One of my favourite parts of the novel is the development of QiJing’s relationship because at the start of the novel, Qiyan Agula is significantly older and treats Jingnu as a mixture of a little sister figure like Xiao-Die or a daughterwife who she will inherit after the death of Nangong Rang and hold her life in her hands. Jingnu sees her husband as almost an older friend she wants to impress, desiring to shed away her childish skin to meet Qi Yan as equals, in intelligence and maturity. And by the end of the novel, Jingnu is that deeply intelligent, perceptive and powerful emperor, who has, not surpassed per se, but has outgrown her to some extent. Like it doesn’t escape me how reminiscent it is of a parent/child relationship especially with how Qiyan Agula parallels Nangong Rang in their relationships with Jingnu, and there’s this idea of her pouring herself into Jingnu in a way that’s self-destructive; the more Jingnu grows, in intelligence, in power, the more Qiyan Agula shrinks and becomes weaker and more vulnerable. By the end of the novel, it’s Jingnu who has to balance between the world and her wife the same way Qiyan Agula would struggle with her revenge against Jingnu, and she emphasises on taking care of Agula like she did especially when Jingnu was younger (carrying her, nursing her, letting her lean on her, reassuring her that Qiyan Agula is her wife and that she loves her) whilst Qiyan Agula is not only dying and losing her memories and constantly blacking out, but has lost the pride and dignity she used to carry herself with, completely letting down all guards and being left in a state of constant vulnerability, she’s constantly feminized in her relationship with Jingnu (Jingnu locking her up at several occasions, Qiyan Agula becoming disconnected from politics like Empresses are said to be, the council regarding her main duty to give Jingnu children and that if she doesn’t then she should be replaced, their reverse marriage scene, Qiyan Agula slowly losing her connections outside of her relationship with Jingnu like Baishi and the bank, Jingnu’s perception of her shifting into seeing her as a wife and someone to take care of).
And it’s really easy to have ended it there, to concede on who the characters are and what they’ve been through. It’s so convenient, Qiyan Agula was no longer accused of betrayal and was reinstated as Imperial Husband. She and Jingnu could’ve been together for a few years and then left together to explore the world. But how can it be forgotten that this was the same Qiyan Agula who lost her parents and homeland and came here for revenge? Qiyan Agula’s story is of a struggle between masculine and feminine, Wei and Jing, revenge and love, body and mind, life and death, of forming any sense of self wrt what is needed of her to succeed in her revenge plan and die when it’s over. For a second it seems that she has settled, choosing love over revenge, cutting off her roots and staying in the Wei Kingdom, but then the novel reminds that, no, it is unfair to her to reduce herself, no different from when she had arrived only seeking revenge, and it’s destroying her. Even with the woman she loves (a relationship that is a product of all those oppressive structures and is defined by them even if both of them deeply love one another and have come to understand each other), she lives within that pain and suffering and her declining health, she cannot conceptualise much else other than death. And so she gets out, forgets all of it and for the first time, nothing is imposed on her, she’s living away from all those influences and pressures. But even in that she leaves behind a clue for Jingnu, on her own terms, that she chose to look for her after all. Once she, too, escapes from the structures that have defined them all their lives.
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