

Conceivably stemming from the rocky experience of his own childhood, the Emperor cherished his son like a treasure, not wanting him to suffer the slightest bit of wrong. On top of that, the Crown Prince was not only his eldest wife-born son, but his only child. With increasing hopes placed onto him, the Prince received increasingly higher expectations, causing him to practically grow up beneath the attention of a crowd.

Due to the sparseness in royal descendants, the officials had been very anxious at the start, urging the Emperor to sprout more branches for the sake of the Great Ming’s face. The Emperor generally wouldn’t argue with his officials, yet he never gave in one cun over this matter. The Cabinet had no stance on it, either. Only a few censors shouted the most viciously about it, but over time, everyone quieted down, no longer held the expectation for the Emperor to have more sons, and focused their attention on raising up the Crown Prince.

However, this Prince’s personality completely differed from his father and grandfather’s. In other words, he matched more with the personality of a normal child’s: lively, active, filled with curiosity about everything, and wanting to try it all.

To an ordinary family, that personality would be nothing of note, but the issue here was that he was the Crown Prince, the future’s heir apparent. At the same time that he enjoyed the pinnacle of glory and wealth, he was placed under all sorts of restrictions. Ever since the Tumu Stronghold Crisis, all the officials had been mentally exhausted by Yingzong faffing about, hoping that all Emperors could be like the present Emperor: sitting quietly on the throne ever since they took it, doing what they ought to be doing, and not adding to their subjects’ stress.

But this Crown Prince was destined to be an exception. With them being different people of different childhood experiences and different personalities, how could the requests used on the Emperor limit the Prince?

When things reached the peak, they could only go back downhill. If he was viciously forced, that would likely only make the Crown Prince grow rebellious and fight against his subjects in everything.

While all the Court officials were still immersed in the pretty dream of how the Crown Prince was to be educated, Tang Fan had already seen this tidbit.

Because he was the Head Vizier, he held the title of an East Palace Teacher, but in reality, he was confined by his work, which really didn’t give him much time to tutor the Crown Prince.

For someone that loved to be active and found it very hard to calm down and learn from scriptures, making him sit there and recite the Four Books and Five Classics or teach him about sages of ancient times was clearly not going to work. Alas, the East Palace’s education methods were in sets methods and norms. Although Confucius had said that lessons should conform to the student, if someone actually brought the Crown Prince out of the palace to play, they would probably get denounced and resign the very next day. Even if as the Head Vizier, Tang Fan would find blame hard to escape from.

One good Emperor was enough to influence the atmosphere of an era. Tang Fan knew that well, so, in spite of his busyness, he still found the time to do what he could to guide the Crown Prince.

In turn, the Prince seemed to find him to be a very different teacher from the rest. For that reason, every time he attended Tang Fan’s lessons, ge could concentrate a little better than with others, and was willing to listen to him a bit more in earnest.

Later on, to his gradual surprise, the Crown Prince learned that Teacher Tang was very accepting of pretty much anything.

For example, after he had learned of the Emperor sneaking the Crown Prince out of the palace, he didn’t painstakingly admonished them like the others, nor did he say anything about it. In fact, he had perhaps intentionally mentioned the locations of sideshows and slums in the capital.

The Prince had been confused, at the start, and later questioned his father about it. Only then did he learn of the particular difficulties Tang Fan had.

As the Head Vizier, he could not publicly agree to the Emperor and Crown Prince leaving the palace. That would be tantamount to him going against every civil official there was, as well as not conformity to a civil’s style. In his head, however, he felt that the future Emperor shouldn’t be stuck deep inside the palace. Only by seeing and experiencing more could his nature be further tempered. On account of his own difficult childhood, the current Emperor was not ignorant despite growing up deep in the palace, while the Crown Prince’s life had gone smoothly since birth, had parents that were unusually affectionate with each other, and he was much less likely to experience any palace intrigue. Hence, he needed to be exposed to the outside world.

It would be bad for Tang Fan to say that, though, so he could only suggest things in a roundabout way. The Emperor, ever good at reading people, had thankfully heard the notes the Head Vizier was playing.

“Your Teacher Tang is different from typical people. He will never use the viewpoint of a pedant to demand anything of you,” he said to the Prince with a smile. “Not only should you not be of the mind to defy him, but you should also learn a lot from him. When he was in his teens, he traveled all across the land, and has seen more bridges than grains of salt you’ve ever eaten.”

The Crown Prince always loved to play. If he weren’t the Crown Prince, he really would have loved to run around and have fun all across the realm. Thus, when he heard his dad say that, his eyes lit up. “Really? The Premier traveled the Great Ming?”

The Emperor nodded. “Of course. If you do well in your classes from now on, we will have the Premier tell you some good stories in the class’s spare time. It’ll surely broaden your horizons.”

Having a son like this, the relationship between them was closer and more casual than general civilians’ would be. The Crown Prince listened, then tried to haggle with his dad. “How about half a shichen of lessons gets me one shichen of stories?”

The Emperor was both annoyed and amused, giving him a bop on the head. “Half a shichen of lessons, half a shichen of stories. The Premier takes time out of his busy schedule to give you those lessons! Do you think that everyone is specially assigned to the East Palace to revolve around you every period of the day?”

The ten-year-old Prince pouted. “Father Emperor, you can appoint him to teach me, then have someone else run the government.”

“That won’t do. We may be valued as the highest power, but we can’t just do anything we want,” the Emperor answered casually.

The Crown Prince huffed. “I see. You’re scared of him.”

This little man knowing how to use instigating mental tactics made the Emperor unsure of how to react, but he didn’t fall for it, nodding instead. “You’re right, we do have a lot of respect for the Premier. If a person is virtuous and honorable, they are worthy of others’ admiration. Recalling earlier days, we almost weren’t able to keep our position of Crown Prince. Were it not for the protection and care of people like the Premier, we would have long been gone from this world, with your existence out of the question. That’s why you need to remember that genuinely capable subjects must be treated with respect, and are never to be treated irreverently. These people are the support beams of our nation. The Great Ming’s capability for stability relies not only on the Emperor, but also on such officials.”

The boy nodded in half comprehension, a bit distressed at heart. They had clearly been talking about fun things, right? Why had Father Emperor suddenly taken a turn into serious things…?

Education

The little Crown Prince was unusually inquisitive. Whenever he felt something to be novel, he would want to go take a look, and if he could try it out for himself, that was even better. Were anyone to tell him that it wasn’t fun, not only would he not believe them, but he would want to go test it out even more.

For example, in the wintertime, he had insisted upon skating and jumping on a lake coated over with ice. His attendants had been terrified, each of them telling him that he would fall into the water and catch a cold, but that only made him want to do it more. In the end, he had stepped on a thin portion of ice that had then collapsed, bringing his lower half in with it. His pants, shoes, and socks had all been soaked, scaring everyone’s souls out of their bodies. Fortunately, he had been found in time, and the tiny child hadn’t completed dunked into the water. Had he caught a cold, whether or not he could recover at his age would be hard to say.

Following that incident, the Emperor had come to an understanding of how much trouble his son was.

He had a severe headache.

Reprimanding him would be useless. Putting the fact that he didn’t like to have heavy words with his son aside, even if he did scold him harshly, the child was lively by nature — what came in his left ear would go out his right, never to be taken to heart. He was young at the present time, putting a limit on his misdeeds, but when he grew up, no one would be able to control him. Since he would go to play in water during the winter now, would he go into the sea to hunt dragons when he grew up?

Having the teachers educate him would be useless, too. He knew his son better than anyone else; even though the boy was quite bright, had a near-infallible memory, and could cleanly recite his teachers’ lessons in benevolence, righteousness, and history… but if whether he took them seriously was to be discussed, there would be nothing to say.

In the young Prince’s eyes, this world was filled with curios, with far too many things he could have fun with. Every spot of land was amusing, all the fauna was amusing, and the people were even more amusing.

Despite his extreme intelligence, he didn’t work industriously, and yet his appraisal and thoughts on human nature caused the Emperor, as a father, endless surprise every time. However, as the Crown Prince saw it, playing around with human nature only had the word ‘play’ in it, involving no actual playtime.

With that personality, would he really be able to bear commanding the country in the future?

Thinking about how reliable his own father had been, then about how unreliable his son was being now, the beyond-reliable Emperor felt trepidation.

With no other choice, he had to ask the people at his side, intending to correct the Crown Prince’s personality.

Huai En was long dead; with that personality of his, he could have followed the Prince every day to supplement his education, otherwise. That would have been more than trustworthy, purely because Huai En had not been as pedantic as officials, and after being in the palace for so many years, serving a Crown Prince would have been a cinch.

What a shame it was that the world had only had one Huai En, and Wang Zhi had already gone off to Ningbo, more or less disappeared into the ocean at this point. The rest of palace people were very loyal, but their wisdom was not exactly high, giving the Emperor misgivings about trusting them with this.

After pondering things, he could only find Tang Fan to ask for advice.

Tang Fan was quite busy. Liu Jian had since retired at this point, he had been promoted to Head Vizier, and now he was so awfully hard-pressed, he barely had the spare time to return home. He was an East Palace Teacher for the Crown Prince on top of that, too. It was for that reason that Sui Zhou had entered the palace several times to back him up in both the open and secret, his implication being to have the Emperor not give Tang Fan too heavy of a burden. The Emperor himself wasn’t sure how to react to that.

If at all possible, he didn’t want to trouble Tang Fan with things such as this, but the Emperor found that educating his son was even more trying than running a country. One person’s plans would fall short, while a pair’s would grow long; in the end, after all the twists and turns, he still had to discuss things with Tang Fan.

The latter was a bit vexed after hearing of all this.

The Crown Prince’s personality was indeed worrying. If he was an ordinary person, his fun-loving nature would be just that, and even if he played himself to death, that would be his own business. He was the future ruler of the country, however — if he kept playing around, it would be the nation that was getting played to death.

Not only the nation, but playing with fate would be costly, too. The current Emperor had only one son right now, so if the Crown Prince didn’t have time enough to leave a son behind in the future…

Stop. Stop it.

Those thoughts flashed through Tang Fan’s mind, terrifying to think of. Even though the possibility was tiny, there was no guarantee that this wouldn’t happen.

As a normal person, one could only pay attention to the present moment, but as the Great Ming’s Head Vizier, Tang Fan had to plan for the future, for a hundred years from now. He had to do all he could to eradicate all unexpected circumstances.

However, leading the crown Prince down the proper path was indeed a very headache-inducing issue.

He shared a look with the Emperor. They unwittingly sighed in unison.

Pitiful were the hearts of this world’s parents.

Blindly admonishing and obstructing him definitely wouldn’t do anything. Many officials might do such things, perhaps, but Tang Fan knew well that that wouldn’t work at all.

Who had never been young before? Everyone had experienced the Prince’s same psychological process (though they might not have had his particular degree of activeness, of course).

At this age where one’s personality had not yet completely settled, if one wanted to do something, there would be someone nearby nagging them about what they could and couldn’t do. With the Crown Prince, not only would he not stop, but he would instead have the mentality of, ‘You won’t let me do it, so now I have o do it.’

Tang Fan thought carefully, then said, “Letting things flow is better than damming it up. Since His Highness has an innate love for play, forcibly suppressing it would only produce the opposite result. You may as well let him go and play until he’s happy.”

The Emperor blinked. “Your meaning is…?”

Thinking to himself that even kind Emperors had times of cunning, Tang Fan didn’t answer that, simply smiling. “What idea Your Majesty has is what idea this subject has.”

The Emperor coughed, forced to say, “Isn’t Wang Zhi in Ningbo? We want to have him bring the Crown Prince around for a tour. Perhaps, after seeing it, the boy will curb back his nature.”

The rest of his words went unsaid. Tang Fan appropriately understood.

“The Crown Prince going out of the palace is a major event, to say nothing of going out to sea. The officials will definitely oppose this to the end. Please think it through, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor knew this, of course. When he had gone out of the palace for nothing more than praying, not even leaving the capital, all of society had opposed it.

Officials all wished that they could confine the Emperor into the palace, that it was best for him to never go a step out of it all of his life, yet they also demanded that he be adept in accepting advice, have respect for virutous folks, and be hardworking in governance.

That was much too difficult. The Emperor was a human, not a puppet.

An Emperor that had never seen the world before would either be meek and incompetent, or spectacularly rebellious, or negligent in governance. A fourth option would be difficult — how many lifetimes of incense had they needed to burn to get the current Emperor, who perfectly met all needs?

Were this another Emperor, he would never have allowed subjects to make arrangements like this. The present Crown Prince went without saying.

Due to his childhood experiences, the Emperor had never been hale. He was quite worried that he would abruptly leave this mortal coil, leaving the not-yet-settled Crown Prince behind, turning a good situation into a possible total mess. For that reason, he always held an intense sense of crisis.

If the other were anyone else, if they heard that the Emperor wanted to let the Crown Prince play outside of the palace, they would probably leap three chi into the air and tearfully object to it. Seeing that Tang Fan was not strongly dissenting to his idea, only pointing out the consequences of it, the Emperor calmed down somewhat.

“It is not that we aren’t aware of what you speak of, Premier. With how unruly the Crown Prince is by nature, if it isn’t muted, I fear that a huge disaster will come in the future.”

“You speak the truth, but this should be considered at length. When the Prince leaves the palace, will the realm be informed?”

“Of course not,” the Emperor said automatically.

“Will the Court officials be informed?”

“It would be best not to do that, else he will never be able to leave.”

“In that case, he should go incognito.”

“Right. We don’t wish to make him reveal his identity; he should change his name to follow Wang Zhi out.”

“Wang Zhi’s loyalty is unquestionable, but his capabilities as one man are limited, and the dangers of the outside world are beyond prediction. Have you ever thought about the incidents the Crown Prince might be met with, Your Majesty?”

“We have. If possible, we would never want our beloved son to go far away. However, thinking far back to the old day, the Great Ancestor beat down a country with one fist, Yongle ousted the Tartars, and Jianwen grew up in the deep palace, isolated in his knowledge and strategy-less, where he ended up burned to death. That ancient saying, ‘Be born in hard times, and you will die in peace,’ was clearly born of wisdom. The Prince is our son, the heir apparent, and we dare not hope that he can compare to Yongle, but if he could at least not be like Jianwen, I would be fully satisfied.”

Tang Fan was thrilled. The Prince was an only son; it was reasonable to say that the Emperor cherished him like a gem, yet he was willing to look off into the distance. Saying something like that displayed the structure of his mind. “You are wise, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor sighed. “Still, he is young. If he is rashly allowed out, the Empress will not let it go, nor be reassured. In your opinion, Premier, should we send some bodyguards with him, just in case?”

Tang Fan nodded. “That goes without saying. His Highness is precious, so even if he needed to go out to temper himself, his safety needs to be assured.”

“Apart from that, do you have any other suggestions?”

“I do.”

The Emperor’s eyes shone. “Come, say them.”

“You should have more heirs.”

“…”

Seeing that he was speechless, Tang Fan held in his smile. “This subject will not mince words. If the Crown Prince has a little brother, he will understand the principle behind setting an example as an older brother. This would also ensure purity of the imperial lineage. It does more than one thing in one go, so to speak. This subject knows that you and the Empress share deep feelings, and I have no desire to be an unromantic villain, but you are in the prime of your life. You will definitely be able to have children and grandchildren running about your knees in the future, so… please put more effort into it.”

The Emperor’s face went dark and twitchy. He glared at Tang Fan, speechless for a time.

The advantage to having a Head Vizier that way beyond conventional norms was that he wouldn’t have to listen to purist words in his ears, and he could easily trust him when it came to major things. Like right now, for instance; likely no one in the entire Court would agree to let the Crown Prince go abroad, yet Tang Fan did, being someone the Emepror could consult with.

The disadvantage, though, was that the Head Vizier would occasionally say shocking statements right to his face, and he couldn’t actually find fault in them.

‘Put more effort into it’? Was this something that could be done with just effort?

Forget it, he could bear with a mix of good and bad. Who made him be the Emperor?

To be an Emperor, one needed to be able to stomach more than a Prime Minister could. If the Prime Minister could swallow down a boat, then the Emperor would at least have to have Mount Tai sitting steady in his gut.

Sui Zhou

The character Zhou州 came from Chuan川 — A place to live in the middle of water, known as an islet.洲

His courtesy name had come from the Late Emperor: Guangchuan, ‘Many Rivers’, the meaning of it being that all rivers merged back into the ocean. He had given him it in the hopes that he would have an open mind when he looked at the world.

Disregarding the Late Emperor’s mediocre governance, he had been regarded as the paragon of a generation in terms of artistic attainments. Sui Zhou was not that great at that stuff, but he had still come to know of A Circle of Harmony, which the Late Emperor had painted himself.

In the opinions of many, the Late Emperor might not have accomplished anything. He had inherited a not-so-great structure from his father, and as time had gone on, he had grown impatient with the extra constraints placed on Emperors, thereafter slacking off.

And yet, Ironically, the only father-like care that Sui Zhou had ever experienced had come from the Late Emperor.

His bond with his parents had been shallow since childhood. He had two siblings; his older brother, Sui An, was his parents’ favorite, and even though his little sister was a woman, as the youngest, she had received some extra attention. Sui Zhou alone, in the middle, was disposable — and because his mother had nearly died birthing him, she didn’t have any particular fondness for him.

He didn’t care much, though. He had been independent ever since he was little. Even if no one cared for him, he could live a good life by himself. Whether his parents cherished him or not would be flowers upon brocade.

At eight years old, when his older brother had been in the middle of being huffy about his parents giving Sui Zhou extra spending money, Sui Zhou had already left home to go study the arts at Wudang.

After Yongle’s time, Wudang’s popularity had boomed, its mountain thereby turning into a national martial arts site. Sui Zhou had studied under the sect for twelve full years, training in winter’s coldest nine days of winter and three coldest periods of summer. That was the only way he had been able to get such high martial arts.

He had a collected nature and wasn’t fond of talking, but he would fulfill what he did claim. The Late Emperor and then-Dowager Zhou had both been rather fond of him.

That was to say, apart from his own parents, there were no elders that disliked Sui Zhou.

The Late Emperor had treated him like his own nephew. Once he had seen that he wanted to join the army, he had given him a long talk, then finally set him up in the Brocade Guard, making it easy to look out for him nearby.

In contrast, his elder brother had been obsessed with earning scholarly honors. Seeing that he had become a Brocade Guard, he worried that Sui Zhou’s status would ruin his own reputation and cause him setbacks in his career, to the point where he had urged Sui Zhou through his parents int he hopes that he would not gain the vicious title of a Brocade Guard.

Sui Zhou hadn’t listened to him, of course. For some things, he wouldn’t bicker about them because he didn’t care. For things he genuinely cared about, he would never let them go.

Seeing that he refused to obey, his older brother had grown furious. The brothers had gone through a row — though it had mostly been Sui An shouting, and Sui Zhou occasionally answering with a sentence or two.

It wasn’t that Sui Zhou was bad at fights. He would have only needed to draw out his sabre and put it to his brother’s neck to assure that Sui An would never make another sound. If the brothers got to that step, however, there would be no meaning to it.

Later on, even their parents had noticed the commotion and rushed over to assuage them. Sui Zhou had heard them used the label of ‘persuasion’, but in reality, their words — inside and out — were saying that being a Brocade Guard was a bad job, and he should resign.

He hadn’t refuted them to their faces. A few days later, he had simply said farewell to his parents, moved out of the Sui home, and gone to live by himself.

He had always been reserved, more do than talk. Others had only believed that he embraced the title of consort-kin and slandered him behind his back a lot, but they had never before though that he would quietly establish a few of his own achievements. Relying on his actual skills, he had quickly gained a steady foothold in the Brocade Guard. By the time those that held jealousy in their hearts and had been waiting viciously for a good show came back to their senses, they had found that he was already pressing down on top of their heads, and they had never realized it.

The Brocade Guard seemed impressive, yet in reality, it had to deal with all sorts of meaningless trash. As the Emperor’s personal guards, it was naturally inseparable from trifles and dark secrets, and as long as a case was odd or dangerous, it would always be on it.

Sui Zhou had once devised a plan for himself. At around age twenty-seven, he would take a wife and have kids, and then at age thirty, he would assume the position of Commanding Envoy. The Envoy at the time had been Wan Tong — Consort Wan’s little brother of full blood — but he would have to retire eventually. When that time came, in terms of seniority and skills, it ought to be his turn for the spot.

With all those calculations, he had overlooked just one mishap.

He hadn’t known that he would come across Tang Fan.

When he had first seen the man, he felt that meeting him was definitely inferior to just hearing about him, and he didn’t look like anything special: a civil official that couldn’t bear any heavy lifting, relied solely on lip service, and was no different than any of those Court officials. Sui Zhou’s expression towards him had inevitably not been any sort of good.

He hadn’t expected that the other would be very disciplined, not batting an eye at having things repeatedly made difficult for him, still talking to him like an old friend when he met him. Regardless of whether he had genuinely not minded or had only pretended to be magnanimous, that display of what he could stomach had been enough to prove that he was an unusual person, and might be a figure capable of ascending to Vizier in the future.

“What’s got you so distracted?”

A voice suddenly hit his ears, interrupting his recollections.

He turned his head to see that Tang Fan had returned from the palace at some unknown point in time, having switched into regular clothes. He still held a book in hand.

“It’s a rest day, but His Majesty suddenly called you into the palace. What was it?” Sui Zhou asked.

“Nothing much. It was only something to do with the Crown Prince. Yesterday, he was up to his tricks again, and went into the Palace of Manifest Virtue to pretend to be a ghost and scare everyone. It was this event that casued His Majesty to make up his mind in secretly sending him off to Wang Zhi.” Tang Fan shook his head, smiling painfully. “I thought I was pretty mischievous as a child, but I never reached the Prince’s level. The new really does surpass the old.”

The Palace of Manifest Virtue had been Consort Wan’s quarters when she lived, and after her death, it had been sealed up for the time being, no one living in it. The Crown Prince running over there must have been because he had heard some rumors, so he had gotten the idea to go be a ghost. In the end, before he had had his fun, his father had instead bristled up.

Speaking up to there, Tang Fan curiously brought the previous topic back up. “Guangchuan, you rarely get distracted. What problem were you thinking of just now?”

The corner of Sui Zhou’s mouth ticked up slightly. “It’s nothing. I was just remembering the past, and the scene of when I first met you.”

Tang Fan smiled at that, too. “Yes, I remember that. You were making things a lot harder for me at the time. If I had been someone with a little less self-control, I would have gotten angry and run off. Tell me, where else would you have ever gotten a partner as wise and courageous as me?”

Sui Zhou took his hand, and said in earnest, “In this life, even though I’ve missed many people and many things, I’m extremely blessed that I didn’t end up missing you.”

The translator says: And that’s all she wrote… online. There’s one more that was a Taiwan-released book exclusive that I have, but I’d like to catch up on proofreading/The Snake and the Crane updates and get started on my next project before tackling something in traditional Chinese. (It isn’t hard, just time-consuming.)
I’ve been translating this thing for over a year, with some bumps in the middle, and to be completely honest, I don’t know what to do with myself. Even though I have a plan for exactly what I’m going to do. What a weird feeling?? Hm. This was such a rollercoaster of a novel, that words fail me on what I should say at more-or-less goodbye. If I could think of them, they would be good things — if I disliked this novel in any capacity, I wouldn’t have finished it.
I do want to reiterate that I was translating this without having read it before, much like I had with Lord Seventh and The Beauty’s Blade. This did not result in any major translation hiccups, which speaks volumes for MXS’s ability to write well in such a massive text.
As for my blind translation, there was one thing I regretted: titling the chapters. “Chichi, what’s so bad about that?”, you might ask. Well… they were all untitled to begin with. I modified the jjwxc chapter descriptors, which were typically just quotes from the chapter itself, to give them some differentiation, but in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. At about the 90 chapter mark, I considered going back and deleting the titles, but it was far too late at that point. If I had to go back in time, I would chose to not do that alone. Otherwise, no regrets!
While I digest the ending of this chapter in my life, I’m going to shamelessly plug my other incoming works. The Snake and the Crane that I mentioned earlier is an in-progress (as of this writing) wuxia mystery novel that I’m writing myself, if that interests you; it’s also on this blog, available for free. A full Faraway Wanderers translation is also incoming, as has been the plan for months and months. Both works can be discussed on the Discord, linked and the very, very top of every post.
All in all, thanks for reading, sugarpies. See you next novel.