I just read a fun little tidbit.
Apparently, TH was planning to have XL confess/express his feelings to XY, but the fans were strongly against it. She was worried about fan reactions so created a poll. The result was overwhelmingly in favour of XL keeping his aloof, non "love brain"/lovesick attitude. Considering that novel fans are overwhelmingly XL's fans, it seems like we liked XL with or without XY attached to him :-). We can't even blame it on TH guys, it was our fellow XL fans who wanted to keep him for themselves that created the problem :-)
When TH was writing this novel, it was in serialized form (like I think all of her previous novels) - she released it chapter by chapter online. The consensus from fans who were there right from the start was that XL was by far the favourite character. Readers liked Jing at first, but after his amazing showing *snort*, most defected to team XL by the end.
From my observations, XL's fans don't like Jing because of who he is and not because they think Jing got in the middle of XY/XL. Jing sees XL as a love rival, but XL has never seen Jing as a love rival - he didn't have that power. The thing that came between XL and XY was primarily her "psychological deficiencies".
So what do you ladies think? How would things have played out if XL confessed his feelings to XY? A happy ending for our lovebirds or will it still be the same outcome? One thing for sure, we won't be debating about XL's intention of having a relationship with XY or not for the past few days :-)
Oh. And long time fans also confirmed that TH did based XL's image on this hotty
The "husband" and crush of many manga/anime fan girls of the 90s.