The harem was blessed. Very blessed indeed. So blessed that all the ladies of the harem were somewhat afraid of having their name tags turned over by his imperial majesty. Anyone whom the emperor blessed with his presence or who went to serve him ended up pregnant.
All six palaces of the harem were filled all day, every day with the sound of crying babies, little pattering feet and mischievous children. And another two palaces were still being built because all the rooms of the palaces were full to bursting with concubines of various grades and their children.
The empress had somehow already given birth to fourteen children and didn't want anymore, but the emperor by law,, was expected to visit her on the first and fifteenth of every month, giving her a headache to find ways to stop the emperor from visiting anymore. She wasn't the woman who had given birth to the most children either. Noble Consort Su had twenty-three, due to having four pairs of twins and three sets of triplets. She didn't want anymore children either.
The Cold Palace had been converted into a sort of orphanage for the children whose mothers had passed away from sickness, injury or childbirth. The children there were taken care of by the women who had previously been sent there for misdeeds, but who now had hope of one day leaving the Cold Palace if they adopted a child and the child did well in the imperial school.
The imperial school boasted of seven classes of twenty in every year level, but that included the noble children living outside the palace walls as well.
Every month, at least one more woman was taken into the harem, until the number of Servant Ladies was too much to squeeze into the palaces anymore and the Empress decreed that these Servant Ladies would continue their work as maids and servants of the higher class concubines, living in the servant quarters, as there was no room for them in the harem palaces.
Add to that, the royal progeny being born to the eldest princes and princesses who had grown up enough to marry and have children themselves. The Forbidden City was indeed a growing and thriving city, run and serviced by royal relatives and royal descendants.
It had come to the point that nearby nations and cities were becoming overrun by these imperial descendants as they were married off, sent to work or apprentice, or sent into the imperial army to threaten all of the surrounding nations. In a few years, all the surrounding nations might be assimilated or naturalised due to the sheer number of imperial or royal progeny being sent out and spread around.
With so many children, descendants and other imperial relatives, one would think that the Da Jiu Dynasty was filled with conflict and fighting inside and outside to contend for the throne. But there wasn't. Although the emperor seldom met his many children, the empress did. She appointed some of her older children and the higher ranking members of the harem to help watch over each other and the children so that they would all grow up as useful members of the empire. She had even encouraged the emperor to establish an elite army made up of just his children - the ones who couldn't sit still in class. This, the imperial progeny army terrorised nation's far and wide, finding no one able to contest them in military matters.
This was indeed a 'soft' way of taking over the world, as the Minister of Rites and the Minister of Foreign Affairs put it.
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And that's all I'm writing on this.
What is the actual story about? Who's the protagonist? Where will the story go?
There's bread and cheese up on the shelf.
If you want a story, go write it yourself.
Bwahahaha.