It’s heartbreaking to know that when Anshi looks back on her first encounter with the late emperor—the man who sexually abused her for years—she can only describe her 10-year old self as ambitious.
In the light novel, Anshi is far less aware of why she was sent to the rear palace, and it’s clear in the books that she did not intend to grab the emperor’s attention.
But in the manga—now the anime—she says she knew, that she understood what she was getting into, and that she reached out to him deliberately.
This is very likely a lie she told herself to cope with the trauma of the abuse she endured, abuse that dictated the course of the rest of her life, for better or for worse.
Because, even if Anshi knew, on paper, what her father intended by sending her to the rear palace, what 10-year old would understand, truly, the implications of winning the emperor’s favor? What prepubescent child fully understands sexual grooming or abuse for what it is, understands how it will hurt them?
Anshi falls for the oldest lie children of sexual abuse tell themselves: that they brought this upon themselves, that they were somehow responsible for what happened.
Telling herself that she put herself in his path out of ambition gives her the illusion of agency. It allows her to ignore the glaring, obvious signs that she could not have refused him if she’d wanted to. It is also a manifestation of her own self-loathing, the all too common misplaced guilt that rape survivors feel in the wake of their assault.
This particular coping mechanism is what drove her to assault the late emperor right back when she was in her late 20’s.
That helplessness, that rage, that unresolved trauma, led to her repeating the cycle of abuse, led her to forcing herself onto him as an adult to reclaim that agency she knows she never had.
And this assault brought about her second pregnancy—the birth of the moon prince, the current emperor’s younger brother.
And even though Anshi knows Jinshi is Ah-Duo’s son, not hers, Anshi was still the woman who raised him. She feels this guilt and revulsion every time she looks at Jinshi, especially since he resembles the late emperor so strongly.
And even though Anshi loves Jinshi deeply, she is constantly haunted by the self-loathing she associates with him. She calls his very existence immoral, a living embodiment of her sins. And it’s so heart-wrenching, so tragic that she blames herself for everything, that she believes all of this happened due to her own, selfish sense of ambition.
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