Wellbeloved, when he is sent to jail for a spell; her pining is worrisome to her master, with the big show approaching, until she is pepped up by James Belford's hog-calling techniques, returning to her trough with enough gusto to take her first Silver Medal. Soon afterwards, to Emsworth's disgust, Wellbeloved defects to Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, whose own animal the Pride of Matchingham is the Empress' biggest rival. In the novels Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather, while she is under the care of Pirbright, she becomes the subject of various schemes: first stolen by Ronnie Fish (who has upset his uncle by bouncing a tennis ball on her back and hopes to get back into his good books by "finding" her again), she is stashed in a gamekeeper's cottage in the woods, and fed by the admirable Beach, but later moved by Hugo Carmody to a caravan owned by Rupert Baxter. In Heavy Weather, she finds Galahad Threepwood's notorious memoirs, hidden in her custom-built new sty by Percy Pilbeam, and eats the whole book, and not long afterward finds herself in the dicky of Ronnie Fish's car, as he threatens to run off with her if her master refuses to fund Fish's elopement. Throughout this, both Emsworth and Gally suspect Parsloe-Parsloe of being behind all the foul play. The book opens with the Empress about to attempt her second silver medal and the book closes by implying that she won. In Uncle Fred in the Springtime, she is once again taken captive, and hidden in a bathroom by the Duke of Dunstable, but flees when Lord Bosham lets off a shotgun in her vicinity. In Full Moon, Bill Lister is twice hired to paint her portrait, and she is put in Veronica Wedge's bedroom for a time by Gally, while in Pigs Have Wings she spends some time at Matchingham Hall, home of Parsloe-Parsloe, having been stolen by the turncoat Wellbeloved in response to Gally's cunning theft of Parsloe's new pig, the Queen of Matchingham. Her subsequent rescue leaves her plenty of time to return to form, before her triumphant third Silver Medal. In Service with a Smile, a Church Lad teases her with a potato on a piece of string, and Dunstable once again schemes to take her away from Lord Emsworth, planning to sell her to Lord Tilbury, but the plot (involving Lavender Briggs and Wellbeloved) is blocked