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Historical person
1657–1704
Sophia Alekseyevna was regent of Russia from 1682 to 1689 during the minority of Ivan V and Peter I. Her government faced court and military struggles while Russian expansion continued in Siberia. The Deer and the Cauldron fictionalises Trinket’s involvement in her rise and later Sino-Russian diplomacy.
Jin Yong’s fiction uses this historical figure within a narrative that blends documented events, popular legend and wuxia invention.
Series
Set during the early reign of the Kangxi Emperor, The Deer and the Cauldron follows Wei Xiaobao—called Trinket in John Minford’s English translation—from a Yangzhou brothel into the Forbidden City. Illiterate, irreverent and almost entirely without conventional martial virtue, he survives through mimicry, bribery, luck and an instinct…
All books in this series
