Another thing is that: Madam Yu married up. But in a deeply shitty way.
Let me expound. So the timeline we get is that 1) Jiang Fengmian was spending a lot of time with Cangse Sanren 2) gossip married them off 3) she married Wei Changze instead 4) his parents pressured him into an (implied very hasty) marriage.
This is why the sole heir to a Great Sect is married to the widely disliked third daughter of a minor one. He had embarrassed his parents. They were like, you're damaged goods on the marriage market now, no good match will have you. Take this instead. Don't argue, you've shamed us enough already.
And she damn well knows it. She knows she wasn't selected on her merits! She knows she's a punishment!
How could she not be weird about Cangse Sanren and public opinion, in that context.
They're not a great compatibility match regardless but the context in which it was arranged was just such spectacular sabotage.
jumping in uninvited bc yzy's family position is something i've thought for such a long time and it's all so dependent on mdzs' quasi-historical setting, but i'd be desinclined to believe she married up because of a few clues: one is wang lingjiao mentioning that "she used her family's influence to marry jfm" (truth of the statement up to reader's discernment). the other is zidian, an extremely powerful spiritual weapon which is not entirely clear if she'd made it herself or has inherited it like JC did, but seeing as she's the third daughter, it either means those two older sisters have even more remarkable weapons or yu ziyuan managed to surpass them in cultivation. other clues are more subtle, such as the yu clan, despite being so influential, had no meaningful losses or wins during the war. we can assume they assisted with yunmeng jiang's rebuilding for obvious reasons, but even that's speculation
now, this is entirely a headcanon i've brewed from these small context clues, but if i were to guess, the yu clan might be a minor clan in terms of cultivation world, but they are certainly rich and influential enough to be acknowledged as such by other characters, so myyyy bet would be on them actually being a major clan in imperial politics of the MDZS world (which we know exist, but are entirely separate from the cultivation world), possibly even having a yu daughter in the imperial harem (<- delusional)
ok but what would even be the definition of marrying up or down in these circumstances?? idk. madam yu might have been the first major cultivator of her mostly secular family, which is why she might have wished to marry into a major cultivation clan, even if yunmeng jiang itsels is less powerful than mishan yu (seriously, how is the clan a major one and still SO SMALL???? how did they gather so much power when the family doesn't even have heirs outside the main branch??????? how did they acquire so much land if its founder was a traveling cultivator???????? I NEED ANSWERS)
on that note, i can definitely see jfm's parents hastily marrying him off to yu ziyuan to quiet down all the drama cssr and wcz's elopement must have caused! though maybe not as a punishment on the matter of her station. again we're given many clues to believe that the yu clan was a very good clan to acquire an alliance to, and a third daughter who's a remarkable cultivator and wielding a legendary weapon is not a bad catch, but honestly maybe they noticed they were a bad match from the start and thought maybe this would be a lesson to him. not damaged goods in the market per se, just finding the closest proper option available to save the family's reputation and if he's unhappy about it, then all the better
[ID: Tags that say: "#always gotta reblog good madame yu discussions #the tension between her undeniable strength as a cultivator and the contempt other characters display towards her… #she's a badass! she has a special nickname (which jfm doesn't have) and a legendary weapon! #she dies after a heroic last stand! she kicks more ass on-screen than most of the men in her generation #AND she calls all the wen political bullshit #but alas. misogyny #yu ziyuan #jiang fengmian #meishan yu sect #mdzs + #that's your queue". End ID]
«The entirety of the cultivation world knew that third lady Yu had cultivated together with Jiang FengMian when they were young. Jiang FengMian’s character was gentle, yet Yu ZiYuan’s personality was harsh. The two didn’t share too many interactions. Thus, although their backgrounds matched, nobody associated the two as a pair. Later, ZangSe SanRen came from the
mountains, passed by Yunmeng, and happened to become friends with Jiang FengMian. They had even night-hunted together on multiple occasions. Both thought highly of each other. People supposed that it was very likely for ZangSe SanRen to become the next mistress of Lotus Pier.
However, soon afterward, the MeishanYu Sect proposed an alliance through marriage to the YunmengJiang Sect.
The leader of the Jiang Sect back then was quite interested, but Jiang FengMian had no such intentions. He didn’t like Yu ZiYuan’s conduct and felt that the two wouldn’t be an appropriate match. He had politely refused the offer a handful of times. However, the MeishanYu Sect set about multiple factors, putting pressure on Jiang FengMian, who was at the time still fairly young and had nothing to lean on. Along with the fact that, not long later, ZangSe SanRen had become cultivation partners with the most loyal servant at Jiang FengMian’s side, Wei ChangZe, and rode off into the sunset, roaming around the world, Jiang FengMian finally gave up.
Although Jiang and Yu were married, they had ever since been a grudging couple. They had always been living apart and held the most disagreeable of conversations. Aside from the strengthening of their sect’s powers, nobody knew what other benefits they had attained.
The founder of the YunmengJiang Sect, Jiang Chi, was born a rogue cultivator. The ways of the sect were honest and unrestrained. Madam Yu’s manners were the exact opposite.»
idk, man, i think that if i lost everything and almost everyone ive ever known and loved, got caught on purpose so that my brother could live, taken back to my now destroyed home where the bodies of my parents were hanging as trophies and the bodies of everyone in my community piled up, got tortured by the men who killed my family, a vital part of myself destroyed, somehow got rescued by a friend of my brother i didnt even know he had so now im alive and no way to restore my parent's legacy or protect my siblings, who are the only other two people alive that i care about, got like three business days to process everything before my brother, who is stronger, faster and smarter than me, that i trust with my life, that always managed to pull off the impossible to the point that my father clearly preferred him over me, told me there's a way to get back in the fight by going to his deceased mother's (who i never met) elusive immortal teacher (who almost no one knows) so she could restore the vital part of myself that got destroyed and i was still highly suicidal and possibly delirious from the all the emotional and physical trauma i JUST went through, i would probably have believed him too but maybe that's just me idk
ngl, i get the feeling that the reason why "xianxian had nothing to do with the fall of lotus pier" is such a prevalent hot take (besides deliberately brain-dead apologism) is that readers genuinely think of wen chao wanting retribution for wei wuxian holding a sword to his throat and threatening to kill him as....an aberration, rather than an entirely predictable response given both wen chao's character and human nature in general.
which in turn is the product of this wider phenomenon i've observed both in the MDZS fandom and in other fandoms. hm, how to describe this.....to put it simply, i feel like these readers just don't know how to conceptualize of fictional characters as....full characters written to act like real people? as in, from their POV, the protagonist knows he's (always he) the protagonist, and all the antagonists know they're antagonists, and all the petty side characters know their place as petty side characters. it's the same reason why readers bash on su minshan: not because he tried to kill everyone or anything, but rather because readers perceive him as being ~uppity~ by trying to compete with lan wangji. how dare this loser side character try to compete with the male lead, doesn't he know he's only a side character????
which is why readers keep treating wei wuxian holding wen chao's life hostage as an event logically isolated from all other plot events, and why they genuinely seem to think that wen chao retaliating for this in any way shape or form is both unnatural and completely unconnected to wei wuxian threatening to kill him. wei wuxian is the protagonist and wen chao a mere minor antagonist; clearly wen chao should know that he's a minor antagonist!!! clearly wen chao (a fictional character) should Just Know that the protagonist is allowed to do whatever he wants to wen chao, smh!!!!!!!
Something I feel like is a little bit important to keep in mind in regards to Jiang Yanli, she doesn’t live in a “Wow, you were so brave for speaking out against your parents,” society. She lives in a “talking smack about your parents gets you fired from your job, because not honoring your parents is a moral failing, and we don’t want you ruining our own reputation by extension by being associated with you,” society.
since i've seen that sentiment many times before: the cultivators attending the pledge conference weren't hypocrites who wanted wei wuxian dead even after the wen siblings had sacrificed themselves. the surrender failed. it was an important thing that happened.
whatever the real reason was, in the eyes of everyone in the jianghu, the yiling patriarch's ghost general pretended to surrender, only to murder over thirty people instead - including cultivators from the lan and the nie clans, who were previously unaffected by wei wuxian's actions and remained neutral on the issue. the pledge conference, where all clans gathered to plan their attack on wei wuxian, was a direct response to that, and you can't call this response unreasonable.
#I do think it's important as part of. like. the spiralling into tragedy as events spin out of any one individual's control#which is not to say that no one bears any responsibility at all#just that nobody wanted this to go down this way and that has to include even jin guangshan#he's a piece of shit but I'm pretty sure he didn't want to get his only legitimate kid killed
I know we all like to think WN is a poor little puppy who would never hurt anyone and his every act of violence had to be caused by someone (JGS or JGY)... But that puts so much weird omnipotence in the hands of JGS/JGY that is simply unrealistic.
...and kinda omits the fact that WN was also a traumatised teenager who was murdered in a horrific way by people in golden robes, and then revived as a walking abomination with the use of dark magic, only to go through more shit... If he just snapped and killed 30 people, it wouldn't be weird, would it?
Wei Wuxian did not save the Wen remnants out of his principles . Wei Wuxian doesn't have as much of a strict moral code as people potray him to have actually. His worldview is quite twisted , he too , has a thirst for vengence and his actions have also been , arbitrarily "Bad" .
Wei Wuxian saved the Wen remanants personally and went ahead to live with them because he owed the Wen siblings a huge debt which he intended to pay back however he could . It's not a martyr complex or a morality complex . It's as simple as that. He realised they'll be treated unwell and I'll in Jianghu, knew he had debts owed and tried to pay them back when the situation presented itself. Not everything has to be a convoluted psychological complex , something Western fans are obsessed with, often using therapy and psychological terms for even minute and simple reactions.
Had these Wen remnants been anyone else he owed nothing to , Wei Wuxian would not have personally invested himself in their well being .
I've been saying this for ages. Wei Wuxian does get attached to them after a while, but he 100% marched up into that Jin camp, and took ONLY Wen Ning's crew with him for one reason only. He took Wen Ning because he owed wn and wq a debt of gratitude, not for helping him take jc out of lp OR for hiding them away (since he doesn't owe the ppl whose family is straight up murdering his), but rather for the surgery he begged wq to perform. Then he took those under wn because wn assured him in the past that the people under him did not harm anyone in lotus pier. Wwx is not some saint or some martyr.
Wwx fully got his revenge and was content to let the rest of the Wen rot, except for those who helped him with his crazy request thus he owes them, and who he was assured had nothing to with personally attacking his home and killing everyone he grew up with (that are associated with said people he owes).
He even left the man who pointed out where wen ning's crew was (and the granny and child) to him in the camps. Wwx was not going on a moral crusade saying 'treating our fallen enemies like that is wrong and bad ™️' (except in cql).
Wwx was following the code of his time and his own personal code. Repay the debts you owe. Take revenge on those who harmed your family. Pretend to leave your sect because you don't want to drag them into your mess especially since it's you who owe these people not them.
It is only on the burial mounds he even got closer to wn and wq and they became somewhat friends. He didn't save them because he liked them, he liked them after he saved them. Then and only then was he actually ready to defend them and the few of their kin that he rescued as 'innocent' to the gathering of cultivators... and mind you, he was only willing to do so for their kin because those people he was assured of didn't have anything to do with the killing of his. As for every other Wen that he had no idea of? Left them to rot in the camps. Because it was the consequence of being part of a fallen enemy and had nothing to do with him... him who took his gruesome revenge out on the battlefield on many of said enemy's people.
I need people complaining about Yanli being betrothed to her mother's friend's son to seriously understand that it is significantly more important to have a loving and supportive mother-in-law than a loving and supportive husband in an arranged marriage and as Madam Yu must have known, Madam Jin delivers everytime.
#fascinating thoughts#it is still super sad thought that madame yu felt the need to arrange a marriage#especially when JFM was so willing to just let her fall in love with whoever when the time came#so to madame Yu it still comes down either to power or a repetition of harmful generational cycles#like yes great that madame yu was intentional about it in terms of arranging a marriage where her daughter would have new supportive family#but uh.... still#complicated situation all around#like in today's society we don't think like that#I'd personally rather have a loving supportive husband than a supportive mother in law for example#because HE'S gonna be her partner the father of her kids and the leader of the clan someday#am I making sense?#just complicated#great point though genuinely#mdzs#mdzs analysis
I think this is the exact type of sentiment I wished to contradict with my post? I may not manage to phrase this situation particularly well, but please bear with me about this.
Firstly, I think it is mentioned that Jiang Yanli is already quite taken with Jin Zixuan, but Jiang Fengmian broke up that engagement because it was clear that Jin Zixuan did not have the same regard for her. This, of course, is because Jin Zixuan seemed, in part, to believe she and Wei Wuxian had something going on, but overall it was actually a pretty sensible decision, and it is not nice to be married to a man who does not even respect you. She might have easily become the next Madam Jin or Madam Yu if such resentment were allowed to fester.
However, from a practical standpoint, only perhaps 25% of this decision was generational trauma/search for power in Madam Yu's part. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a political move this was, and how close Madam Yu and Madam Jin must have been for this arrangement to exist.
Jiang Yanli, despite being a woman of great inner strength and kindness, is not what one would call a desireable bride. She is indeed the daughter of a clan leader, but her father already has a son and the son-in-law cannot expect to absorb the Jiang. Her father also has a ward with whom she is close in a way that would be socially inappropriate, especially given that the whole world seems to be convinced that both Jiang Cheng and Jiang Yanli were weak for him and not always in a brotherly way. By herself, she is considered plain and weak, with few or no achievements to her name. Nearly everything about this is misogynistic, but it is also the reality that adult Jiang Yanli would have to, and likely did, navigate.
Jiang Yanli is extremely fortunate in that she has a father who is either wholly disinterested in this marriage business or willing to let her find someone to fall in love with (though how she's going to do that when apparently she doesn't go out as much is beyond me, maybe he was waiting for someone to come asking?) and a brother who pretty much worships the ground she walks on. That being said, it is practically an expectation for women to marry (and I don't think we have a single unmarried lady in MDZS except Wen Qing, whose life is presumably disrupted and then ended too soon, and Baoshan Sanren, who might as well have had a husband) both at that time and today.
Madam Jin, in this scenario, is the second mother. It is obvious that she is extremely politically powerful, to the point where her husband the sect leader did not have any concubines in spite of sleeping with any woman he could find, and apparently did not ever take in a bastard despite having only one son until Jin Guangyao became too important to ignore. She was, in fact, so powerful and important that she could singularly dictate who the wife of the heir and the future Madam Jin would be and chose a bride and alliance the literal sect leader was not keen on. This is the kind of protection Madam Yu wants Jiang Yanli to have. I genuinely cannot emphasize enough how much trouble a mother-in-law can cause you both physically and mentally (women where I live have been literally murdered about it in this very century) and while I cannot comment on Chinese dating cultures in modern times (any Chinese people reading this please share insights if you want to!), I don't see how this wouldn't have been an issue then. This is especially true if you belong to royalty/nobility because there the power struggle exists beyond simple domestic matters. As a woman, you would be expected to co-ordinate with and work with her for the household, and your only line of defense against any harassment would be your husband's love and favour, who, in Jin Zixuan's case and every other case, might just find her a tad too boring or unattractive and take a concubine, or just simply grow tired of having a wife who could not get along with his mother.
(As an aside, consider checking out the Lu family drama to see the kind of struggles that would exist among nobility and how much power women could have. I'm pretty sure there is a cdrama with Empress Lu but the name escapes me. She, like most other Empresses, is both fascinating and ruthless and I love her so much.)
Is this misogynistic on the husband's part to do and Madam Yu's part to consider? Yes. This is also incredibly pragmatic. So apart from the 25% generational trauma and power struggle and the absolute terror she would have felt about her own position and her friend's being repeated for her daughter, 75% of it was actually extremely well-thought out for Jiang Yanli's safety and long-term benefit, and from what we know, Jiang Yanli, if not particularly over-enthusiastic, was certainly willing and approving of the groom (even if he could really do with some common sense).
Literally so hungry for Chengxian post-canon where Jiang Cheng decides to take Wei Wuxian's "let bygones be bygones" completely and utterly seriously.
Jiang Cheng treating Wei Wuxian with complete formality every time they meet even though he is literally raging inside. He's convinced himself that obviously, this is better for both of them because Wei Wuxian clearly finds his emotions Gross.
Wei Wuxian, on the other hand, is completely taken aback by Jiang Cheng's formality and... he's not good. He has to do something about it.
Along the way, the truth is revealed about Jiang Cheng's sacrifice.
And Wei Wuxian has an earth-shattering revelation. About multiple things.
Lol, yes XD "It's our body, Jiang Cheng, how dare you withhold it from me??? I have at least 66% rights to it! Right, Lan Zhan??"
I can only imagine LWJ in this scenario, slowly losing his mind, because he wants to be angry at JWY for distressing his husband, but cannot be angry for JWY acting like he wanted him to act! XD He's not the Second Jade for nothing, he can be a hypocrite with the best of them!
Why cannot JWY just be subservient and permissive towards Wei Ying, and allow him all liberties while never reciprocating??? Is it so hard to ask for??
Meanwhile, Jin Rulan, the youngest sect leader in history, who is withessing this clusterfuck: Sizhui, I want you to tell your fathers that if either of them steps closer than twenty feet of my jiujiu, I will bury the Lan Sect in so much debt that Sect Leader Yao will be able to annex Gusu for two bags of rice.
Sizhui: ...now now, let's not be hasty. Wei-xiong is just easily excited..
JRL: One. Bag of rice. Not the good rice either.
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