Lament at Long Gate Palace

Eleven

Disclaimer: This is a translation of the Chinese novel 长门怨 by Qiao Xi/乔夕 and not my own work.

Translated by: Catharcity
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A long time later, I began to understand the value of a golden palace.

If Wei Zifu loved you, then her story could only have ended the way mine did.

People often said that the limits of love lay in one’s ability to endure – to endure the fact that the man we loved would have three wives and four concubines.

Wei Zifu managed to tolerate. So, she accompanied you by your side for thirty-eight years.

She could accomplish this because she did not love you.

All along, what she wanted was never love.

If, from the beginning, all I wanted was only the precious throne belonging to an Empress, perhaps I would not have lost you as quickly as I had.

But I wanted to be your only, just like how Zhuo Wenjun was Sima Xiangru’s one and only.

I wanted a love like theirs.

I was destined to never receive it.

Because I had forgotten that I wanted the love from a man who could never love me.