Chapter 1573: Questioning Consort Fan
Chapter 1573: Chapter 1573: Questioning Consort Fan
After Consort Fan endured the Empress Dowager Wang’s rebuke, she felt she had lost all face. At the palace banquet she merely showed her face for a moment, then used the excuse of feeling unwell to return to her palace.
Right now, she was languidly leaning in the east side room of Chang Chun Palace, letting a trusted palace maid rub her chest.
She was truly stifled with anger.
On top of the suffocation there was pent-up fury; this clotted resentment wanted nothing more than to burst out of her heart. On her way back, she deliberately picked on a minor fault to punish a young eunuch, ordering people to beat him with boards. If it hadn’t been for that lecture from the Empress Dowager Wang, the palace would have gained yet another wrongful ghost!
Violating heavenly order, my foot!
A whole pack of rootless, lowborn trash and cheap sluts, what right do they have to talk about heavenly order? It was clearly just an excuse to make her lose face, and right in front of so many people.
"Oh—" The more Consort Fan thought about it, the more suffocated her chest felt.
"My Lady, is it that this servant is pressing too hard? This servant deserves punishment."
Consort Fan shot her a glance and waved her hand.
"Reporting to My Lady, the Prince has come." The chief Eunuch of Chang Chun Palace bent his back as he came in to report, and not far behind him followed Prince Zhou.
Consort Fan immediately had the palace maid step aside, straightened up a little, looked at Prince Zhou striding quickly toward her, and exclaimed, "My son, the palace banquet hasn’t dispersed yet. Why have you come?"
Prince Zhou came up to her, anger radiating off him. He glared at the palace maid and eunuch and said, "Get out."
Consort Fan’s brows pinched together. Watching the eunuch and palace maid withdraw, her face sank as she asked, "What is wrong with you?"
"I should be asking what is wrong with Mother Consort. Do tell me, why for no reason at all did you have to target that Madam Song? If you wanted to use someone as a sacrificial pawn, there are plenty of choices. Why did you have to pick Madam Song specifically?"
Consort Fan’s face darkened and she scolded, "Is this the tone you use to speak to your Mother Consort? A tone of interrogation?"
Prince Zhou choked.
He drew in a breath, softened his voice a bit, but was still somewhat flustered with anger, saying, "Your son truly does not understand why you had to target her. Do you realize that after you went after Madam Song, Prime Minister Song turned around and targeted your son? He advised Father Emperor to have your son go work with the Hanlin Academy to compile that so-called Grand Canon of Celebratory Rites."
Compile the canon?
Consort Fan was stunned for a moment and said, "What, they’re sending you to compile the canon?"
A堂堂 Prince, going to compile some canon—what merit is there in that, what achievements could he gain? Isn’t that just trapping him in the Hanlin Academy?
Consort Fan knew that the Crown Prince had now been established, but so what? The Crown Prince was still young; it wasn’t even certain he’d live to grow up. Even if a Crown Prince had been set, there were precedents of Crown Princes being deposed. Under that premise, only if her own son had enough foundation would he have the strength to contend in the future, no?
But now, compile the canon?
"Prime Minister Song—Song Yunzhi—he actually dares!" Consort Fan was a little frantic. "Did your Father Emperor agree?"
"Naturally he agreed." Prince Zhou ground out between his teeth, "Your son stayed in the capital and did not go to take up his fiefdom, certainly not to be left here to compile that canon. Yet you insist on targeting Madam Song, and now you’ve made Prime Minister Song bear a grudge against me."
Consort Fan opened her mouth. "I...I didn’t intend it that way. It’s just that whenever I see her, I think of your late great-grandmother. Your great-grandmother used to be such a glorious figure, and she ought to have enjoyed that kind of glory, but she died so early. Now your maternal grandfather’s whole family is in mourning. At the very moment you most needed support for the establishment of the Crown Prince, they are in filial seclusion. Whenever I think of it I get angry, so naturally, when I saw Madam Song I just couldn’t help myself."
"Mother Consort, Great-grandmother was already over seventy; how is that considered an early death? And she was only your grandmother, not your mother!"
Consort Fan slapped the kang table heavily. "You unfilial brat, shut your mouth!"