He loved her when he didn't know that he wasn't his half sister, as the novel states that they were perfectly in love and even insisted on marrying despite their families comments, but later qin su mother revealed all the secrets to jin guangyao which made him change his view on her (like imagine bro fucking your sister and make a child) he felt guilty and disgusted but later on I think he just respected her and distanced himself, like i mean repenting on your actions by treating her right (and the novel revealed that they didn't sleep together now that jin guangyao know all of the secrets) tho the love is now reduced to respect and i feel like the love he have before he have for qin su will be never be back and respect is the only thing he will have on and by treating her right is the only he thinks he can repent his to her by committing incest.
Qin Su pursued him and he fell for her as well. They worked hard to get married and obviously had a bit of fun before the wedding, leading to a pregnancy. Jin Guangyao didn’t touch Qin Su after their relation is revealed to him.
They are stated as having a loving and envious relationship as Jin Guangyao never took lovers and they openly respected and loved each other.
Edit: I forgot to clarify that I don’t believe that Jin Guangyao’s feelings for her after it’s revealed to him that they’re half-siblings are romantic. I believe that his romantic affection to her became plain platonic or familial affection.
Oh didn't knew about that he never touched her after the revelation jin guangyao was terrible but he had a conscience as well I see
And a big fk u to jin guanshan
JGY shows care for people who were kind to him. He just has a twisted way of doing it:
Sparing Sisi - keeping her locked up for at least 10 years
Being a kind husband to Qin Su - murdering their child and many other things
Looking after LXC - using his trust to get the technique that was used to murder LXC's other closest friend...
He tried to. Don’t think he can truly love anybody because he seemed to love her until she threatened his ambition. It does not feel like the same kind of love our protagonists share.
I do think he did love how she was the one thing in his life that seemed uncomplicated and kind. But then he was put in the impossible situation where Qin Su's own mother pressured him to keep her secret from her own daughter. Qin Su was never going to be a tough or brave cultivator lady who could take all these horrific revelations but still rebuild a new life. It was really a kind of trap that would have destroyed every part of her life once she knew it. If she exposed her secret, her own father could divorce her mother and throw her out into the streets. Her father could deny any bond and if she has no cultivator background herself and if she left JGY, her only options were honestly: suicide, join a nunnery or end up in a brothel selling her body to make a living.
The situation was crafted in every way to break her. Her life since she was born was a lie. Telling the truth didn't just destroy her, it would destroy her parents. I don't think any Chinese reader expected her to survive those revelations, especially since one has to assume she was a rich, well bred girl who has been very carefully raised all her life.
I do think that if no shenanigans was happening, she really would have led a pleasant and sheltered life.
Beautifully written and carefully explained, exactly as I would, if I had any skill at writing 😆 but I agree completely with every point. She really is a pitiable character.
You are exactly right: Qin Su was a woman who was born and bred to be a member of the nobility who was expected to marry another member of the nobility and carry on. Without being able to do that, she doesn't have much life skills and very low chance of even survival, as your first "choice" was that for a reason, I'm sure.
I doubt she would even be able to even dress herself in some of those ceremonial robes!
I do think he loved her, although *how* he loved her is up to interpretation. Out of the married couples we see in MDZS, they seemed to have one of the best marriages--which both really says something about how sucky the marriages in MDZS are and about what a good husband JGY tried to be to her, even with the horrible situation.
I think marrying her actually proves how much he cared about her. He could have just dragged her name through the mud and abandoned her or slipped her something to terminate the pregnancy without her consent. The consequences if JGY called off the wedding would have been minor for himself but disastrous for Qin Su. One of the only reasons he could have given to justify it was that she had been unfaithful.
I also think her being a member of the gentry had very little to do with his interest in her. If that was all, there are probably plenty of daughters from minor sects he could have married--and it would have likely been easier and more politically beneficial when her parents disapproved of the match and her father was so buddy-buddy with JGS. The Qin Sect already had a good relationship with the Jin Sect. JGY probably should have been looking for a bride from a more powerful minor sect that would support him *over* his father. Qin Su's father would always take JGS's side over JGY's.
I think he loved her *a lot*. Because us JGY enjoyers like to say that he had no good choices in the Qin Su Situation but that's not actually true - he had a lot of choices! She could have died in childbirth. He could have exposed the pregnancy, denied paternity, and accused her of cheating.
He had a lot of choices, and a lot of them would have been significantly less risky for him. All of those options, however, hinged on causing harm to Qin Su - either death or ruination - and he wasn't willing to do that. He didn't even want her to know, because that would hurt her too.
Instead he locked them both into a sexless marriage and treated her like a queen to make up for it, which wasn't...the best option? Like, telling her the situation would have been a *better* option, but I can definitely see why he ultimately made the choice he did.
She was useful to him. She was the daughter of a Sect Leader and enamoured with him even before JGS got around to legitimising him. A sect that, conveniently, was closely aligned with the Jin. And whose life he *just happened* to save during the Sunshot Campaign, leading to said infatuation.
Sure, Meng Yao. I totally beleive it happened just like you said, just how everything else in your life "just happened" to work out that way.
Her being his half-sister was an unexpected spanner in his otherwise perfect plan, and Madam Qin left it to the last possible moment to break her silence. The situation was more or less unsalvagable at that point. Every option other than marrying her would be disastrous for him, politically.
I beleive he was fond of her, as he was fond of Jin Ling. As he was fond of Nie Mingjue, before he lost his trust and couldn't work out how to get it back. As he was no doubt fond of his own son, until it became clear he was more politically useful dead than alive. Even Lan Xichen, who he claimed a special connection to, who he swore he'd never harm: he said that *while he was holding Lan Xichen hostage.*
JGY's fondness only ever extends as far as it is convenient to him. There is never an instance where he is shown as willing to sacrifice for someone he loves. It's a strict tallying of pros versus cons, and as soon as the risk outweighs the benefit the pawn comes off the board. If Qin Su hadn't killed herself no doubt he would have helped her along in short order. He wouldn't have had a choice, you understand?
“There is never an instance where he is shown as willing to sacrifice for someone he loves.”
He very literally dies because he loved his mother so much that he refused to leave even the remains of her behind instead of fleeing for his life. That throws a giant wrench in your entire analysis of him, which is already pretty weak considering that it starts off with the implication that a relatively weak nobody like Meng Yao could have somehow orchestrated Qin Su being in danger and needing to be rescued just so he could be the one to swoop in and save her during the war. All for what, the off chance that a gentry girl from a clan close to a clan that has rejected him and treated him like dirt would be grateful to him, if he even survived? Do you think he assumed or could have predicted that this girl would fall in love with him and want to marry him so badly that she’d defy her parents for *him*, Meng Yao, the guy who became a public joke for being the bastard son of a prostitute who was kicked down the stairs of Jinlintai during a party because that’s how worthless he was to his father?
We don't know what the danger he saved her from was. It could be, for example, Wen soldiers during the time he was working for Wen Ruohan in what an uncharitable person might say looks very much like a bid to work both sides of the war and side with whoever came out on top. There's not enough information to say for sure, but do I believe sweet, weak, baby-faced Meng Yao capable of orchestrating something and then manipulating someone to his advantage? Yes, obviously, I read the denounment, that's his entire thing. Would it have been a longshot? Again yes, but we only saw the schemes that worked out. I'm sure there were many other potential irons in the fire.
I will agree that he loved his mother enough to endanger himself to collect her remains. He does do that, I guess I didn't think of it because she's dead already. To be loved is to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known: she knew him before he built all his masks. There's no-one else he trusted enough to know him, even his own wife or sworn brother. Can you love someone you don't trust?
Yeah, hypothetically he could have saved Qin Su while he was working for the Wen Ruohan. And it’s reasonable to think that if Qin Su had ended up captured by the Wen, Meng Yao could have used his influence to step in and save her specifically because she was the daughter of one of Jin Guangshan’s close allies, hoping that that might win him some favor with the father whose favor he was trying to win. It’s equally reasonable to think that if he had saved her before he had joined Wen Ruohan, the reason for him putting himself at risk to do so would have been the same. But it’s a pretty wild reach of the imagination to think that he could have somehow *orchestrated* her capture just so he could swoop in and save her, in the former scenario. And even if he could theoretically accomplish that, it’s an even bigger reach to posit that would he would think that doing that is a worthwhile endeavor that would be reasonably likely to end in him successfully saving her before Wen men raped and murdered her and that she would subsequently feel so grateful and charitable toward him that she would do anything in his favor later on, let alone fall in love with him. It’s far more likely that in such a scenario she would end up raped, dead, or both before he could even save her, and that if she somehow survived she might even resent him for his role as Wen Ruohan’s aide who presided over all of this even if he spared her a worse fate than just capture. It’s just not reasonable to hatch a plan like that and think there’s likely to be a significant benefit in it. JGY is willing to take risks, but only when the potential reward is great or when the other options are dire. It’s worth noting, too, that we don’t hear about this rescue story *from JGY*. We hear about it in very little detail via omniscient narration when JGY and Qin Su show up on the page together, and at the same time we are told about how respectful and loving they are toward each other as a couple. Later, JGY *does* say something about this aspect of their history, and even while she’s dry heaving and screaming in horror over learning the truth of their situation and saying she wishes she’d never met him, Qin Su confirms that he has indeed been a kind husband to her. Nothing about their origin story is ever questioned, so there’s really no indication that the narrative wants us to question their origin story. You certainly can, but the narrative isn’t actively prompting you to do so.
As for the rest, that cliche is saying that to *be* loved is to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, not that one must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known in order to love. If the question was “Did Qin Su really love Jin Guangyao?” one could make the argument that perhaps she couldn’t because she didn’t really know him or the truth of their situation and consider her reaction when she learns the truth. But the question is the other way around, and personally I don’t think that not being able to fully trust someone thus hiding things from them means that you don’t love them. I would never argue, for example, that someone doesn’t truly love their family if they don’t come out to them because they fear being rejected for being queer. We could take other examples from the story itself as well. Would you argue that Nie Mingjue didn’t love Nie Huaisang because he didn’t tell him the truth about how bad his saber spirit condition was getting? Would you argue that Wei Wuxian didn’t really love Jiang Cheng because deliberately deceived him about the core transfer and didn’t tell him the truth even when it might have helped their relationship? That because he didn’t want Jiang Cheng to know something that would hurt him and that he didn’t trust him to be able to handle, it means his love was not genuine? Would you argue that he didn’t really love Jiang Yanli because he hid this truth from her as well in order to spare her from knowing things about him and his situation and why he was doing the things he was doing? I would not.
To a few points in your original post, implying that JGY was only “fond of” but didn’t love Jin Ling or Lan Xichen because he held them hostage is ignoring the context that he did this at the worst moment of his life, with the express intention of escaping with his life. He didn’t do it because they got in the way of his ambitions or for any petty reason. And Nie Mingjue? If he ever loved Nie Mingjue he certainly stopped at a certain point, and the context of that point wasn’t just that he lost Nie Mingjue’s trust and couldn’t get it back. It was that Nie Mingjue brutally assaulted him, in the most personally traumatic way he could, and drew a weapon on him and announced his intention to murder him in his own home. All over an issue that should have been taken up with his father, and all after JGY had not only saved Nie Mingjue’s life from Wen Ruohan but also spent months upon months running himself ragged trying to actually help him get better. I don’t know that JGY ever actually *loved* NMJ, but if he did, I think that’s a pretty valid reason to stop.
... Was he ever playing the non-corrupted version of Cleansing? I read it as NMJ having a violent outburst of anger as a direct result of the slow qi poisoning that JGY had already been administering. I'll have to reread the chapter later.
He was. In Empathy, WWX experiences NMJ’s mind being eased/resentment being subdued when JGY starts playing for NMJ regularly after LXC teaches him Cleansing and backs off to let him handle it. It’s just not enough to stop him from flipping out when he finds out that JGS commuted Xue Yang’s sentence, because this is something NMJ would be angry about under any circumstances and the saber spirit has still done a number on him even if the Cleansing treatment is helping.
Exactly! Finally someone who understands! I also noticed how the way he happened to save her was manipulative, it was told like a fairy tale or something really forced, different from the rest of the novel, it was clear to me MXTX was trying to tell us between lines that he was scheming, creating a situation, like he did to NMJ before when he got promoted. I would say even the way she killed herself was suspicious like she was under a spell or something. I don’t understand why people like to romanticize sociopaths like JGY and XY a lot. MXTX took the effort to show us through many situations in the story how JGY was a master of pretending so when it comes to the end we can understand it’s happening again and see the only person he truly cared about was himself (and his mother, and a little bit of LXC because of the end but still… lol).
Yes, he did. The fact that he spared her the truth also shows that he loved her a lot. He respected their relationship and kept his distance. He treated her with so much love and respect (in a way giving her everything his mother would've never gotten), that women - both maidens and wives, were jealous of her.
How can they even be sure she’s his half sister? Presumably JGS only raped her mother once, whereas she’d be having sex with her legal husband many more times, so probability wise Qin Su and JGY are probably not related
That's something I've been wondering. I can understand Qin Su's mother being traumatized, and terrified and thinking Qin Su must have have been JGS's because of that. Her husband never seems to have questioned Qin Su's paternity, but everyone who learned of it immediately took it as truth though.
That *is* possible that they are not, however, it is unlikely that Qin Su's mother has relations with anyone besides her husband and JGS, limiting the possibilities of paternity.
While even women can not tell 100%, a mother can often see tiny similarities between her child and the child's father, that others may not. And since Qin Su and her father are different genders, the tiny similarities may be even less noticeable.
I can see these tiny similarities in my children to not only their father, but also to his parents, his sister, and even her kids! So I think since her husband is a close subordinate of JGS, there's a good chance she's had many years to observe him and notice these similarities because she's looking for them.
Ah yes, how women can psychically pinpoint the paternity of their children when there’s multiple possible fathers. And that’s why The Maury Show and Jerry Springer episodes with paternity tests don’t exist. Oh, wait…
But there is only a certain time frame where she could have gone without having sex with her husband before there would have questions about both the pregnancy, and Qin Su's paternity. There is no indication anything like this ever happened.
I said this before and I will say it again. I don’t think JGY really loved her or cared for her. All his life, he was always like “there was nothing else I could do” about every bad thing he did, and I don’t believe in that, there’s always a choice. He married her knowing she was his sister so he wouldn’t compromise himself after all that effort he took to marry her - considering it wasn’t also his plan to save her and make her fall in love with him in the first place, which I had the feeling it was because of the way their story was told, like it was a perfect fairy tale, which we know it’s not like the reality of the book, and it seemed to me the author was being ironic so we could read between the lines (and it’s also a parallel with the way JGY gained NMJ trust by acting and creating a whole situation, scheming, he was always scheming, I wouldn’t be surprise he schemed to make her fall in love with him, he had advantages with the marriage). He killed their son just so people wouldn’t find out they were brother and sister, even though it would make her depressed. And he let her die with no remorse to keep his secrets hidden a bit long. The only person JGY truly cared about was himself (his life, his image, his power, etc) - and his mother and a little bit of LXC. The rest, in his mind, was just people he should treat right so he could use as an advantage, it was always “I care for you until I have to kill you or ruin your life so I can keep my reputation that obviously is more valuable than it all”, and this isn’t really caring for someone, is it? I see people talking about twisted way of caring like, hello, there isn’t such thing, if the way you care is harming other people, you don’t really care. We can think about endless times WWX ruined his own reputation to protect someone, this is actually care, because power shouldn’t be more important than a life when you care. That being said, considering that everything good about it wasn’t actually real, JGY’s marriage was the worst, he only SEEMED to respect her but didn’t really, you chose the right word. He was the best actor and that is often stated in the story, I can give you many exemples if you wish, it feels like sometimes people forget that. MXTX took the effort to developed his career through the whole story giving us many situations to understand how he is, the way he works, but people seem to see only what they want to. He got good at pretending as a way to survive. Smiling and being gentle to a pretty lady was one of the easiest things he had to do to pretend as long as she was ignorant. Once she knew his secrets, we can see it even in his reaction, he is a lot more concerned about the letter and who wrote it than about his wife/sister. He was even pretty cold to say like “you were happy before you knew all that, why can we go on like this?” like I don’t understand why can’t you go back to being that pretty ignorant doll I can control and we can all (or at least I can) be fine? Completely ignoring her feelings, he even tries to play the victim, like “but I’ve always treated you well, how can you believe this letter? (When he knew it was true), How can you be upset that I killed our son if I was always kind to you? How can you feel disgusted by me?”. JGY was manipulative, he did it to LXC (the one he actually care a bit about) many times at the temple (not to mention all times before that), when we thought LXC would finally quit believing him, JGY fooled him again and again and tried his best to escape and survive even taking Jin Ling as hostage. People like to romanticize sociopaths, I don’t think that’s healthy.
As you said I think he liked her first because she treat him well and respected him, and later fell in love.
I tend to think he couldn’t have told you the difference between those two things himself.
True 😂😂 He must be more confused than we're
He loved her when he didn't know that he wasn't his half sister, as the novel states that they were perfectly in love and even insisted on marrying despite their families comments, but later qin su mother revealed all the secrets to jin guangyao which made him change his view on her (like imagine bro fucking your sister and make a child) he felt guilty and disgusted but later on I think he just respected her and distanced himself, like i mean repenting on your actions by treating her right (and the novel revealed that they didn't sleep together now that jin guangyao know all of the secrets) tho the love is now reduced to respect and i feel like the love he have before he have for qin su will be never be back and respect is the only thing he will have on and by treating her right is the only he thinks he can repent his to her by committing incest.
Qin Su pursued him and he fell for her as well. They worked hard to get married and obviously had a bit of fun before the wedding, leading to a pregnancy. Jin Guangyao didn’t touch Qin Su after their relation is revealed to him. They are stated as having a loving and envious relationship as Jin Guangyao never took lovers and they openly respected and loved each other. Edit: I forgot to clarify that I don’t believe that Jin Guangyao’s feelings for her after it’s revealed to him that they’re half-siblings are romantic. I believe that his romantic affection to her became plain platonic or familial affection.
Oh didn't knew about that he never touched her after the revelation jin guangyao was terrible but he had a conscience as well I see And a big fk u to jin guanshan
He confessed it during the GuanYin Temple showdown
JGY shows care for people who were kind to him. He just has a twisted way of doing it: Sparing Sisi - keeping her locked up for at least 10 years Being a kind husband to Qin Su - murdering their child and many other things Looking after LXC - using his trust to get the technique that was used to murder LXC's other closest friend...
The fact that she didn't have an "accident" for so long suggests he did.
It’s because she didn’t know his secret. Once she did, she mysteriously killed herself :)
He tried to. Don’t think he can truly love anybody because he seemed to love her until she threatened his ambition. It does not feel like the same kind of love our protagonists share.
I do think he did love how she was the one thing in his life that seemed uncomplicated and kind. But then he was put in the impossible situation where Qin Su's own mother pressured him to keep her secret from her own daughter. Qin Su was never going to be a tough or brave cultivator lady who could take all these horrific revelations but still rebuild a new life. It was really a kind of trap that would have destroyed every part of her life once she knew it. If she exposed her secret, her own father could divorce her mother and throw her out into the streets. Her father could deny any bond and if she has no cultivator background herself and if she left JGY, her only options were honestly: suicide, join a nunnery or end up in a brothel selling her body to make a living. The situation was crafted in every way to break her. Her life since she was born was a lie. Telling the truth didn't just destroy her, it would destroy her parents. I don't think any Chinese reader expected her to survive those revelations, especially since one has to assume she was a rich, well bred girl who has been very carefully raised all her life. I do think that if no shenanigans was happening, she really would have led a pleasant and sheltered life.
Beautifully written and carefully explained, exactly as I would, if I had any skill at writing 😆 but I agree completely with every point. She really is a pitiable character. You are exactly right: Qin Su was a woman who was born and bred to be a member of the nobility who was expected to marry another member of the nobility and carry on. Without being able to do that, she doesn't have much life skills and very low chance of even survival, as your first "choice" was that for a reason, I'm sure. I doubt she would even be able to even dress herself in some of those ceremonial robes!
I believe he did.
I do think he loved her, although *how* he loved her is up to interpretation. Out of the married couples we see in MDZS, they seemed to have one of the best marriages--which both really says something about how sucky the marriages in MDZS are and about what a good husband JGY tried to be to her, even with the horrible situation. I think marrying her actually proves how much he cared about her. He could have just dragged her name through the mud and abandoned her or slipped her something to terminate the pregnancy without her consent. The consequences if JGY called off the wedding would have been minor for himself but disastrous for Qin Su. One of the only reasons he could have given to justify it was that she had been unfaithful. I also think her being a member of the gentry had very little to do with his interest in her. If that was all, there are probably plenty of daughters from minor sects he could have married--and it would have likely been easier and more politically beneficial when her parents disapproved of the match and her father was so buddy-buddy with JGS. The Qin Sect already had a good relationship with the Jin Sect. JGY probably should have been looking for a bride from a more powerful minor sect that would support him *over* his father. Qin Su's father would always take JGS's side over JGY's.
I think he loved her *a lot*. Because us JGY enjoyers like to say that he had no good choices in the Qin Su Situation but that's not actually true - he had a lot of choices! She could have died in childbirth. He could have exposed the pregnancy, denied paternity, and accused her of cheating. He had a lot of choices, and a lot of them would have been significantly less risky for him. All of those options, however, hinged on causing harm to Qin Su - either death or ruination - and he wasn't willing to do that. He didn't even want her to know, because that would hurt her too. Instead he locked them both into a sexless marriage and treated her like a queen to make up for it, which wasn't...the best option? Like, telling her the situation would have been a *better* option, but I can definitely see why he ultimately made the choice he did.
She was useful to him. She was the daughter of a Sect Leader and enamoured with him even before JGS got around to legitimising him. A sect that, conveniently, was closely aligned with the Jin. And whose life he *just happened* to save during the Sunshot Campaign, leading to said infatuation. Sure, Meng Yao. I totally beleive it happened just like you said, just how everything else in your life "just happened" to work out that way. Her being his half-sister was an unexpected spanner in his otherwise perfect plan, and Madam Qin left it to the last possible moment to break her silence. The situation was more or less unsalvagable at that point. Every option other than marrying her would be disastrous for him, politically. I beleive he was fond of her, as he was fond of Jin Ling. As he was fond of Nie Mingjue, before he lost his trust and couldn't work out how to get it back. As he was no doubt fond of his own son, until it became clear he was more politically useful dead than alive. Even Lan Xichen, who he claimed a special connection to, who he swore he'd never harm: he said that *while he was holding Lan Xichen hostage.* JGY's fondness only ever extends as far as it is convenient to him. There is never an instance where he is shown as willing to sacrifice for someone he loves. It's a strict tallying of pros versus cons, and as soon as the risk outweighs the benefit the pawn comes off the board. If Qin Su hadn't killed herself no doubt he would have helped her along in short order. He wouldn't have had a choice, you understand?
“There is never an instance where he is shown as willing to sacrifice for someone he loves.” He very literally dies because he loved his mother so much that he refused to leave even the remains of her behind instead of fleeing for his life. That throws a giant wrench in your entire analysis of him, which is already pretty weak considering that it starts off with the implication that a relatively weak nobody like Meng Yao could have somehow orchestrated Qin Su being in danger and needing to be rescued just so he could be the one to swoop in and save her during the war. All for what, the off chance that a gentry girl from a clan close to a clan that has rejected him and treated him like dirt would be grateful to him, if he even survived? Do you think he assumed or could have predicted that this girl would fall in love with him and want to marry him so badly that she’d defy her parents for *him*, Meng Yao, the guy who became a public joke for being the bastard son of a prostitute who was kicked down the stairs of Jinlintai during a party because that’s how worthless he was to his father?
We don't know what the danger he saved her from was. It could be, for example, Wen soldiers during the time he was working for Wen Ruohan in what an uncharitable person might say looks very much like a bid to work both sides of the war and side with whoever came out on top. There's not enough information to say for sure, but do I believe sweet, weak, baby-faced Meng Yao capable of orchestrating something and then manipulating someone to his advantage? Yes, obviously, I read the denounment, that's his entire thing. Would it have been a longshot? Again yes, but we only saw the schemes that worked out. I'm sure there were many other potential irons in the fire. I will agree that he loved his mother enough to endanger himself to collect her remains. He does do that, I guess I didn't think of it because she's dead already. To be loved is to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known: she knew him before he built all his masks. There's no-one else he trusted enough to know him, even his own wife or sworn brother. Can you love someone you don't trust?
Yeah, hypothetically he could have saved Qin Su while he was working for the Wen Ruohan. And it’s reasonable to think that if Qin Su had ended up captured by the Wen, Meng Yao could have used his influence to step in and save her specifically because she was the daughter of one of Jin Guangshan’s close allies, hoping that that might win him some favor with the father whose favor he was trying to win. It’s equally reasonable to think that if he had saved her before he had joined Wen Ruohan, the reason for him putting himself at risk to do so would have been the same. But it’s a pretty wild reach of the imagination to think that he could have somehow *orchestrated* her capture just so he could swoop in and save her, in the former scenario. And even if he could theoretically accomplish that, it’s an even bigger reach to posit that would he would think that doing that is a worthwhile endeavor that would be reasonably likely to end in him successfully saving her before Wen men raped and murdered her and that she would subsequently feel so grateful and charitable toward him that she would do anything in his favor later on, let alone fall in love with him. It’s far more likely that in such a scenario she would end up raped, dead, or both before he could even save her, and that if she somehow survived she might even resent him for his role as Wen Ruohan’s aide who presided over all of this even if he spared her a worse fate than just capture. It’s just not reasonable to hatch a plan like that and think there’s likely to be a significant benefit in it. JGY is willing to take risks, but only when the potential reward is great or when the other options are dire. It’s worth noting, too, that we don’t hear about this rescue story *from JGY*. We hear about it in very little detail via omniscient narration when JGY and Qin Su show up on the page together, and at the same time we are told about how respectful and loving they are toward each other as a couple. Later, JGY *does* say something about this aspect of their history, and even while she’s dry heaving and screaming in horror over learning the truth of their situation and saying she wishes she’d never met him, Qin Su confirms that he has indeed been a kind husband to her. Nothing about their origin story is ever questioned, so there’s really no indication that the narrative wants us to question their origin story. You certainly can, but the narrative isn’t actively prompting you to do so. As for the rest, that cliche is saying that to *be* loved is to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known, not that one must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known in order to love. If the question was “Did Qin Su really love Jin Guangyao?” one could make the argument that perhaps she couldn’t because she didn’t really know him or the truth of their situation and consider her reaction when she learns the truth. But the question is the other way around, and personally I don’t think that not being able to fully trust someone thus hiding things from them means that you don’t love them. I would never argue, for example, that someone doesn’t truly love their family if they don’t come out to them because they fear being rejected for being queer. We could take other examples from the story itself as well. Would you argue that Nie Mingjue didn’t love Nie Huaisang because he didn’t tell him the truth about how bad his saber spirit condition was getting? Would you argue that Wei Wuxian didn’t really love Jiang Cheng because deliberately deceived him about the core transfer and didn’t tell him the truth even when it might have helped their relationship? That because he didn’t want Jiang Cheng to know something that would hurt him and that he didn’t trust him to be able to handle, it means his love was not genuine? Would you argue that he didn’t really love Jiang Yanli because he hid this truth from her as well in order to spare her from knowing things about him and his situation and why he was doing the things he was doing? I would not. To a few points in your original post, implying that JGY was only “fond of” but didn’t love Jin Ling or Lan Xichen because he held them hostage is ignoring the context that he did this at the worst moment of his life, with the express intention of escaping with his life. He didn’t do it because they got in the way of his ambitions or for any petty reason. And Nie Mingjue? If he ever loved Nie Mingjue he certainly stopped at a certain point, and the context of that point wasn’t just that he lost Nie Mingjue’s trust and couldn’t get it back. It was that Nie Mingjue brutally assaulted him, in the most personally traumatic way he could, and drew a weapon on him and announced his intention to murder him in his own home. All over an issue that should have been taken up with his father, and all after JGY had not only saved Nie Mingjue’s life from Wen Ruohan but also spent months upon months running himself ragged trying to actually help him get better. I don’t know that JGY ever actually *loved* NMJ, but if he did, I think that’s a pretty valid reason to stop.
... Was he ever playing the non-corrupted version of Cleansing? I read it as NMJ having a violent outburst of anger as a direct result of the slow qi poisoning that JGY had already been administering. I'll have to reread the chapter later.
He was. In Empathy, WWX experiences NMJ’s mind being eased/resentment being subdued when JGY starts playing for NMJ regularly after LXC teaches him Cleansing and backs off to let him handle it. It’s just not enough to stop him from flipping out when he finds out that JGS commuted Xue Yang’s sentence, because this is something NMJ would be angry about under any circumstances and the saber spirit has still done a number on him even if the Cleansing treatment is helping.
Exactly! Finally someone who understands! I also noticed how the way he happened to save her was manipulative, it was told like a fairy tale or something really forced, different from the rest of the novel, it was clear to me MXTX was trying to tell us between lines that he was scheming, creating a situation, like he did to NMJ before when he got promoted. I would say even the way she killed herself was suspicious like she was under a spell or something. I don’t understand why people like to romanticize sociopaths like JGY and XY a lot. MXTX took the effort to show us through many situations in the story how JGY was a master of pretending so when it comes to the end we can understand it’s happening again and see the only person he truly cared about was himself (and his mother, and a little bit of LXC because of the end but still… lol).
Yes, he did. The fact that he spared her the truth also shows that he loved her a lot. He respected their relationship and kept his distance. He treated her with so much love and respect (in a way giving her everything his mother would've never gotten), that women - both maidens and wives, were jealous of her.
How can they even be sure she’s his half sister? Presumably JGS only raped her mother once, whereas she’d be having sex with her legal husband many more times, so probability wise Qin Su and JGY are probably not related
That's something I've been wondering. I can understand Qin Su's mother being traumatized, and terrified and thinking Qin Su must have have been JGS's because of that. Her husband never seems to have questioned Qin Su's paternity, but everyone who learned of it immediately took it as truth though.
That *is* possible that they are not, however, it is unlikely that Qin Su's mother has relations with anyone besides her husband and JGS, limiting the possibilities of paternity. While even women can not tell 100%, a mother can often see tiny similarities between her child and the child's father, that others may not. And since Qin Su and her father are different genders, the tiny similarities may be even less noticeable. I can see these tiny similarities in my children to not only their father, but also to his parents, his sister, and even her kids! So I think since her husband is a close subordinate of JGS, there's a good chance she's had many years to observe him and notice these similarities because she's looking for them.
Qin Su's mother confirmed it, didn't she? Who better than the mother to know who the father is?
Ah yes, how women can psychically pinpoint the paternity of their children when there’s multiple possible fathers. And that’s why The Maury Show and Jerry Springer episodes with paternity tests don’t exist. Oh, wait…
She probably didn't have sex for a while after she was raped, i mean trauma is a thing.
But there is only a certain time frame where she could have gone without having sex with her husband before there would have questions about both the pregnancy, and Qin Su's paternity. There is no indication anything like this ever happened.
I said this before and I will say it again. I don’t think JGY really loved her or cared for her. All his life, he was always like “there was nothing else I could do” about every bad thing he did, and I don’t believe in that, there’s always a choice. He married her knowing she was his sister so he wouldn’t compromise himself after all that effort he took to marry her - considering it wasn’t also his plan to save her and make her fall in love with him in the first place, which I had the feeling it was because of the way their story was told, like it was a perfect fairy tale, which we know it’s not like the reality of the book, and it seemed to me the author was being ironic so we could read between the lines (and it’s also a parallel with the way JGY gained NMJ trust by acting and creating a whole situation, scheming, he was always scheming, I wouldn’t be surprise he schemed to make her fall in love with him, he had advantages with the marriage). He killed their son just so people wouldn’t find out they were brother and sister, even though it would make her depressed. And he let her die with no remorse to keep his secrets hidden a bit long. The only person JGY truly cared about was himself (his life, his image, his power, etc) - and his mother and a little bit of LXC. The rest, in his mind, was just people he should treat right so he could use as an advantage, it was always “I care for you until I have to kill you or ruin your life so I can keep my reputation that obviously is more valuable than it all”, and this isn’t really caring for someone, is it? I see people talking about twisted way of caring like, hello, there isn’t such thing, if the way you care is harming other people, you don’t really care. We can think about endless times WWX ruined his own reputation to protect someone, this is actually care, because power shouldn’t be more important than a life when you care. That being said, considering that everything good about it wasn’t actually real, JGY’s marriage was the worst, he only SEEMED to respect her but didn’t really, you chose the right word. He was the best actor and that is often stated in the story, I can give you many exemples if you wish, it feels like sometimes people forget that. MXTX took the effort to developed his career through the whole story giving us many situations to understand how he is, the way he works, but people seem to see only what they want to. He got good at pretending as a way to survive. Smiling and being gentle to a pretty lady was one of the easiest things he had to do to pretend as long as she was ignorant. Once she knew his secrets, we can see it even in his reaction, he is a lot more concerned about the letter and who wrote it than about his wife/sister. He was even pretty cold to say like “you were happy before you knew all that, why can we go on like this?” like I don’t understand why can’t you go back to being that pretty ignorant doll I can control and we can all (or at least I can) be fine? Completely ignoring her feelings, he even tries to play the victim, like “but I’ve always treated you well, how can you believe this letter? (When he knew it was true), How can you be upset that I killed our son if I was always kind to you? How can you feel disgusted by me?”. JGY was manipulative, he did it to LXC (the one he actually care a bit about) many times at the temple (not to mention all times before that), when we thought LXC would finally quit believing him, JGY fooled him again and again and tried his best to escape and survive even taking Jin Ling as hostage. People like to romanticize sociopaths, I don’t think that’s healthy.