The scandal of the Marble Boat erupted through the Forbidden City like a flash flood, tearing away the carefully constructed facades of power and exposing the rot beneath. Prince Gong, wasting no time, forced an immediate emergency session of the full Grand Council. This was no longer a matter for a small committee; this was a crisis that struck at the very heart of the regency. He had the evidence, the architectural plans, and the damning ledgers brought into the Hall of Imperial Supremacy itself.
The atmosphere was explosive. High-ranking ministers and Manchu princes who had, for years, feared Cixi's wrath now looked at her with new eyes—eyes filled with shock, disillusionment, and contempt. She sat upon her throne, a lone, isolated figure, her face a pale, rigid mask of fury. For the first time, she looked not like an all-powerful regent, but like a cornered animal.
And for the first time at such a momentous state meeting, the boy Emperor, Ying Zheng, was present. He sat on his small throne between the two Dowager Empresses, a silent, wide-eyed child observing the implosion of the woman who had held him captive.
Prince Gong stood in the center of the hall, his voice ringing with the authority of a prosecutor delivering his final, irrefutable argument. He laid out the case with ruthless precision. He unrolled the plans for the new Summer Palace, he presented the ledgers detailing the obscene expenditures, and he contrasted it all with the desperate, underfunded reports from the military.
"While our soldiers in the west face the Russians with inadequate supplies," he thundered, "and while our coastal forts are armed with rusting, obsolete cannons, the funds meant to defend this nation have been spent on Venetian glass and pleasure pavilions! While we debate how to afford the steel for a single new warship, enough silver to buy a cruiser has been carved into a useless boat of stone!"
He turned, his arm outstretched, pointing an accusing finger not at Cixi herself, but at her cowering loyalists. "This is not merely corruption! This is a betrayal of the highest order! A betrayal of our soldiers, a betrayal of the people, and a betrayal of the ancestors and the Mandate of Heaven itself!"
Cixi fought back desperately, her voice sharp and brittle. "These were private funds! From the Imperial Household! The renovations were necessary to uphold the dignity and prestige of the Dragon Throne!"
"Dignity?" Prince Gong shot back. "There is no dignity in a hollow shell! There is no prestige in a beautiful palace that cannot be defended! The ledgers do not lie, Your Majesty! The silver was siphoned from the same customs revenues that were allocated for the Coastal Defense Fund! You chose to build a garden while the house was on fire!"
The court was in turmoil. Cixi's arguments were weak, her denials transparently false in the face of the overwhelming evidence. Many of her own supporters, men who had benefited from her patronage for years, began to back away, their faces grim. They were loyal to power, but they were not willing to go down with a sinking ship, especially not one made of marble.
This was the moment Ying Zheng had been working towards since the day he awoke in this era. This was the culmination of every whispered message, every secret meeting, every covert operation. This was the checkmate. Now, he had only to deliver the final, killing blow, and he would use his gentlest, most unassuming piece to do it.
He turned his head slowly and looked at the woman sitting on the throne beside him, the quiet Empress Dowager, Ci'an. He looked at her not as a sovereign, but as a frightened child looking for comfort. His face was a perfect picture of fear and disillusionment.
His voice, small but carrying with devastating clarity in a momentary lull, cut through the tense atmosphere.
"Huang E'niang," he said, his voice trembling just enough to be convincing as he used his affectionate title for her. "Does this mean we will not get our real ships after all? Because the silver was all spent on a boat made of stone?"
The question was a work of political genius. It was so simple, so direct, so heartbreakingly childish. It stripped away all the complex arguments of finance and faction and reduced the entire scandal to its most basic, moral components: real ships for defense versus a frivolous, stone toy. It forced every person in the room to choose a side, not between Cixi and Prince Gong, but between responsibility and decadence, between the survival of the nation and the vanity of a single woman.
Ci'an looked down at the small boy, at his wide, troubled eyes. She saw the a Cixi, her face contorted in a mask of desperate, furious denial. She saw the undeniable proof in the ledgers unrolled on the floor. And she felt the weight of her own conscience, a conscience that Ying Zheng had so carefully and patiently nurtured over the past months. Her fear of Cixi was finally, completely overwhelmed by her fear for the future of the dynasty and her protective love for the boy she now believed was its only hope.
She rose to her feet. The hall fell silent. The quiet, gentle Dowager, who had not made a major political statement in years, was about to speak.
Her voice was not loud, but it rang with an unprecedented, unshakable authority.
"The embezzlement of naval funds in a time of national peril is an act of treason against the state," she declared, her words clear and precise. "The new Summer Palace project is to be halted immediately. All remaining funds are to be audited and returned to the Coastal Defense Fund without delay."
She took a deep breath, gathering her strength for the final, decisive stroke. "Furthermore," she continued, looking directly at the stunned face of her co-regent, "it has become clear to me that the regency, in its current form, is no longer functioning in the best interest of the throne or the empire. The discord is too great. The trust has been broken."
She delivered the final sentence, a decree that would forever change the balance of power in the Forbidden City.
"Until the Emperor reaches his age of majority, all edicts, appointments, and expenditures related to military and financial matters will now require the seals of both Dowager Empresses to be considered law."
It was a political decapitation. She had not removed Cixi from power completely—that would have been too unstable. But she had seized for herself an absolute veto over Cixi's two most important spheres of influence: the army and the money. She had unilaterally ended Cixi's sole dictatorship and re-established a true, if adversarial, co-regency.
The episode ends with Cixi staring in stunned, silent disbelief, her face a mask of utter defeat. She had been completely outmaneuvered, not just by Prince Gong, but by the quiet, gentle woman she had always dismissed as a political lightweight. Prince Gong had his victory. The fleet would be built. And Ying Zheng, the boy-emperor, sitting silently on his small throne, had just successfully orchestrated a palace coup. He had seized functional control of the military and the treasury. The long, arduous path to rebuilding his empire was now finally, truly open.