Empress +

A Chinese empress has recently been victorious at little known minor conflicts with the newly discovered Europeans, most of which have important trade routes in operation within her empire, but this apparent good relationship between the peoples has not stopped smaller, more extremist and independent European factions aggressing her imperial boundaries... A relationship develops within her and one of the captured slaves, and we are inserted into the story on a warm, humid evening at her imperial palace, as her now #1 servant, by her personal request serves her dinner...

The empress is seated at her rather small, beautifully decorated table in the middle of a richly decorated room, her servant enters occasionally, serving her different dishes delivered by him personally from a kitchen a few palace levels below... The empress' living quarters are relatively small, with exits to her bedroom and balcony, apart from the downward-leading staircase...

Her servant, on this particular occasion enters and finds the empress standing, at the entrance to her balcony, staring at the sunset, leaning to a side of the doorway... Unusually greeting him and requesting him join her at the doorway, to most likely observe the sunset, she is wearing a long, red and gold-lined imperial robe, with her long black hair tied in a bun, as her servant wears loose trousers and a vest, and is much taller and with his chin-length brown, wavy hair, much scruffier than her...