To the innocent young girl looking at the high walls, the Imperial Palace was a beautiful haven where the nobility, clothed in riches, lived and dined. To the outside world, the Imperial Palace was the Forbidden City they would never be granted entrance to. Inside, however, was not as idealistic as it seemed.

A complicated web of lies and intrigues ensnares the back palace as the Empress and Crown Princess struggle for supremacy over the back palace. What use is it though? To have control over the back palace, when the cold emperor so brutally shuns the harem and those who live in it? While the back court is an entropic mess, the upper court is full of deceit and beguile as the Emperor isn’t who he seems and the Royal Court Advisor isn’t as powerless as he looks.

A concubine plots to overthrow the Emperor through carefully made friendships, masking her deceit behind a mask of humility and honour. 

An Eunuch makes a deal with a Prince and brings another with her to her fall.

The one expected to tell the most lies, is the one who is the most truthful. In this game of deceit, is anyone who they say they are?

On the outside, it is almost every girl’s dream to enter the palace, to dream of being showered with gifts and where fantasies about the Emperor surface. All you have to do is be gifted the spice bag. Gifted the spice bag and you enter into the never ending plots between concubines, fearing constantly for your life, wary always for sabotage.

To do what is forbidden seems most common in the Imperial Palace, taking power that isn't yours and loving those you shouldn't love.

Survival upon entering this world… is to change everything you are and become the one thing you hate. For in the Forbidden city, entrance means never looking back.