Shenmei

Background

Betrothed to Shishou, the clan's adopted heir, she was instead sent to the Former Emperor's harem as a high-ranking consort, unknowingly a hostage through which the Empress Regnant could control the Shi Clan and end its slave trade. The emperor never favoured her; her ten-year-old lady-in-waiting Taihou bore his illegitimate daughter instead, and the other concubines mocked Shenmei for twenty years. Given back to Shishou, she found that he had married that illegitimate daughter and had a child by her, Suirei, whom Shenmei abused for years; she later bore Loulan, whom she treated more like a doll than a daughter.

Seeking revenge on Li, she drove out clansmen who opposed her and, with Ayla, an emissary from Shaoh, began making and stockpiling feifa guns in the Northern Province, while demanding a potion of eternal youth - an order she gave the captive Maomao with a twenty-four-hour deadline. Her husband and both daughters pretended to go along while secretly working to expose the rebellion. When the Forbidden Army attacked her fortress, she took Loulan's gun to shoot Loulan and Jinshi, but the gun was defective; its shrapnel hit her instead, and she died from blood loss.