"The Emperor's Fan" is a fantasy short story by American writer L. Sprague de Camp, the fourth of his Novarian series.

[1] Tsotuga the Fourth, emperor of Kuromon, is a competent but dull ruler, notable only for occasional temperamental outbursts.

Seeking some impregnable magical defense, Tsotuga is heartened when his crony, Reiro the Beggar, tells him that just such a weapon is said to be in the possession of the sorcerer Ajandra, from the tropical empire of Mulvan.

Tsotuga receives Ajandra, who produces a large painted fan, created centuries before for the king of the Gwoling Islands.

Therefore, on the advice of his wife the empress Nasako, Tsotuga appoints as his new prime minister Zamben of Jompei, Supervisor of Roads and Bridges for Jade Mountain Province.

The two subsequently wed, making Zamben imperial consort and regent to the fourteen-year-old Prince Wakumba, in effect emperor himself in all but name.

The code book is consigned to the imperial archives as a curiosity, and the weapon's remaining victims are doomed to languish in limbo.

The attempt to restore that emperor brings back Tsotuga instead, resulting in him regaining the throne of Kuromon after an absence of two hundred years.

He praises de Camp's "elegant, lapidary style that retained the virtues of clarity, and the skill of his plotting disguises any sketchiness in characterization.