PeachBlossomGoddess

I think it’s very hard to save someone’s life on the battlefield without help from the enemy which just seems implausible to me.

I think he is torn - he has genuine admiration and respect for Jinqi but his sister wants the man and he has no interest in her.

I think Changmin is alright. But that Changzheng is a total asshole.

He thought she was going to say - let me have your baby.

No worries - I wrote a detailed walk through of the word play on Cuique's name itself in the discussion section but not of the other ones:
https://mydramalist.com/754367-the-story-of-xiang-lan/discussions/155236-ep-11-what-s-in-a-name-cuique-word-play

Sorry typo - Lin Jinlan. Corrected.

I think maybe saving the ML was just a happy coincidence which he then turned into an opportunity.

I don't remember what exactly the matriarch said but maybe she though only Grandpa Shen and the FL's dad (who were the only officials) would be sacrificed. She thought her other two sons and the women would be spared but she was prepared to accompany her husband.

I think she knew she needed to come clean about her ability to read. After all, the ML knows and so does grandpa Lin. And she was starting to tentatively trust the ML - she knew he didn't have to let her off at the library. It was a job only she could do and an important one. If she did it well, she could set herself free. It didn't hurt that she also likes to read. Its a good job - much better than making tea 24/7, watering plants or cooking. So it was an opportunity she decided to seize.

I think the FL was rightly wary of the ML and tried to steer well clear of him until she overheard him telling Yuchan to let the Xingtang scandal slide. Then she realized he is not a bad guy and will not kill her callously. That is why she is was prepared to help him and bailed him out from the pesticide incident.

I think both the matriarch and patriarch expected the women to be spared.

There are also two sons from the second branch - his paternal cousins the 3rd and 4th young masters. Second uncle did not take concubines so his sons are full, legitimate sons. Lin Jinlan would be last in line of succession, after them even though he is from the first branch bc he is illegitimate.

I think definitely it was Zhao trying to grind him into dust. He told his grandpa he expects it though.

Chinese names have 3 characters - surname, generation name and given name*. So Xiu is the female generation name and Jin in the male generation name and in loose informal setting they just refer to each other as brothers and sisters. But when specificity is needed they would be differentiated as tóngbāo xiōngmèi/同胞兄妹(full siblings; Xiushu); shù xiōngmèi/庶兄妹 (siblings from concubines; Jinlan, Xiulai, Xiuru), táng mèi/ 堂妹 (paternal younger cousin sister; Xiuwan) etc
*Post 1980s most Chinese names only have 2 characters bc of the one child policy. Just surname and given name, no more generation names.

Yeah I wonder whether the Zhaos did this bc they needed him. Despite Grandpa Zhao's power and influence, they seem short of male talent - Xingtang's dad and bro seem to be useless sacks of flesh. So they recruited Jinqi who was a talented scholar to help build up their influence in the court. But he refused to be their puppet and went the army route instead.

Yeah I initially was thinking along those lines also but then I realized he saw the flower pin on Jinqi's hat from the get go. He of all people must know his sister's name means larkspur and understand what it means. The fact that he said nothing and went along with it all suggests to me he may have been in on it. Otherwise, he would have quietly asked Jinqi to remove it before it became a thing.

Ms Du discovered her court ambitions were misguided. This was Ming dynasty, a terrible time for female officials. The founding emperor codified the Six Bureaus giving a career path for female officials in palace administration. But from the reign of the Yongle emperor, which is Zhu Di, the sitting emperor in this drama, the eunuchs took over. Almost all of the administrative, document handling and secretarial duties were shifted to the eunuchs. Female officials were reduced to ceremonial roles - they just became seal bearers or more or less palace vases. So Ms Du's ambitions went nowhere, that was what Madame Qin was alluding to. So her best option was to marry as well as she could but first of all at 19 she is aging out and she is of military lineage - so not good enough to be legitimate wife of the first young master of a noble family like Lin Jinqi.

I think everyone over estimates the ability of the Lins to bail out the Shens. The Lins barely got out by the skin of their own teeth and had to retreat from the capital back to Jinling. Grandpa Lin is retired with no official post and Jinqi is the highest rank Lin after clawing his way up to 4th rank in the army. His father is only 7th ranked. The Shen men knew it was coming so the young Jinqi's naive intention of warning them wasn't really needed, it just shows his heart was in the right place.

Who are you talking about? The 2nd Young Lady Lin is Xiuwan, the one who is supposed to be engaged with Xie Zhao.
I think you mean Xiuru, the timid 3rd Young Lady Lin. She is the daughter of a deceased concubine so she has no power or standing in the household. Maybe that makes her susceptible to influence by Ms Du.

Yeah word play is very common and popular throughout Chinese history. It is a combination of a long scholarly culture and a long history of censorship. Scholars like to "modestly" show off the depth of their knowledge and sophistication by engaging in poetry and word play competitions. Also openly criticizing the emperor can get you killed so they use a lot of metaphor and homonyms to seem to say one thing when they are really saying something else. It is still very prevalent and relevant in today age.

In that particular scene, they are playing a drinking game where they have to match medical herb names with lines from the Four Books and Five Classics, which are the foundational canonical texts of Confucianism. Obviously you have to be a highly educated person to be able to play this game. It would be very laborious and time consuming to translate this word game properly so that non-native speakers can understand it so I suspect WeTV just did a literal translation and left it at that. I am not well versed enough in those classical texts (boring) with so many archaic words to do it well. Even though I have come across and had to memorize some of the more famous lines, I have never come close to reading the Analects, Mencius or the Book of Rites etc in full.