Thinking about Suirei again…. She’s literally so iconic.
She took Medicine That Kills You For Ten Minutes and walked it off like a champ. She kidnapped Maomao and gave her a stack of medical textbooks to distract her, like a parent giving their toddler cocomelon. She’s so androgynous everyone thinks she’s a dude when she wears men’s clothes. She keeps wearing men’s clothes even after going into hiding. She’s deathly afraid of snakes because her shitty stepmother threw her into a pit of them for probably no reason. She has no friends. She is one of three people in the entire series who were able to outsmart Maomao. She makes one attempt at a joke and when it doesn’t work never tries again. Maomao is *very* interested in her intelligence and medical knowledge, which weirds her out. She got locked in a closet during one of her stepmother’s orgies. Her half-sister loved her so much she took her original birth name as a fake name while spying. She loves said sister more than anything else.
She tried to assassinate Jinshi. She’s so pretty, when she shows up disguised as a eunuch she ends up becoming legitimate competition to Jinshi’s beauty. She’s Jinshi’s cousin. Did I mention she’s hot as fuck.
Fates Week 2026 | Day 5 - Royal Siblings
i wish i had the energy and wrist to finish this
obligatory post-posting yap under the cut
so i originally started with the other theme, “conspiracy”, and had it thumbnailed out the night previous, but i didnt like it bc it was two garons and an eyeball and not enough wife, so i hard pivoted the next morning to “royal siblings” instead.
i had a rough idea for it as like family portraits, but with aqua very patently missing from either side and just kind of standing there like she was supposed to be filling in spot from a clearly complete set. ive always felt that regardless of how well she gets along with the hoshidofam, shes never truly felt like she belonged anywhere, unlike corn who is actively wanted by both sides.
however i didnt want to draw two sets of siblings in different styles bc my wrist has been protesting my treatment of it this week (haha oops), so i just decided to go with the nohrfam instead and imply that whole mess through a series of paintings. initial sketch below:
i had meant to keep it simple since i didnt want to stress my wrist out too much: the sibs, an additional portrait of corn, and aqua holding back a curtain with some implied mutilated paintings underneath, and herself with no visible face - however, the more i thought about it the more i wanted to add in more hints of the messy history of the current nohrian royal family and how aqua was basically considered dead amongst them. also like i dont think there would be a proper group portrait of the siblings as of current, and that it would be easier to depict their individual histories and selves through disparate paintings.
which very quickly led to a bunch more work lol
aqua herself was by far the easiest part bc i draw her so often that shes just easy and fun at this point as long as i dont need to contend with the miles of hair obscuring her back/silhouette as a whole. i love her hair very much, but i am admittedly kind of dogwater at drawing it loose and flowing all the time, and i personally love a big, loose braid.
per the initial sketch i did consider leaving her in her default white songstress outfit, but also the idea of a mourning dress + veil was simply too tantalizing to resist since i already knew i wanted her to have no face. the veil is a combination of her usual headdress + default corns hairband and pin. the dress itself started off as something very different and i had to stop myself before i went down a rabbit hole of looking up german fashion plates bc ive been literally cranking these out once a day and knew i would have to Fucking Chill if i wanted this remotely done before i was too tired or my wrist gave out (whichever first). the initial dress was closer to something more renaissance, but then i wanted a shawl or something else sheer and sort of lacy/feathered to mirror the veil, so i drew that too. obvs the shawl did not make it to the final cut, and the dress ended up being an adaptation of her usual songstress outfit, just with more nohrian flair with dark feathers, tyrian purple, and gold. the small bit of spine on the back of the bodice is a nod to corns armor as well as the general motif of death (and also bc it looked too plain and i needed something for more visual interest).
the paintings were their own little challenge, but mostly in that i realized id put So Damn Many and had to figure out how to properly populate them and then summarily mutilate the ones that were marked dead. most of them i just opted to deface beyond recognition so i wouldnt have to draw too much, but all of them are their implied causes of death. anyone pictured without a face is either literally or effectively considered dead. also the larger the painting, the more important subject(s) depicted.
i opted for child paintings bc i figured those would be the only times when they still had the perceived leisure to actually sit there for hours to have themselves painted vs times closer to the present as garon lost his mind and etc. of the mutilated paintings, the implied causes of death include: stabbing, mauling, poison, drowning, burning, beheading, execution, and mysterious disappearance (in no particular order).
obvs in the center we have a much younger garon with katerina (face obscured to depict death) and a wee lad of a xander. i wanted garon to look like a real dilf of a king and had originally planned something for how katerina looked before i realized i had to show she was dead somehow.
camilla and her mother was a fun one bc i knew exactly what i wanted out of this one - her mom front and center and very clearly mirroring katerinas pose in the painting above, and camilla behind and off to the side, also somewhat mirroring xanders pose. i know there are feh child version(s) of some of these kids but i opted not to ref any of those bc i wanted both of camillas eyes visible. i dont necessarily subscribe to the idea that one of her eyes is missing, but i like the implication that she could be hiding something (women and secrets and allure and all that). i think its generally agreed upon that the concubines were pretty much entirely self serving and were generally not great mothers, so i wanted it to be a very mom focused painting with camilla sort of as an afterthought. her moms head has obviously been torn out of it.
leo and elise both have smaller individual portraits without their moms because i did not want to think of more moms and bc the frames were too small and would not be recognizable if i didnt just put their faces in them. but also bc theyre babies and i knew specifically that i wanted elises shining little baby face to be uniquely cute and cheerful amongst the rest of this carnage. she is holding a stuffed rabbit. leo gets the generic profile view bc i thought it was very regal and depicted his aloofness well.
corns portrait is half covered by a rag bc its Not Supposed To Be There. initially this was an older portrait of them as like a teen that camilla probably commissioned and put up herself, but the idea of a petulant looking baby corn was too funny to pass up.
the painting of arete is actually one of arete holding young aqua. unfortunately, i ended up saving the file after i merged it, so the layer data no longer exists, but i had intended to show that painting in its entirety on its own. where aqua is standing here is literally in front of her own image in that painting.
There are comparisons to be made between Shisui and Jinshi for sure but one unexplored aspect I think this episode brings up is between Jinshi and Shishou in what love can do to a person. Does it make them become better or destroy them in pursuit of that person?
For Shishou, he wanted Shenmei so badly that he was willing to let his whole clan be destroyed to please her. Even after it was clear that her heart had turned bitter and she could no longer return his love due to her own spitefulness, he continued letting her hurt both his daughters in hopes that she might find some affection for him.
We see too when he dies, his flashback of her is a warm, soft version of her that almost never existed. She was cunning from the beginning and barely, if ever, returned his attention. His inability to let go of who he envisioned her to be in their youth became a problem for everyone after. Even if he still tried to protect the nation, his daughters suffered and his clan became a cautionary tale, all due to his inability to see Shenmei for who she really was. This is evidence of a love destroying someone, a fatal attraction really.
In contrast, for Jinshi, his love for Maomao only leads him to become better as a person in a desire to be someone who can protect her and give her an environment where she can succeed. He doesn’t harm others in pursuit of her, nor does he ask her to be anything different than who she is.
When he sees her in his mind, it’s not some idealized version but her apothecary self, in her green everyday outfit and lovely just as she is. He pursues her because she’s uniquely a person who pushes him to step outside his comfort zone and brings out the truer side of his personality others ignore. This love isn’t destructive but beneficial as for Jinshi he’s only learned to be a better man in pursuit of Maomao and this relationship has grown them both.
This is interesting to me because we can say the stories of these two make them excellent foils. Their contrasting stories show what love has the capability to do to a person, to either destroy them if it's distorted or to make them better if it's a true and honest kind of love.
Shishou considered what he was doing as loving but didn’t realize Shenmei felt he was the lesser option compared to the Emperor. She never knew she was a bargaining chip. Even though he was being kind in taking her, to her it was a cruelty and so his love was just something she didn’t want and ignored. His then turning a blind eye to her cruelty became a selfish desire that she would come around and return his love which was all in vain as she never changed. It was purely two kinds of selfishness that both led to much pain and heartache.
Jinshi’s love is selfless because he doesn’t let others or Maomao become trapped by his desire to love her. He learns to take into account any inconvenience he’s putting on people by wanting Maomao in his life and tries to lessen those burdens so there’s a good outcome for everyone. That’s what real love should look like, finding compromise and looking at things not only from a single minded perspective but also those of the ones around you. In the end he and Maomao have a chance because what they share doesn't remain unrequited or one-sided, it becomes a mutual love they work hard for.
Ah, toxic lead face powder, my old friend. You can even see some of the same gauntness that Lihua started to have towards the end, though that could just be age, I suppose.
It sure is fitting for Maomao's true antagonist to be a highborn lady wearing poison facepowder who abuses servants and daughters. And then to top it off she wants a miracle drug and makes apothecaries kill themselves developing it. Lady Shenmei is here to harmfully bother the cat
So it's now clear that Suirei and Jinshi are blood-related, as both are grandchildren of the former emperor (even though, legally, Jinshi is the son of the former emperor and anshi, but biologically, he is their grandson) Only two girls became pregnant with the former emperor, Taihou (Shenmei's lady-in-waiting) who gave birth to a daughter, and Anshi, who gave birth to the current emperor. Taihou’s daughter was banished from the palace, but years later, the former emperor ordered Shishou to marry his daughter, and Suirei (whose real name is Shisui) was born.
That’s the two-generation humiliation Shenmei was talking about.
There's just something so compelling about Shishou and Shenmei. Love is treated as inherent good in many stories; sometimes true love is even depicted as salvation. But Shisou's genuine love for Shenmei expressed itself as enabling and complicity.
Shisou's love led to his enabling of the abuse of both of his children by Shenmei. She was once a person who would never commit such deeds, so he couldn't face the reality of the cruelty that shaped Shenmei.
He allowed her to throw Suirei, his eldest child, out of the clan to appease her wounded ego. Until the end, he never expressed regrets over the fate of his eldest daughter. To keep the illusion of the pure Shenmei intact, he could never try to truly know Shisui. To understand Loulan's despair would mean condemning Shenmei, so until hours before his death, he believed Shenmei's doll Loulan was his daughter.
He could neither condemn Shenmei nor truly betray the empire, so he enabled her scheming in a way that would centralize most corruption around his clan so that it could be destroyed with one strike. But Shishou was the head of the Shi Clan. Shishou upheld his own version of reality where he is loyal to the Li Empire and loves Shenmei with everything he has by damning the lives of everyone else he had a duty to protect.
