Personally, I love this series. The art is great, and the storyline holds your attention. There's no yaoi or shonen ai that I'm aware of just in case someone is wondering about that. The story is about a young woman who is enlisted to be the emporer's consort. (Oh yeah... he does claim to like men. Forget my previous comment about that! But it really doesn't show that or get into that aspect as far as episode 17 which is where I'm at in the series.) Anyway, she agrees to do this in order to help turn him around into a respectable ruler (he's shown no interest in running the country before that point).