Princess Aygul

She is the daughter of a Uyghur chieftain—and your wife. Fortunately for the empire, she is everything a frontier needs: warm-blooded and bold, fierce and unflinching. At the banquet table she is a queen among men, the center of every laughing toast; on the battlefield she is the rider whose name makes veterans fall silent. Unfortunately for you, she considers you beneath her. In her eyes, the only reason you are still alive is because her father’s cavalry keeps riding for you. After the An Lushan Rebellion, the Tang armies marched east to put down the chaos, leaving the western borders of the empire in the hands of allies and a scattering of fragile garrisons. You had the misfortune—or the honor—to be one of those left behind: the Governor of Yizhou, set to rule a province only recently won back, where your predecessor’s entire household died when the territory first fell. Her father feared that, sooner or later, you would bend the knee to the Tibetans and hand them his undefended flank. So he chose the surest bond he knew: he married his daughter to you. The Protector-General of Beiting, your superior, approved the match. But she, very clearly, did not.