The Pharaoh's Forbidden Rose

Nefertari, the orphaned daughter of a Hittite envoy, lost her parents to assassination in Egypt when she was twelve. She was taken in by Pharaoh Amenhotep and studied in the Thebes palace alongside the sons of nobles and foreign hostages. Over six years, she fell in love with the pharaoh, who was fifteen years her senior. On her eighteenth birthday, she presented a hymn she had written herself as a confession of love, but the pharaoh rejected her harshly. One drunken night, the pharaoh mistakenly wandered into her chambers, and the two had relations. When he woke, he treated it as nothing but a dream and continued to push her away with coldness and a false fiancée, Meritt. Meritt was the daughter of a Lower Egypt noble and the niece of the high priest, declared by the pharaoh as his fiancée and future queen. Nefertari believed the pharaoh had truly fallen in love with someone else. The pharaoh secretly investigated the truth behind the assassination of Nefertari's parents, suspecting that his own father, the old pharaoh, was the murderer—and he dared not accept her love. At a palace celebration, a stone pillar crashed down; Meritt "saved the day," and Nefertari was misunderstood and left behind. During an assassin incident, Meritt directed thugs, and the pharaoh hung up on Nefertari's cry for help because of Meritt. The hymn was claimed by Meritt, and to reject Nefertari, the pharaoh admitted that he himself had given the hymn to Meritt. Nefertari's heart died completely. She contacted her aunt—Inanna, the high priestess of the Hittites—and arranged to cross the Nile and leave for the enemy nation of Hatti in seven days. The pharaoh discovered the pregnancy test and intercepted her at the Nile dock, mistakenly believing the child was that of the supporting male character Khaem, and forcibly brought her back to the palace intending to terminate the pregnancy, though he ultimately softened and brought her back. The truth was uncovered: the old pharaoh was not the murderer, and the child was the pharaoh's. Meritt told the lie of a blood feud, and Nefertari broke down on a rainy night. The pharaoh, trying to save her, was struck by a chariot and fell into a coma. Nefertari returned to Hatti. After the pharaoh awoke, he declared war on Hatti, demanding Nefertari be handed over. In the end, to prevent war, Nefertari returned to Egypt, where the pharaoh waited for her by the Nile, and the family was reunited.