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A Young Womans Dynastic Records

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A Young Woman's Dynastic Records is a The Saga of Tanya the Evil fanfic written on spacebattles by gdstriker.

Still defiant in her Rage Against the Heavens as she dies on the battlefield, Tanya gets reincarnated in a much different yet just as hazardous to the health political quagmire.

She gets reborn in the decaying Late Qing Chinese Empire, expected to enter the Imperial Palace as a lowly consort and never leave again.

Thing is, her new name is Yehenara Xingzhen, the future Empress Cixi. And she's not done fighting.


A Young Woman's Dynastic Records contains the following tropes

  • Abusive Parents: Yehenara Duanren absolutely loathed his infant daughter as soon as she was born (mostly out of superstition as he suspected her Mystical White Hair from being evidence of demon taint) and physically abused her on a whim, to the point she's immediately tense and anxious when he enters the room.
  • Age-Gap Romance: Helmut von Bessel (around thirty) and Renshu, a fifteen years old teenager, are rather attracted to each other.
  • Alternate History:
    • Since Xingzhen has established a much more effective army in the Longyintai, the Taiping Rebellion is swiftly ended and ultimately is a crushing victory for the Qing Empire. She also forces reforms upon the Deadly Decadent Court, halting the country sinking more and more into the role of "sick man of Asia".
    • In Europe, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte decided to run for President instead of establishing the Second Empire, allowing him to remain in power after warring with Germania and not losing Alsace-Lorraine.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: After she delivers a healthy son whose birth causes many omens of good fortune to appear, Xingzhen is publically acclaimed as Empress of China.
  • Behind Every Great Man: The Imperial Court is hyper aware that the Emperor's new, revolutionary reforms have been suggested by Noble Consort Yi, but nobody will be so rude as to actually tell it.
  • Beware the Quiet Ones: When she enters the wife selection for the newly crowned Emperor, Xingzhen is immediately noticed for being too calm — a girl who watches her surroundings so carefully and walks with purpose is somebody interesting.
  • Deadly Decadent Court: This is Late Qing China — much emphasis is put on pageantry and ritual, while effective governance is barely an afterthought. When the Emperor starts to really shake the rot down, the Manchu clans are infuriated by the loss of their privileges and have no qualms plotting a famine or a war to make the sovereign lose face.
  • Defiant to the End: Even as her second life explosively ends, Tanya refuses to bow to Being X and acknowledge him as a god.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: Even the friendly Western countries tend to be hopelessly racist on the matter of China, if in a more paternalistic way. The Francois and Imperial ambassadors are shown surprised by Noble Consort Yi speaking fluently their language, and the treaty giving them an opening to send engineers and missionaries in the Qing Empire is seen as the opportunity to educate "the yellow race".
  • Despair Event Horizon: Renshu comes dangerously close to wasting away in her bedroom when all of her efforts to secure influence and power at court fail, leading her family to quietly repudiate her. Xingzhen intervenes to save her from that, taking her at Yi Ning Palace to have the opportunity to be useful.
  • Divine Right of Kings: A major driving question at court is to discover if Noble Consort Yi truly is approved by the Dao pantheon to stand besides Yizhu and implement reforms — it ultimately culminates when she gives birth to a son who's plainly blessed by Heaven, as proven by several positive omens.
  • Epic Fail: Lord Lexington's attempt at saber-rattling by having Commodore Allerton bombard Fuzhou to convince the Chinese to further open up to Albish trade. Everything goes wrong:
    • Between a heavy storm and sabotaged navigational tools, Allerton loses track of his position and assumes the first port he comes across is Fuzhou, when it's actually Wenzhou (roughly 200 miles short of his destination).
    • When he orders warning shots to be fired into the harbor, his gunners overshoot and hit the American concession zone (the existence of which is the reason why Wenzhou was not chosen as the target city), blowing a hole in the embassy wall, killing a junior member of the diplomatic mission and wounding the ambassador.
    • When he finally makes it to Fuzhou, he is blocked by a fort capable of shrugging off 68-pounder shells and firing shells dangerous enough to threaten his squadron in return.
    • An attempt to take the fort by land gets a battalion of Marines slaughtered in a trap.
    • After losing all his Marines, Allerton's fleet is boarded by the Chinese, which results in his death, the capture of his flagship, and the destruction of the rest of the squadron.
    • After all this is over, Xingzhen uses the accidental attack on Wenzhou as grounds to renounce the Treaty of Nanking, revoke every Albish concession zone in China, and expel the Albish from the country. Within weeks, the Albish presence in China is reduced to Hong Kong, which has been cut off from the mainland.
  • The Good King: What Yizhu aspires to be. To this end, he fiercely supports Xingzhen's efforts to uproot corruption and gracefully listens Shi Dakai's accusation about him not truly understanding his people.
  • Internal Reformist: After gaining the Emperor's interest and his blessing to proceed as she deems fit to ensure China's long-term survival, Xingzhen proceeds to expunge corruption from the military and bureaucracy as soon as she can. Obviously, such behaviour causes all these highborns who benefited from the institutional rot to eyeball her with more than a smidge of hostility and attempt to discredit her.
  • Jerkass Gods: Being X forces Tanya to reincarnate a second time, pointing he has forever to enjoy her struggles.
  • Military Maverick: Xingzhen decides to enlist a few of them to fight the Taiping rebellion, reasoning they will be efficient instead of being hobbled by notions of honourable fighting.
  • Mystical White Hair: Yehenara Xingzhen remembers her past life and how to wield her qi in order to use spells and talismans. She's also born with silver hair, fueling the rumors that she's a fox spirit.
    • Her son inherits her pale hair, described as "dark silver", and his birth is surrounded by omens of good fortune.
  • Politically Incorrect Villain: In line with the widespread racism of the era, Sir Harry Parkes disparagingly calls Chinese people "yellow monkeys" and has no qualms seeing thousands of them dead than allow for one single Englishman to be humiliated.
  • Purple Prose: As befits an Imperial Palace Drama, the narrative is heavy on metaphors and poetic allusions.
  • Realpolitik:
    • Albion seeks to keep China unstable by encouraging the Taiping rebellion. Xingzhen is pretty unhappy to learn of their interference in the conflict.
    • In order to court the Francois Republic as her ally, Xingzhen offers them Annam (Vietnam), leading her to discreetly arrange for a coup since the current king is extremely traditionalist and violently xenophobic but has a more open-minded brother.
    • When a Mughal prince begs for the Qing's help in seizing his throne back, Xingzhen agrees because it will destabilize Bharat and prevent Albion from drawing on their prized colony's resources to ruin China's day.
  • Simple, yet Awesome: Xingzhen's entire stick. She cares not for flourish or grandeur, she invests in precision, confidence and reliability. And she draws everyone else's notice for that.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: What prompts Xingzhen to kiss Yizhu for the first time? The Court was dragging her to trial in order to condemn her as Daji reborn, and the Emperor in a fury came to stand beside her and make extremely sure he cared for her.
  • Token White: Helmut von Bessel, a Germanian former Imperial Army official, agrees to teach how to fight a war to the Dragon Claws.
  • True Love is Exceptional: Among the Emperor's consorts, Xingzhen isn't the prettiest, the best spoken or the most obedient, but she nonetheless mesmerizes Yizhu with her sheer confidence and vision for the future. It rather infuriates the other consorts as Xingzhen is nothing like the expected standards for a Manchu bride, she shouldn't be so successful in seducing the Emperor!
  • War Is Hell: The Taiping rebellion is depicted in quite gruesome ways, showing how violent and ruthless it was on the countryside.
  • Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Xingzhen's golden eyes are mentioned to be cold and intelligent, fitting for her ruthless personality and her ability to survive the Deadly Decadent Court while advancing her agenda for reforms.

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