Monopolizing the love of this womanizing emperor for ten years is no small deal. Neither is being married to a man who would drive his crown prince of thirty years to suicide.

We already saw Wang Luodan cast as Wei Zifu, and now it’s time to introduce the rest of the cast for upcoming drama The Virtuous Queen of Han Wei Zifu. Raymond Lam will play Han Wudi (aka Liu Che), Wei Zifu’s husband and the emperor who expanded the Han empire enormously. According to history, they met at his sister the Princess of Pingyang (Played by Zhou Liqi)’s villa. Wei Zifu and her brother Wei Qing (to become a key general, beginning with Liu Che’s affection for Wei Zifu and cemented by his own talent, played by Shen Tai) were lowly servants in the villa, and with no powerful connections, life for Wei Zifu was difficult in her first years in the palace. Liu Che’s childless first empress, Chen Jiao (played by Shen Miao) detested her, and at one point she and her mother the senior princess of Guantao (Liu Che’s aunt, played by Liu Yinghong) attempted to kidnap Wei Qing (who ended up marrying the Princess of Pingyang). Of course, Liu Che has his own problems too; in his early reign, his Confucianism often butted heads with the Daoism of his grandmother Dou Yifang (remember her, from Ruby Lin’s Schemes of a Beauty? She’s now a grande dame, played by Chen Shali). Throw into the mix a love triangle, with the faithful Duan Hong (fictional, I think, played by Xu Zhengxi) forever in love with this “virtuous empress of the Han dynasty.” Look out for her rags-to-riches story, to be broadcast in 2014. 

Liu Che’s mother, empress Wang

Chen Jiao

The Princess of Pingyang

Grand Empress Dowager Dou Yifang

The senior princess Guantao, played by Qi Wei in Schemes of a Beauty

Liu Che

Wei Qing

Duan Hong