And I’m pleased to say that three out of the four of us who were there that night have books out in 20. So at the end of the dinner, we all pledged to write the books of our hearts, commercial prospects be damned. Chinese BL web novels got close, but they were… well, in Chinese. Asian historical TV dramas had a lot of the elements I craved but without the queerness. In my case, I was yearning for a sweeping, high stakes, historical epic with the hyper-emotionality of a romance - but which also queered gender roles. We spoke to Shelley about the novel, creating Zhu and setting a novel during the last gasps of the Yuan dynasty… When did you first get the idea for She Who Became the Sun?Īn embarrassingly long time ago I was at dinner with friends, and we were complaining about how we could never find the exact stories we wanted to read.

Can anyone fool Heaven indefinitely, escaping what’s written in the stars? Or can Zhu claim her own future, burn all the rules and rise as high as she can dream?Ī re-imagining of the rise to power of Zhu Yuanzhang, who was the peasant rebel who expelled the Mongols, unified China under native rule, and became the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, She Who Became The Sun is an epic historical fantasy by Shelley Parker-Chan. But all the while, she feels Heaven is watching. Zhu’s pursuing the destiny her brother somehow failed to attain: greatness. Stealing her dead brother’s identity to survive, she rises from monk to soldier, then to rebel commander.

She Who Became The Sun follows a peasant girl who refuses her fate of an early death in Mongol-occupied imperial China.

Who became the sun