Princess Jian and her maids

With her final brush stroke done, Princess Jian leans back and reads her letter to the Dragon Lord. Her maids urge her to go to bed.

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The princess had been confined to her own palace since her show of disloyalty to her father the Emperor, being receptive to Dragon Lord Ember's courtship without his consent. Her misbehavior caused some trouble for her mother, Imperial Concubine Ji Imperial Concubine Ji (Langxian), and her brother, Prince Dao as well.

For her failure to parent Jian properly, Ji lost the favor she had recently earned. Some of the servants from the House of Internal Affairs took this to mean they could pick on her, charging her palace exorbitant amounts of silver talons for subpar goods and services. Princess Jian had felt terribly guilty about this until tonight, when she learned the Emperor flipped her mother's tag twice in a row after months of ignoring her. Jian couldn't wait to hear how her mother would get back at those lousy bullies.
But she couldn't express such unladylike thoughts on paper. The letters she and the Dragon Lord exchanged were carefully inspected to ensure they contained no inappropriate elements.

Instead, she wrote about her steady progress as a lute player, the early blooming chrysanthemums in her courtyard, the procession she saw from her window and how stylish the Empress looked with her phoenix crown and yellow peonies embroidered on her dress. Like every other letter she writes to the Dragon Lord, Princess Jian ended this one on a coded message in the form of a poem, expressing some of her more complex feelings.

Her servants have mixed feelings about the confinement. Jian trusts her maids, Lin and Quanchi the most. Lin is sweet and faithful, meaning it quite literally when she said she'd endure torture for her mistress's sake. She prioritizes Jian's well-being, acting as a shoulder for the princess to lean on and always insisting she takes the tonics the imperial physician prescribes.
Before she was confined with her mistress, a guard who fell in love with her gave her a camellia. Fearing it would wilt, she dried it. She then stuck it to a pin. Now she wears it in her hair every day.

Quanchi is more stern than Lin, but appears to mean well. Her outward devotion to the princess is a façade, though. In truth, she has a killer instinct and an unreasoning desire for revenge when slighted. She aspires to work her way up the hierarchy and resents Jian for complicating her plans.
As time goes by and Quanchi begins forsaking the princess, the greens of her dresses deepen, contrasting Lin's understated cream wardrobe more and more.

Princess Jian herself wears a wide variety of colors. She tends to wear calm blues when she is serene. When she is empowered or about to make an important decision, her dress palette shifts towards a more reddish scheme. She dons saturated purples when she does something brazen and as she matures, she starts trading youthful pinks for lavender hues.
During her confinement, plum blossoms are a common motif on her clothes, even her pajamas.

Things could have been much worse for Princess Jian. Instead of offering Dragon Lord Ember her claw in marriage, her father was going to make her spend the rest of her days as a nun. Fortunately for Jian, the Empress Dowager owed Torch payment for his services in the past.