I know zhu and ouyang are meant to mirror and be parallels for each other in the narrative but it's still kinda insane how if you look at their life stories they are practically the same person, like
both watch their families die violently at ~10 years old
with their families dead they are both still so determined to survive they carve themselves a way to keep on living anyway even if it’s insanely hard; ouyang becoming a eunuch and zhu waiting on the steps of the monastery for days
in order to keep on living, they also have to hide some essential part of who they are; zhu her gender, and ouyang his desire for revenge
they manage to spend their teenage years and early adulthood in relative comfort hiding away from the fate that they don’t want but are aware is waiting for them
and by not wanting their fates I mean they really, actively, DO NOT WANT IT!! zhu just wants to stay in the monastery hidden from the world and her nothing fate, and ouyang wants to play war with esen without having to think about his revenge forever
but of course they end up destroying each other’s comfortable bubbles (ouyang burning down the monastery and zhu causing ouyang the worst professional failure and humiliation of his life), becoming a catalyst for each other’s fates
and as the story progresses, those fates become the thing they want more than anything else, something they’ll be willing to hurt their loved ones over, no matter how much it hurts them too
at the end of swbts, they both have committed some atrocity (zhu killing the prince of radiance and ouyang killing esen) that allows them the command of an army, promising that army a victory over their mongol rulers
and then there’s of course the gender stuff
both of them share the core experience of hating or fearing their body growing up, wishing it was the ’perfect male body’ instead
which of corse meant that basic things like bathing became something to be feared and loathed because it would reveal the state of their body to themselves and/or others
their looks are very frequently commented on by others
and most importantly they are both specifically diagnosed by a medical practitioner of some kind to have a lack of masculine yang energy. yay!!!!
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