Empress Handbook

Ending Note

I began to draft the plan for Empress Handbook during the Queen's Birthday public holiday after I watched a documentary on how the British royal family eats. I felt the dramatic tension within such an interesting yet wasteful presence, so I thought it would be fun to create a fanfiction story based on that. Personally, I don't have any feelings towards actual royal families, aside from the fact that I love the public holidays they give because I happen to live in a country that is a part of the Commonwealth of Nations (I would like to courteously propose the idea of celebrating every single royal family members' birthdays).

I came up with Yeoreum's name after I heard the song Dream in Summer Nights by IU, and it occurred to me how the Summer season births most of the vivid, happy things in the world and that the Korean word for it—Yeoreum—is quite pretty. The other original characters' names were either given because of a second meaning, a pun, or simply because it sounded good. For example, Soojung's name, Soojung, can also mean fixing in Korean, and that girl has a lot to fix, so I thought it fitted her well.

Some readers complained about the craziness of the female side characters in the book, namely Yunhee, Soojung and Dakyung. I would like to clear things up before any misunderstandings could be inspired.

Those female antagonists' so-called insane characters are an intentional creative decision I made to speak to the stereotypical impression of women being mad, bad and sad in the Victorian age.

Empress Handbook's female antagonists' bullying behaviour towards Yeoreum represents their desire to fit into the misogynistic high-class system designed for females to fail and their ignorance towards that fact. I previously didn't want to spell out this decision, but I was afraid that future readers would hammer the hat of hating women on my Feminist head.

Empress Handbook was my creative outlet during my final year of high school. It allowed me to distract myself from the pressure of university entrance exams and some personal issues during the insane year of 2020.

I wrote most of the chapters during my design and technology classes while pretending to complete my already-finished portfolio and also before bed. Those times were my only free time away from studying and procrastinating.

Empress Handbook is the first fanfiction story I wrote seriously, and I was inexperienced with many things. To create a three-dimensional original female character, I got into Yeoreum's mind and did an MBTI test to know her better. I apologise for the unrefined details of this work, and I would like to thank all my lovely readers for the patience and tolerance they have kindly gifted me.

All in all, I am appreciative of everyone who ever opened this story, and I genuinely hope that you guys enjoyed the little world my mind generated. I want to thank everyone who left kudos, voted, subscribed, bookmarked, commented and added this story to a reading list. It means the absolute world to me.

See you in the spin-off Hostage Handbook if you're interested in Jungkook and Yeoreum's mutually destructive romance. If you're not staying on for that much more depressing ride, goodbye, farewell, have an amazing day, afternoon or night, and I will be looking forward to seeing you again in another story.

Best wishes,

Eileen.