Plot
Set in third century BC China, the story of The Emperor's Shadow revolves around the relationship between Ying Zheng, the King of Qin, and later the First Emperor; and the musician Gao Jianli. Gao Jianli's mother was the king's wet nurse when the young king was a hostage in the Zhao state, but they were separated after the former returns to Qin to become king.
After reaching adulthood, Ying Zheng embarks on a series of wars to fulfill his plan of unifying China. He kidnaps Gao Jianli from the Yan state to compose a powerful hymn for his new state. The two conflict over the new composition, the construction of grand public works, Ying Zheng's ruthless mass killing policies, and Ying Zheng's daughter, Princess Yueyang.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“If you need a certain vitality you can only supply it yourself, or there comes a point, anyway, when no ones actions but your own seem dramatically convincing and justifiable in the plot that the number of your days concocts.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)