Novel's Tidbits & Discussion

I wanted to discuss more about the characters, so I'm reposting this here. 

For the most part, PWX gets excerpted from responsibility for how things go down in their first life.  However, while the Crown prince descends into madness PWX is his right hand man. He provides the network and structure that both Li Chuan and Li Rong use that keep them in power. 

He is fundamentally against the noble court structure and feeds Li Chuan's desire to destroy it. He fails to save his marriage and causes Li Rong to lose faith in love and to develop even more negative feelings towards the commoners class: as his actions in marrying her and pretending to love her while having someone else in his heart, come off as "climbing" up and the "doing anything for power" behaviour she has been indotrinated to believe all commoners would do when placed "above their station". Their antagonism for years in court is fueled by his desire to break the noble class and show her that he is as worthy as any of the nobles to be her consort, and her belief that he is a scoundrel and conniving dog that is manipulating her brother to lift up the commoner class. Li Rong is focused on PWX and does and says things to Li Chuan through the lens of herself and PWX rather than seeing the Emperor's POV is different. She forces him to marry and stabilise his harem because she has done so herself: PWX and SRQ are stable, so why can't LC stabilise QZZ and SGY. After breaking up with PWX she didn't breakdown, so why is he breaking down after ZZ dies? Li Rong's antagonism with her husband falls to her brother while PWX's antagonism for his wife rubs off on Li Chuan. 

Li Chuan's falling out with his sister from a political side is clear, they are on opposite sides but on a personal side, while she had no reason to understand that she was slashing at her brother emotionally, he was drinking insults in his backyard and at court and feeding off of PWX displeasure in his wife's "infidelity" and opposition. By the time the supposed assassination occurs, in his mind big sister Li Rong no longer existed.

PWX is a new upstart in court and doesn’t really understand the politics of noble marriages, their familes and court dynamics as the rest of them. They were born into it and he is just a brilliant mind that has studied about them. He helps Li Chuan to stabilise the north and quell the famine in the south but the cost is instability and chaos. He did climb up using the emotinal gap Li Chuan had to achieve his dream of a reform but inadvertently fed Li Chuan's hate for his sister and the nobles. 

While Li Rong, The Emperor, the Empress, SGY and the rest of the noble class created Li Chuan's demons; PWX was the one to empower it, allowing him to avenge QZZ while achieving his political goals and laying waste to the noble class. 

PWX as an ambitious and brilliant outsider to the imperial and noblest class could never have anticipated the level of toxicity of the nobles, the level of viciousness the Prince would reach or the utter chaos the country would experience by simple choices he made in his personal life and work.

This aspect of PWX is never really explored. His own regrets for the way things went down in the first life and his better understanding of cause and effects of the imperial family is an important factor in the 360 change in his personality and goals take in the 2nd life. It's not as simple as being in love with Li Rong and wanting her back. The fact that he knows that his choices as a member of the imperial family will change the world around them and the need to be more deliberate and careful with those choices..

I like Li Rong as a character. Especially coming off watching the absolutely bonkers Princess Wanning in The Double; it was very interesting to see Princess Ping Le Li Rong, a saner version of the grand princess archetype. You can see this achetype in other dramas like: The Rebel Princess and The Long Ballad as well as side character older version of this type in Love Like The Galaxy, Royal Rumous and In Blossom.

The story unfolds for her ulmost exactly as she expects life to be in her first life. For her there are no big waves and everything is normal, if not entirely perfect, may be slightly imperfect due to the unrest among the common people. Her first inkling that there is a problem is at her death when PWX kills her.

The 2nd life for her was immediately filled with revelation after revelation: 

1.PWX didn't kill her, it was SRQ

2. SGY was not the gentle lady she knew in the palace, she was a hellion.

3. QZZ wasn't the ethereal wall flower moonlight of PWX, she was a warrior.

4. Her father's tryannical and isolated rule had it's reasons: After seeing her brother's reign take the same trajectory, she was able empathise with her father more.

5. She, was also responsible for her failed marriage; she didn't try to understand PWX or work on her marriage 

6. The noble class were rampant and they were manipulating the court and draining the country.

All these rapid fire rrevelations t the restart of her life made her waver in her sense of self. Unlike SRQ who refused to self reflect and repent, Li Rong tried to change. She tried to save PWX from entering the quagmire of imperial life, her brother and SRQ from losing their souls, her clan and family from destroying themselves and the country from descending into chaos. 

Her feelings for PWX were under developed in the first life and she never would have believed she loved him. This is something SRQ knew about her but she didn't know about herself. Finding out he had someone else in his heart, broke her heart and made her doubt "real" love and worsened her prejudice against the common class. This in turn would fuel her antagonism of her father and brother's desire to weaken the noble class. Her relatively strong feelings against the reform in the 1st life almost entirely disappears in the 2nd life because they were more an argument with her ex-husband than a real strongly held political belief. This fact came as a surprise for PWX who had to deal with being in love with someone who fundamentally looked down on him, only to find she didn't truly feel there was natural superiority based on birth alone, in their 2nd life. 

Li Rong's feelings for PWX also had to overcome imperial indoctrination to not have true feelings for anyone especially someone of lower birth that could offer no benefits in terms of power or wealth. LR and LC were raised by a mother who regretted her feelings for the emperor and wanted to protect her children from that pain of disappointment and shame of loving someone who would use them for power and then abandon them. Li Rong's first life she could innocently ignore her training and attempt to have a loving relationship with PWX but at the first sign of trouble, she would believe that her mother was right. In her 2nd life, she would waver on falling into love even more after confirming :love was a lie" in from her own marriage and then the betrayal by SRQ. 

LR- PWX are only able to save their marriage in the 2nd life by clinging jealously to each and consistently communicating and erring on the side of trusting each other. Neither one of them knew how to get back to each other in the first life but they tried very had to never disappoint the other in the 2nd life. 

With SRQ: They grew up together and appeared  to have had childhood crushes for each other. Under normal circumstances they would probably have been betrothed to each other as the class, status and ages aligned. But because of the Emperor's temperament and state of the court they silently let each other go in the 1st life. Until the LR-PWX marriage started to crack. SRQ was quick to insert himself, giving PWX a sense of inferiority and feelings of being an outsider similar to how Li Rong felt about him and QZZ.

Li Rong quickly and happily diverts her love and emotions to a newly broken amd pitiful SRQ to escape the lowly feeling of waiting for PWX to choose her over QZZ. She selfishly and unfeelingly ignores how truly terrible it must be for SRQ, the former golden child of the kingdom, to be incapable to be her companion by virtue of being castrated, a slave, his clan being exterminated and being the "other" man. All she can see is that they have found happiness in the world they created and that even though he is a eunuch, he is the 2nd most powerful person beside her Regent Princess position and that he has all her love. That she would never hurt Li Chuan or PWX the two men that essentially emasculate him does not breach her mind as a problem to their "love story". 

In the 2nd life she can finally see these things clearly. So she not only doesn't blame him for killing her but also feels guilt as he was the closest person to her and she never felt his desperation and desolation. She wanted only the best for him till the end but eventually had to take action against him when she realised that the SRQ she wanted to protect was already the rotted one that could kill her and without her positive influence in this life had become his true treacherous most venomous self.

Li Rong and Li Chuan: In the 1st life, while Li Rong loved her brother and would alway be on his side, her simple character flaw was that she could never comprehend that her brother didn't ’t want and is incapable of handling and enjoying being the Emperor. She enjoys the power and politics so it was hard for her to see and understand his disinterest.

The way she easily closes her feelings of disappointment with her father for guarding against her and marry her down and then decisively tries to make the arranged marriage work and matter-of -factly gets over it as soon as it started to fail; make her unable to understand why her brother is hung up on what she considers small things in cmparison with the power and glory of imperial life; when she was so easily able to do them. 

However in her relationship with her brother, she lacks the perspective that PWX was privy to. The fact that her brother had only been trying to live up to her and the Empress' expectations in becoming crown prince against his father's wishes; the reason her brother wanted to quell the war in the North, the truth behind QZZ's death and the Su Clan extermination. She didn't know and she was left to stand against her brother for all the wrong reasons believing she was balancing two equally righteous sides. She never truly realised or accepted that the nobles were extremely self serving and detrimental to life of the country and the Emperor. Till she died Li Rong could not see this fact and she also could not see that she had become as powerful and as dangerous the top noble houses. 

After pushing him to marry SGY, who then cheats on him, murders his love and wants to crown an illegitimate child, with the knowledge and support of his mother and uncle, Li Rong begs for the lives of the only people he can openly punish for it. From Li Chuan's point of view: he must have felt hate, disgust and fear towards her. She's lucky he didn't kill her immediately. Her life saving grace was his knowledge that she still had a soft spot for him and her power was balanced by PWX's.

On the otherhand Li Rong really didn't understand Li Chuan. She really thought only Li Chaun was being selfish and willful while SGY, the Su Clan and the other nobles were being suppressedunjustly and aggressively by his tyrannical rule. She would never hurt Li Chuan, PWX, or SRQ or anyone they cared about. The underlining cause and effect were unknown to her and it never crossed her mind that they could hurt each other so much as well as destabilising the country for their personal quarrels.

She was a self obsessed person while PWX, SRQ and LC were never fully honest with her. They were all equally too young, naive and reckless in the first life. But the 2nd life they got a chance to be more matured and even though LC didn't have two lifetimes he still corrected the mistakes of the past.

Thank you doing this.