In the year of our Lord, starting in four-oh-two
Happened a story no one knows, not even you.
Enter the tale of a malevolent Sovereign Murong Xi,
Sisters Xunying and Song'e, all the death from their sins yet to be.
That man would grant every luxury to drain the land dry,
While Empress Dowager Ding was left to wonder why.
The empire was forged in that dowager's bed,
Of a quiet affair granting the crown for his head.
But the sovereign's gaze took to the younger domain,
And the architect of his rise was cursed to be slain.
Enter the sisters, the source of his light,
Bleeding treasuries away and into the night.
But when sister Song'e sickened from death’s coming blow,
The royal doctor promised to cure this mortal woe.
Alas she had died, and Emperor ordered him bound,
Drawn, quartered, and burned till he was ash on the ground.
Now the last sister: the only soul in his eyes,
With a greed that expanded from land to the skies.
So now the queen requested a trek through the snow,
With the king and a legion, to the tundra they’d go.
A hunting procession through dangerous exhaust,
An acceptable margin of imperial cost:
Five thousand men left to freeze, blinded by white,
Or served as a banquet for tigers and wolves in the night.
But the Empress is happy, the journey rolls on,
Through the deadly expanse till the breaking of dawn.
And later still, she demands jellied fish under a boiling sun,
Then bring winter roots when the solstice is done!
If the season objects, the supplier will bleed,
For their reality bends to her majesty's need.
Raise up the palace, let the architects toil,
Where a measure of grain buys a measure of soil.
Yes, empty the silos and shudder the state,
For the Empress is hungry, and kings do not wait.
Then the summer of great strife said long enough she had reigned,
But death was a border the Emperor refrained.
So enter still love divine, a morbid embrace,
He wouldn't let the heavens intrude on his space.
And to ensure she had staff for her next life,
He kindly requested to kill his brother's wife.
A silver blade offered, a royal decree:
She would become a ghostly friend, her life taken for free.
Oh, the mandate of heaven is a terrible weight,
But crying on cue is the law of the state.
The ministers tremble, their tear ducts run dry,
So they swallow hot peppers to feign a true cry.
A safe and false mourning, a spice-driven weep,
Lest you join the dead queen in her infinite sleep.
Burn the eyes, burn the tongue, let the tragedy show,
For the tyrant is watching the theatrics below.
The funeral marches, the hearse rolls away,
The General decides he has nothing to say.
He waits for the madman to step through the gate,
Then quietly locks out the head of the state.
Remember the priceless dirt and every last kiss
Even the memory of impossible fish still persists.
Marvel the labor of a dead lover's shrine,
The story is closed... and the moral is fine.
