#imperial uncle

[dangermousie]

I have started Imperial Uncle by Da Feng Guo Guo and what a gorgeous, evocative mood piece that is one of the most quietly yet viscerally despairing novels I’ve read.

I love it. It’s the closest I’ve seen a danmei come to a Mary Renault novel, if it even makes any sense.

[smittenskitten]

oh!

ahahahaahaa ok

I am in stitches

[yakarmi]

SPOILERS FOR THE IMPERIAL UNCLE!!!

*Me rooting for Prince Huai to end up with Yun Yu the entire novel*

Yun Yu at the end, after Prince Huai confesses to him: Actually, we’re related. So no. We can never be together.

Me: ……………..

Betrayal.

I’m getting over it. I like Liu Tongyi. Just…. 😭

[bellaroles]

So afraid I will get duped along the way but I'm only a few pages in I can see that this guy's life sucks already. I can't help but side with him lol.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

not to be fucking insufferable about Imperial Uncle, but it's such a fascinating read (despite its flaws) because it's all about Roles and breaking away from them.

the protag and LI leave the imperial court separately and reunite a few years later, and it's only by leaving that they can actually get to know each other as people and have their happy ending.

it's also really interesting that, despite MC's love life being a substantial aspect of the book, the book isn't really a romance—it's about the constraints of being born into the imperial court, even when your status gives you power over many people. it's about how the privilege that comes with your status can affect someone else and cause harm, even if you never meant for it to happen. it's about being lonely at the top, and how the best intentions can be misinterpreted by the people around you. it's about theoretically having the power to write your own story, but instead you're beholden to other people's perception of you. it's about having to leave the decadent life you're born into but never really wanted, and making your own way.

A large part of Imperial Uncle depends on code switching; the characters are referred to, and use, shifting titles/names/courtesy names as an indication of power—courtesy names are less intimate than names, but because the Emperor uses his uncle's courtesy name, nobody else has the privilege to use it... and thus it becomes a more intimate form of address. And in turn, Chengjun can call other people by their courtesy names whenever he wanted, but they "dare not" call him by the name he longs to hear on their lips; the man he ends up together with only manages to call him by his courtesy name once, after they have both left the imperial court behind them, and when he says the name it was with great difficulty, despite (or because of) loving Chngjun for a long time. Chengjun could also bestow nicknames on others, but the closeness is just a facade.

The divide between individuals in the imperial court is constantly referenced every single time the characters refer to each other, and refer to themselves in the presence of each other. The Emperor is, by definition, alone even in a palace filled with people, with the unique 1st person pronoun that marks his status. Prince Huai, Chengjun, switches between "I" (我) and "this prince" (本王), before dropping the latter—and with it, the political maneuvering and mind games that chains him by virtue of being born. There is the careful, polite distance of referring to oneself as "this commoner", and the resentful despair in claiming a form of address that one should've always been entitled to. There is the title of "Imperial Uncle", and what that means for the people bound to and by it.

[angryteapott]

Imperial Uncle

I’m an imperial uncle; his imperial majesty’s uncle. Once, someone with nothing better to do took a comprehensive survey of the current dyn

READ IMPERIAL UNCLE, FREE TRANSLATION MAPPED ABOVE!! I encountered this novel through a post in the league of nobleman tag describing it as an in universe webnovel where the emperor is gay for his uncle, but I promise there’s a lot more going on. I highly recommend this novel to anyone who liked a league of nobleman ((Zhang Ping cameos and it’s hilarious and perfectly in character)) or to anyone who likes a tragicomedies or unreliable narrators. Give it a shot!!! If you’re not convinced, my full review is under the cut.

First of all, calling our main character the emperor’s uncle is a bit unfair. Prince Huai is a royal cousin once removed, called “imperial uncle” as a vague slight from the empress dowager. His father once held immense military power and as such the world treats the MC as a credible threat to the throne despite the fact that his own political influence is just an illusion. Or is it? While love is discussed at length, this story isn’t really a one-true-love romance, and the many love interests mostly serve to illustrate how our MC’s internal world interacts with his treacherous reality.

The novel is deeply buried in Prince Huai’s version of events and uses that to meditate on perspective, love, and how motivations and circumstances can warp both. Our unreliable narrator tends to see things in extremes and himself as helpless- either his position makes everyone despise him entirely or everyone’s secretly in love, and he has little to no control over any of it. The truth, of course, is more complicated. The novel’s twists and turns aren’t always events or revelations from other characters- sometimes they’re simply our narrator letting slip a detail that casts his entire narrative in a different light. It’s the sort of story that makes you want to tilt and squint at it to see how the light hits it from different angles.

It’s also gloriously funny. Our MC’s haphazard and petty narration makes even the most tragic events seem a bit pedestrian and humorous, and he’s almost always cracking a self deprecating joke or responding to extreme situations in ways that fully take the wind out of them (LOL LAXATIVES FSKJLSJDMAFGH). This makes the truly sad bits really punch you in the gut, especially when our dauntless hero doesn’t quite manage to shake them off.

There are flaws, of course, and the first one is easily resolved: the extras add almost nothing to the story and take away from what makes it compelling. The themes they raise are interesting but different and under-explored. Skip them. The second issue I had was that a large and fairly important obstacle to our main character is resolved off screen between the two halves of the novel and in a way that could have happened earlier. Resolving it changes nothing other than making it seem it a bit pointless to include in the first place (knowing that it could easily be resolved, why did our MC angst about it?). That said, that’s more of a quibble than a real issue. Also, while I actually found that the sexism added historical verisimilitude and was punctuated by enough “women are human” moments that it wasn’t unbearable, our MC is sexist and occasionally racist. Treat with caution.

TLDR: I highly recommend!

[moononmyfloor]

Ancient Detective ost made a surprise reappearance my YT feed (gosh I miss that precious little drama) and I suddenly remembered how struck I was by Du Yafei's beauty back then. He was among the first C-actors (and there has not been many after that) whom I was enraptured with upon the very first glance like damn. Truly a crime he doesn't seem to get lots of roles.

AND

Since I'm reading Zhang Gong An these days, I'm reminiscing about Imperial Uncle a lot as well and when I saw Du Yafei today a bulb went off: heyyyyy he would make the perfect Jing Weiyi!!! 😍

A huge part of Uncle's appeal is that the man is a contradiction, a beautiful contradiction. And I just think Du Yafei excludes the same aura that I imagined Uncle would as well!

He just feels equal parts kind and steadfast yet possibly-scheming (against you) and unpredictable, youthful yet simultaneously "I've lived too long, I've had enough of this" kinda weariness like Ye Baiyi, dreamy yet mature have seen too much stuff for my age look in his eyes, a flirtatious demeanour that also makes you think that he has some deep-seated unspoken yearning/longing.

Ah, I miss uncle😔

Also plz this scene is SO story-of-Uncle's-confessions LMAO

[randomidiocyncrazies]

lmao every time i (re)read Imperial Uncle there’s something new to think about... spoilers for the endgame romance for the novel, but it’s kind of funny how the book (and author) is kinda infamous for having ‘ambiguous’ romantic plots,  and i actually. kind of. dig that??? relationships are messy and they’re not always neatly shelved; there isn’t necessarily always a clear ‘real’ love interest in romance. 

(though to be honest, i actually think Da Feng makes the ‘main’ love interests pretty clear in Imperial Uncle and Peach Blossom Debt... she always reserves the most lavish descriptions for them. 

i think people complain because 1) she usually doesn’t introduce the ‘main’ LI until the other important characters have already appeared; in Peach Blossom Debt the real love interest doesn’t really show up until like. 9 chapters in? something like that. whereas the other LI has interacted with the MC quite a bit by that point, and in normal danmei logic it’d make sense for the other LI to get with MC. similarly, the LI that the MC of Imperial Uncle ends up with is only mentioned a couple of chapters in, while the other important characters have already interacted with the MC on-screen (though he’s also the first guy MC explicitly mentions being in love with -- even though the person he’s in love with is just a fantasy of what MC thinks the LI is like at the time)

2) she also uses 1st person in the three danmei books i’ve read by her. the information conveyed to the reader is limited by the narrator’s narrow point of view -- hell, one of the most enjoyable things about Imperial Uncle is to look at what MC isn’t saying, or what MC has misinterpreted, and figure out what’s actually going on. therefore, some of the character dynamics/backstories are intentionally concealed at first, either because the narrator doesn’t know, the narrator doesn’t want to think about it, or the narrator does not consider it important enough to talk about it in their internal narration.

3) there are always multiple love interests, and they’re usually all likeable or at least sympathetic, but do not necessarily get a happy romantic ending of their own. the level of reciprocation varies in the 3 books I’ve read: MC is only really ever interested in 1 LI in Peach Blossom Debt; MC is torn between the two LIs in Imperial Uncle (though the first guy he fell for is also the one he ends up with); and in Spring Once More it’s a harem ending lmao, though given where she chooses to end the story it’s bittersweet at best. since each LI is sympathetic and have their own compelling dynamic with the MC, you get a lot of people conflicted about whether they like the official pairing the most, or would rather the other LIs end up with the MC.)

and now to, imo, the most controversial shipping dispute of Imperial Uncle. discussions of potential incest. 

i genuinely think Imperial Uncle is a book with romance, rather than a romance; while the MC’s romantic woes takes up a lot of his internal narration, the scene of actually getting together with the endgame LI is very, very understated. at its core, the novel is really about the burden of being a part of the royal family, of being unable to have normal family dynamics due to the politics involved in the position of being related to the emperor, of having your motives questioned due to who you’re related to. the most important relationship in the book is undoubtedly the one between the MC and his emperor-nephew, but it’s not a romantic relationship (at least not from the MC’s side). 

however, because it’s a danmei, and the MC does agonize over his love life for a solid chunk of the book, some folks take ‘the most important relationship’ to automatically mean ‘the most important romantic relationship’. folks have argued that, because the MC cares about his emperor-nephew’s safety and is willing to make sacrifices to ensure that, it must mean that the MC is ~secretly in love~ with the emperor but cannot admit it due to the ~taboo~ aspect of it... because uhhh apparently romance is only reason why anyone would care about someone else???

like, while i think you can interpret the emperor’s feelings to possibly be ambiguously romantic (i personally don’t read it as romantic, but i can see why people come to that conclusion), i just. cannot see any interpretation where the MC’s feelings are romantic rather than familial; he thinks of him as a kid who’s forced to grow up way too fast, i really don’t see how people read romance into that sentiment. also: this is a reminder that the novel explores how royal family dynamics are inherently dysfunctional, where everyone can’t help but be paranoid about each other’s motives even if they’re a family and only have the best of intentions. incestuous romance is very much not the point.

(though to be fair, one of the LIs does turn out to be secretly related to the MC -- the MC’s father is the brother of the LI’s grandfather -- and the MC is distraught when he’s forced to confront it. That's the final nail in the coffin, and they do not end up together.)

anyway, it’s late and i’m losing my train of thought, but one of the reasons i enjoy Imperial Uncle despite its flaws because it’s a book with a romantic component, but the most important relationship portrayed in the books isn’t a romance. i think that’s pretty neat. not to mention the fact that MC is very much not on the same page as the rest of the cast for large chunks of the book, and the fact that MC is... kind of a liar in the sense that he has a tendency to think he’s in the right and innocent, even though once you step out from his POV you can see why other people don’t see it like that.

(like. “oh the other princes of my generation don’t like me bc they’re determined to see me as a threat to the emperor’s safety” while casually committing a breach of etiquette in a way that could be read as showing disrespect to the other princes and potentially the emperor... or being all “I’ve received less and less invitations to banquets at the palace over the years” while he declines every single one of his nephew’s invitations to come dine with him at the palace. gee i wonder why you don’t get invitations, dumbass)