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Real/Fake Princess (C) I-Huan 2002. All rights reserved.
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October 05, 2007
by: Serdar Yegulalp
An unexpected delight -- a historical romance that works even if you're not a fan of either genre.
Manhua Description: It is the end of the great Tang Dynasty. China is in violent chaos due to the infamous Jin Kang Rebellion. Fearing the inevitable destruction, Concubine Liu tearfully entrusts the care of her baby daughter Princess Yi Fu to a common citizen named Tang Hui... and the whole of China is never the same again.
Manhua Review Content: (This section may contain spoilers.)
Here’s a historical romance that actually gives the genre a good name. I know some people reading this are automatically going to assume “historical romance” and “quality” don’t belong in the same sentence (let alone the same lexicon). Trust me, I’m not normally a fan of this kind of material either—which is why Real/Fake Princess came as such a pleasant surprise.
R/FP is set against the period of the Southern Dynasty in China (1136 C.E., according to the notes), and is—as most romances are—a clash of wills between a man and a woman. The man is Wu, the “Seeker,” yanked off the battlefield and appointed new duties he has no particular interest in. His job is to find members of the royal family who have been displaced by the war, insure they are the real thing, and re-install them in the imperial palace. Since there are entirely too many people out there trying to impersonate the royal family, he’s forced to sift through them all and apply heavy manners to get the job done. His main compensations include alcohol—lots of it—and a fair amount of time spent with a courtesan, Dai Xuan, who’s also growing rather attached to him.
The woman is Zhi Li, the true daughter of the last emperor, now in hiding in a little fishing village with her brother. They pose as apothecaries, and all that time away from the court has allowed Zhi Li to blossom into a headstrong young woman with a strong attachment for her “brother,” Hui (actually just her guardian during her time in exile). At the start of the story, Hui has just paid a visit to the Seeker in the capitol, and is prepared to bring Zhi Li back there and reinstate her title. There’s only one problem: she has no interest in going back to the capital. Her home is here, in the village, helping her neighbors and being with Hui.
Duty speaks loudest of all, though, and soon a very petulant Zhi Li finds herself standing in front of Wu, who remains singularly unimpressed by her, and is determined to “unmask” her as a fraud. If she admits openly to being a fraud, she can take a small stipend and leave—but if she persists in her “deception,” she can be put to death. Of course, at least part of this is a ruse: the real princess, you see, would not simply take a bribe and walk away. As un-regal as Zhi Li is, outwardly, she’s got a fire about her that reminds Wu a great deal of the man who could be her father. And it goes without saying that Wu finds himself responding to that pride in a way he doesn’t expect.
The tug-of-war that unfolds between forms the substance of the story, and it’s a pleasure to watch how it advances thanks to both lead characters being genuinely interesting personalities. We’re curious to see what they do next, which is one of the hallmarks of any good story. At one point Dai Xuan makes an analogy using (what else?) a game of chess, but here the analogy actually fits, and at the end of the first volume I sensed there was going to be a lot more to this particular romance than I’d been led to believe by a mere synopsis.
Real/Fake Princess (C) I-Huan 2002.
English translation (C) 2006 DrMaster Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
A frustrated Wu tries to dig into the mystery of Zhi Li, who's entirely too unrefined (in his eyes) to be a genuine member of the royal family.
Art: The biggest drawback to Real/Fake Princess is, sadly, the artwork. It’s got the awkward look of a first-timer’s title, like someone who just graduated from doujinshi to more professional projects. Awkward, but not out-and-out terrible—in fact, there’s a slight degree of improvement over the course of this one volume. Most of the problems lie in I-Huan’s faces and poses, which don’t have the refinement that they really need. But the art at least gets the job done, and it’s the story that really matters here—so much so that almost all my concerns about the art are negated.
Translation: DrMaster did a fairly swell job with their localization—the language for the translation is well-chosen and undistracting, and from the look of the book they had access to the original digital files to retouch everything. Both the text lettering and what few FX there are have been reworked cleanly; the only sign you’re reading something not originally in English is the fact that the book is right-to-left, which is as it should be. I also liked the little history lesson we get in the back of the book (courtesy of the author), which provides some useful historical context. (My only major objection in the translation was using the term “geisha” to refer to Dai Xuan, which is neither historically nor culturally accurate.)
The Bottom Line: One of the real pleasures of doing this review beat is to receive something you don’t know anything about and come away from it with a smile on your face. Fans of romance in general and historical romance in particular are probably going to come away as pleased by Real/Fake Princess as I was.
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