The Royal Marriage

Procedures

(DAYU)

A couple of weeks passed. Missing the Queen Dowager gets more intense as time passes. But at the same time, knowing that she is in the arms of King Dao, gave me comfort.

I was confined to the Palace. As tradition dictates it, as the newest member of the Royal Family, the blunt of mourning the passing of one of my husband's relative will be on my shoulders.

My days are filled with cleaning the Queen Dowager's room. Slowly and by myself, with the aid of just one or two attendants. I have to catalog her things. Sometimes, I will held one of her fans or shawls and I will break down in tears. That's when the attendant with me will run and call for Qing or any available member of the Royal Family to console me.

I also have to light incenses to the Grave of the Kings every afternoon. A temple like place where the plaque with names of the Wang ancestors who passed away were written. I have to stay there and pray for their souls easy passing on the afterlife.

Before the sun sets on the West, I have to be inside the Prince's Pavilion to hide there and mourn and not emerge until the sun had risen the next day.

It's tiring and comforting at the same time.

It's tiring because I know I won't like to be mourn like this when I pass.

It's comforting because I know that my predecessors experienced this too. The Queen Dowager and the Queen, Qing's mother, had experienced this once upon a time in their reign as Crown Princesses.

It gave me a feeling of belonging with them. A commonality among us. Me doing this means it's my duty as the legal spouse of the Crown Prince of the Land. And it's my right.

It's giving me mixed emotions.

Slowly but surely, though, I started feeling better each day. As I watch old videos of King Dao and Queen Chun in each other's arms, it solidify my belief that the Queen Dowager is happy where she is right now. Beside King Dao.

So I forged on and did my duty as tradition dictates it.

And aside from my duty to mourn the Queen Dowager, my time was also occupied with readying for the decision of the Council about our request to go through surrogacy to beget heirs for the Royal Family.

The Council and the Royal Family will vote on that. If they will allow us or not.
If yes, we will proceed with looking for the right hospital to use and for eggs and for a surrogate mother who will carry our heir.

Yes, it's a complicated, tiring and if you are sentimental, cold process.

It disturbed me too. Enough to talk it with Qing one afternoon after I prayed in the Grave of the Kings.

"Won't people judge our children if they were conceived with the help of Science? It feels cold, Qing. I want our children to be made with love. Maybe we should reconsider that concubine proposal?" I told him while biting my lower lip.

"Who told you that they are not made with love? Dayu ah," Qing pulled me closer and capture my face between his warm hands. "They are not here yet but we love them already. They are not yet conceived but we awaited them eagerly already. They are already made of love. Our love. I can sleep with a woman, a concubine, to gain a child, sure, but if I don't love that woman, can we also say that that child was conceived with love?"