Title: Freedom from Choice
Characters/Pairings: Tianzi
Rating: G
Word Count: 863
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.
Notes: Written for the LJ comm cgcontest #1 "Sovereignty"
During your lifetime you hear a wealth of other people's thoughts, opinions, feelings, lies – in direct conversation, behind your back or overheard snippets of dialogue. Maids gossiping, servants muttering, advisors persuading. Some people say life was not a matter of chance, but of choice. Whether to stand or kneel, to talk or be silent, to serve or rebel, to live or die.
(Sometimes, though, there was nothing to choose from.)
Her entire life had been about what other people told her. According to the Eunuchs, her advisors, everything was the will of heaven, fated to be, and choices were taken away from her. She was Empress only in name, a ceremonial symbol of the state, and had never done anything – never been allowed to do anything – to deserve the title. It was simply a birthright to carry it.
All the High Eunuchs had access to the secret court documents, had been dealing with administrative issues since her ascension to the throne as a child. They were used to signing decrees in her name, taking matters right out of her hand, and steering her in directions designated by them. They were used to conditioning her to their liking, making her feel like she owed them for their gracious help, when all they were doing was abuse her power.
Despite all their efforts, they would never be able to extinguish the embers of doubt simmering beneath layers upon layers of assurances, intrigues, bald-faced lies. (Not as many of their obvious wrong-doings went by unnoticed as they would like to think.) It spoiled her appetite just thinking about how many of her people lived in extreme poverty, on the verge of starvation, when she lived in a palace overflowing with delicacies.
When all she wanted was to help these people, use her authority to serve them as a benevolent Empress would.
With Eunuchs unwilling to hand over the reins, and with them their priviledges, unwilling to even assent to compromises, however, she had little hope of ever acting according to her beliefs. They listening to her concerns (not bothering to hide their impatience), smiled at her (fake and condescending smiles) and declared they would do what they could (but never did if there was no benefit for them).
Now and then, they might actually carry out her orders when they were seen as inconsequential enough, if only to humor her and make her think she had some tangible power over them.
On all other occasions, she had no choice but to sit still and be used.
Not even their overthrow in a coup to restore power back into her own hands had been her choice. (She believed in peaceful – not bloody – resolutions.) It had all been planned and carried out by a faction dissatisfied with the usurping Eunuchs, but loyal to the Empress. A faction led by Xingke, the man she had saved from capital punishment by using her authority as absolute ruler for the very first time. (Xingke, the man she wished to have as a friend, confidant, lover.)
By Mandate of Heaven, she had a legitimate claim to rule over not only the Chinese Federation but all under heaven, the entire civilized world. In her heart of hearts, though, she was afraid and insecure, plagued by custom, not knowing if she was capable of expanding her rule outside of the palace, speaking with the full knowledge that her words would be taken as sacred and her actions as directed from above.
Despite her grand name of Tianzi, Empress of the Chinese Federation, she was a simple girl with simple wishes: she wanted to see the outside world, to taste it, and be friends with people she loved. Real friends she could share her deepest thoughts with, who did not see only her title as Empress or the power at her back, who might even call her by her birth name – Lihua, the sound of which she had long forgotten.
And friends, she had heard, were the family you could choose for yourself.
Those were her dreams, the treasures nobody could take away from her.