Do you know any ChengQing fics that address the fact that JC wanted WWX to leave WQ's family to die, and that he is very much not a zombie rights activist WRT WN? Or actually killed her family in novel verse but that may be too far lol. I'm 1000% here for ships with conflict but ngl most stuff I've seen seems to either have her brush it off or leave it as the most awkward elephant in the room lol. I just can't see her being okay with that just bc he's hot and has good fashion sense.
I haven’t read a lot of post canon chengqing fic! The premise of most of the aus I’ve read is that he changes his mind, or it never comes up in the first place, which is what gives them the chance to get together. If anyone else has recs, please let me know!
I think that while she’d probably have a lot of feelings about it- I definitely agree that it would not be something she’d be ok with on hotness grounds- I’m also not sure those feelings would be a straightforward condemnation. One of the things I like about them is that their starting moral positions are pretty similar. She also wants to protect her particular people before all else and is extremely devoted to her family! While she wavers in that conviction, it never extends to open rebellion or support for their enemies, which is what Mingjue is being so stubborn about. Of course Jiang Cheng is in a more powerful and autonomous position than she was, but I think based on the deal she struck with WRH- she’ll serve him loyally as he embarks on his genocidal conquest, including spying for him so he can locate essential resources that will make him basically invincible and running his supervisory office; in exchange no one touches the Dafan Wen- she has a pretty good understanding of why he might choose to prioritize the well being of his people over the well being of other people and she’s not wholly unsympathetic to that choice. She seems to basically respect his position and think he’s doing, if not the right thing, at least an understandable thing that is in line with his responsibilities. She has two separate opportunities to tell him about the core transfer and try to cash in on that favour, or ask him for help more generally and she pretty vehemently does the opposite of that. She tells him they’re even and strongly suggests that helping her entire family is impossible for him to do, before adding that she IS a Wen and will be sticking with her people (the same way, I think, he’d stick with his). When she asks him if he’d have helped I don’t think it’s because she thinks he’s a terrible person who would have ignored the obviously correct thing to do for petty reasons; I think she is pretty intimately aware of what it can mean for the choices of the aristocracy to trickle down to the people they’re responsible for, as evidenced by all the innocent people she is responsible for who are punished for her uncle’s choices (and arguably for her choices, that she made to protect them, it is always crying about Wen Qing times). And also because the Jin are sadistic assholes and the Nie are down with collective punishment and Xichen didn’t want to fight with Mingjue about it but that’s a side issue.
And in the end she does turn herself, her brother, and her people over to the Jin to save Wei Wuxian. She basically follows Jiang Cheng’s exact plan but two years later. Is it a rejection of her previous my-people-first-philosophy? An outgrowth of the fact that Wei Wuxian is one of her people now too, and she thinks the Wen are doomed but maybe they can still save him? She’s functionally trying to undo the sacrifice he made when he saved them, and tells him they should have died in the camps; I do not think that implies she thinks he owed it to them.
I personally actually do think he owed it to them, and also that Jiang Cheng owed them more help than he gave. In CQL trying to turn them over to save his brother is the most fucked up thing he does by far (and it’s very fucked up!), but I also think the peasants going to die for Wei Wuxian is bullshit and honestly prefer the novel on that point. Wen Qing and I are clearly not in agreement about ethics in feudalism, is what I’m getting at here. Anyway I’d love to read fic that gets into any of this and I turn anon’s request for recs over to you all.
