It was a mockery of her life’s work, really, when Banruo reflected on it later in exile.

She spent ten years guiding Prince Yu to compete with his dimmer brother in order to drive the destruction of Liang based on the full conviction that the ruthless Liang emperor would never make this son who was most like him his heir to the throne – Xiao Xuan, no matter how much he refused to admit it to himself, had enough buried self-awareness to know only too well the destructive tendencies of a character such as his – and her success had been in turning Prince Yu's public image into that of a shining prince in the eyes of those deluded in the Liang court.

Then Mei Changsu appeared and though he up-ended Banruo’s plan, he also led a path to her discovery that Prince Yu was the true heir to Hua; and yet…somehow, she still could not quite understand how, this precious information had precisely been the thing that caused both her and Prince Yu's downfall: in turning to assist him in earnest, she had set her prince on a path of destruction that ended in his blood and the loss of his only child, who she now wandered the world to look for, and could only hope she finds her new master before she died.