Only one woman can save her world from barbarian invasion but to do so she will have to sacrifice everything she cares for – love, loyalty and maybe life itself.
Japan, 1853. Fiery, beautiful and headstrong, Okatsu has grown up among the samurai of the Satsuma clan, in the sunny deep south, where women are encouraged to be bold and taught to wield the halberd and ride a horse.
But when she is just seventeen four black ships appear bristling with cannon, manned by creatures who to the Japanese eyes are barbarians and threatening Japan’s very existence, and Okatsu’s life is turned upside down.
Picked by her feudal lord, the Machiavellian Lord Nariakira, she is given a new name – Princess Atsu – a new destiny and a vital task: she is the only one who can save the realm.
Her journey will end in Edo Castle at the dark heart of the country, a place so secret that it can’t be marked on any map. There she is doomed to live out the rest of her life sequestered in the Women’s Palace, where three thousand women live and only one man may enter, the shogun. It is a place of jealousy and ritual but beneath its immaculate face lie whispers of murders and ghosts. She must fight just to survive and to achieve her task and discover her destiny and discover one last secret – the secret of the shogun himself.
Based on historical events this is the true story of Princess Atsu and her struggle to save Japan.