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Historical person
Zhu Yuanzhang was the founder of the Ming dynasty and ruled China as the Hongwu Emperor from 1368 to 1398. Born into an impoverished peasant family, he became a Buddhist novice after famine and disease destroyed his household, joined the Red Turban rebellion and rose to defeat rival warlords and expel the Yuan court. As emperor he rebuilt state institutions but governed through severe laws, purges and close personal control.
Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun reimagines Zhu’s rise through a fictional girl who assumes her dead brother’s identity and claims his destiny. The Radiant Emperor novels draw on the Red Turban rebellion and the fall of Yuan rule while deliberately transforming gender, sexuality and personal relationships. They are revisionist historical fantasy rather than a conventional fictional biography of Zhu Yuanzhang.
Series
The Radiant Emperor duology reimagines the collapse of Mongol Yuan rule and the rise of Zhu Yuanzhang, the rebel commander who became the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty. Shelley Parker-Chan transforms the future emperor into a genderqueer protagonist who takes her dead brother’s identity, pursues his promised…
All books in this series
