Tigers Sniff the Rose episode 23 recap: A hunt for her hand

In short

Yan Shang turns Meng Zaishi's boulder into a joke, but Meng Zaishi demands the princess in marriage and exposes that she can't have children. She answers by turning the match into a hunting contest and entering it herself.

What happens in episode 23

Meng Zaishi's stone is meant to frighten the court, and he adds that a hundred thousand troops stand at the border, ready for the Emperor's orders. The hall goes silent. Yan Shang steps forward and says he has studied foreign scripts since childhood. With leave from the Emperor and Yu Cheng'an, he reads the carving aloud: an imperial decree from over a hundred years ago, recording a frontier surrender, with the Meng clan's letter of submission hung over the Shenwu Gate. The hall laughs, and Meng Zaishi is left looking foolish.

He tries again. He was like a son to Meng Baiyu, he says, and by frontier custom a son takes on his father's widow, so he asks the Emperor to give him the princess. With his army behind him, it is close to a threat. The princess stands and doesn't refuse outright. Since the frontier prizes martial skill, she proposes a hunt: whoever comes first decides whether she marries. The Emperor sees she has turned a forced match into a contest, approves it and invites young men to compete.

To break her, Meng Zaishi tells the whole hall she ended a pregnancy at the frontier and can never have children. The room erupts. Yang Si says he will enter the hunt, and Zhao Lingfei loudly says she will too. Touched, the princess declares that she will also take part, because her marriage is hers to decide. For the rest of the banquet she drinks cup after cup while Yan Shang watches her with concern.

Afterward Yu Cheng'an and the Crown Prince each send a physician to take her pulse. Rumor says any child she bears could hold the realm, which is why every faction treats her as a pawn. She tells Yan Shang it's all true and asks if he minds. He smiles: a fortune-teller once told him he would have no heirs either. The Crown Prince sends Yang Si to find out more. Yang Si finds this cold, but he goes, and she icily tells him it's true. Zhao Lingfei then arrives as promised with her little dog and teaches the princess how to command it.

Liu Wenji is carrying Yu Cheng'an's late supper when the arrogant Eunuch Chen knocks it over. Picking it up, he overhears Yu Cheng'an and Wei Qiao discussing Chunhua, the child she is carrying and the Crown Prince's moves. Caught, he steps out and explains. Yu Cheng'an doesn't punish him. He asks how Liu Wenji was hurt and orders that he stay at his side from now on, remembering how he learned to read while serving Mu Ningshuang as a young man. He tells Wei Qiao he won't let Liu Wenji out of his sight before the hunt, and that this clever, literate young man might be worth training. The princess, trained in martial arts since childhood, tells Yan Shang to stay out of danger at the hunt. He says they will face it together.

Why it matters

Episode 23 sets up the hunt that will decide the princess's marriage, makes her lost child public, and moves Liu Wenji to Yu Cheng'an's side.

Based on the episode synopsis, summarized in our own words: TVmao (电视猫) episode synopses