Twilight Revenge

In the general's household there are two daughters, one born to the general's wife and one to a concubine, and it is the second who is mistreated for years, until she has a lung disease. That daughter is Serena Harrington. At her coming-of-age ceremony she asks for help. Her half-sister turns the request into a trap, and Serena is made to kneel in the snow as a punishment and dies there. She comes back to life in the same house with no more illusions about it. There is an affair over a map of the border defenses, and Serena deliberately hands her half-sister a copy with holes in it. When the emperor examines the map, Serena uses the occasion to cut her ties with the general's household in front of him and takes the surname of her adoptive mother. Her half-sister tries slander next. Serena has laid her plans ahead of time, comes away with an imperial edict that puts her under the emperor's protection, and the household is punished. The general's son tries to shame her at the military examination and fails. Her half-sister and a daughter of the duke's house lean on their families' standing to pick quarrels with her, and then they carry off her adoptive mother, who is the Empress Dowager living unrecognized among ordinary people. The emperor and the people around him are angered by it.