Margot, dark-skinned and robust, is chosen as the emperor’s fiancée yet shunned by delicate court ladies. She tends turnips in her quiet palace yard and exchanges heartfelt letters with General Rowan, a scarred frontier warrior who truly sees her. Rowan carves a wooden circlet for her but dies in a brutal ambush before confessing his love. Grief-stricken Margot spends forty years as Emperor Lucien’s loyal, platonic companion, running the palace and growing crops, cherishing the circlet as her li
