thematic questions of empress xianming
something something the way your abusers look like immovable giants when they are plain and pathetic human beings who revel in cruelty in order to exert control over their own helpless existence.
but it doesn't change that abusers, especially ones that take on a parental role, are uniquely immovable, and for ASIANS, there's an especially cruel and immobilizing fear unique to the concept of FILIAL PIETY, which means that no matter what you have to respect your parents for being born.
for certain types of asian abusers, there's a unique quality that dehumanizes the "DISOBEDIENT, UNFILIAL, AND UNGRATEFUL" child.
in empress xianming, qian zhouyu gets indoctrinated into a buddhist cult with syndicate connections (think geto suguru from jjk) and his abuser is the MONARCH OF MOON COURT, and in yue xianming's eyes, the monarch is a pathetic sniveling toothless weasel trying to exert power where power is none.
but the MIRAGE of power is absolute
in the eyes of the "subjects" ie those "subject" to it.
and a big part of the game, EMPRESS XIANMING, is about trying to extract qian zhouyu from the indoctrination and forced domination by an authority that doesn't deserve the respect it demands.
but it's also simultaneously a game about dehumanization so severe it becomes sociopathic: yue xianming is openly a sociopath.
raised by a sociopath, though he doesn't admit it.
THE LORD OF SPRING COURT / THE FAIRY QUEEN OF SPRING COURT, shiragiku-sama, is also a sociopath, and she raised a 12-year-old xianming as her younger brother (she is 8 years his senior) and at 20 she already saw the potential in him to become like her, and so she raised him and played with him and molded him and taught him what it meant to be a hitman (assassin is a kind word for it) as well as a genius, though his caliber is higher than hers.
at 20, shiragiku saw the potential in him to become someone that could someday rival her mastery. and she wanted a friend, a playmate. she wanted a friend.
a nonpareil can recognize another one the same way a curse knows a curse.
shiragiku and xianming are both sociopaths, the difference between them being that shiragiku has no loyalty except to herself and is openly beholden to none, including xianming.
xianming doesn't fault her for her lack of "loyalty" because he also has no "loyalty" to her; their relationship is comfortably transactional and contingent on "no hard feelings" in the sense that both of them are independent and abstract of one another.
both of them are have their own glass castles, even if shiragiku mentored xianming and raised him like a younger brother, to them family has no meaning. but they RESPECT each other as pareils, peers, in the way that nonpareils and those without parallel respect each other because the only other option is to despise one another, kill each other, and then be alone.
if you asked xianming if he LIKES shiragiku, he wouldn't understand the question. like, if he likes her. likes to be around her, likes her company, likes her ((xm voice: rancid), flitty, inconsistent, mercurial, capricious) personality, her hair, literally anything. he would tell you it doesn't matter, because he didn't "choose" her, she is just there, and they are associated with one another as each other's only peer and rival in the unearth of fairyland.
but the difference between shiragiku, who raised him to have a friend and playmate, and xianming is that xianming has an Obsession. the name of xianming's Obsession is qian zhouyu.
qian zhouyu is the spymaster for moon court, under the thumb of the monarch, who functions like a twisted buddhist cult leader. when xianming returns, she immediately seeds doubts and cracks the "perfect" facade of the absolute omnipotent powerful ruler. because she is a True genius, and a tide-breaker, and only she can stand against shiragiku, who wants to leverage war with her spring court against the moon court because she is bored.
even though shiragiku raised xianming, xianming has no particular or special affection for her nor any resentment or hurt to see her on the other side of a war. xianming even suspected such a thing might occur someday, and that's why she raised him.
to play against.
so xianming enters the field as a tide-breaker and a wildcard, a joker, to roll the dice upon whether or not he will act and change the sway of the tides to help the moon court (to which his a-yu belongs and is lifelong indebted to, shackled to) or to stand aside and watch it die and then collect a-yu from the ashes and absorb him as his bride/husband/war prize/best friend into her own ghost valley.
the thing qian zhouyu fails to understand time and time again. is that xianming isn't the helpless mute boy he grew up with, as two warchildren and orphans and childhood friends. he is a monster with no parallel.
and the difference between a god and a monster is so thin and threadbare as to be utterly transparent, like spider silk.
the thing about qian zhouyu is that no matter what abuses and violences and horrors he has endured, he is still "a fairy" (a human) and loves others and cares for others and his heart aches to see cruelty enacted upon his neighborhood full of people who he stood by and saw day after day after day, who live as other "subjects" in the same fairy kingdom court "subjected" to the same violence, who are his nakama and neighbors, no matter how bad and shy he is about showing his deep well of love and care and affection for them.
unfortunately, yue xianming has no comprehension of that. and with that comes calamity.