My Nephew, The Crown Prince

Yvette is the orphaned daughter of a general who fell in battle, and the Emperor takes pity and arranges a marriage for her. She is given to Crown Prince Jeremy, and in the eastern palace she is degraded in every way people can find until she is dead. Then she opens her eyes at the banquet where the marriage decree is announced, before any of it has happened. She is asked again to choose, and she does not take the Crown Prince. She names Prince Yale, the Emperor's own uncle, badly wounded in a large campaign and lying unconscious with no one expecting him to wake. Once she is married to him he comes around. Yale treats her with respect, puts his protection over her, and the feeling between them builds slowly from there. On the other side of the palace, Jeremy begins to remember pieces of a life he has not lived yet, understands what he threw away, and starts pursuing her with something close to madness.