thinking about zibai changing the whole trajectory of zhongli's life. aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh
guy who was just on teyvat for funsies and wanted to train and become stronger. knows 5000 AncientTM martial art skills and secret techniques. doesn't really care about teyvat and its workings as a world but befriends zibai by chance, who's both an angel and a lunar emissary. she loves humans very very much, something that's programmed into her being and not something he shares. the way the heavenly principles love is indiscriminate, humans as individuals are irrelevant and sacrificing some of them for the greater good is always morally correct. while working with the moons though, she's come to learn to love them individually, so when the HP mandates the destruction of lang-gan, she defies that order and sacrifices herself to save them.
zhongli!!!!! motherfucker!!!!! who made people (me) believe for years is one of the staunchest followers of HPs rules after he took on the job as an archon. who makes you think "ah what a tragic character. he keeps having to sacrifice his friends but he can't even properly mourn that fact because he simply has accepted the duty of Loving Humanity above all, and that always takes priority". who might genuinely feel very deeply for his friends but in the end he'll always let them go bc that's how his character is constructed, he's the One That Outlives Them All and Has Made Peace With That.
yes this fucking guy! actually has NEVER let go. all the shit he did in the past 4000+ years? was a tribute to her.
after zibai not!dies (thanks to the secret technique he taught her), zhongli embarks on a quest to maybe find a way to save her. or maybe that wasn’t the initial goal bc he doesn’t know how feasible it is. what he does is mourn her, grieve for her and commemorate her. zibai died because of her love for lang-gan's people, so lang-gan's people he will protect in her stead. he might not love them like she did but watching over them lies in his power. guy roams around teyvat and befriends guizhong. (hah! another subject he'll have to Mourn). watches humans struggle and try to survive the big upheaval. maybe starts to care abt humans a little bit.
anyways i bet zibai gossiped to him about teyvat's world order and he's very aware that there's something deeply wrong with teyvat. i am convinced that zhongli actively sought out azhdaha because of his identity (dispossessed dragon sovereign, defeated by the HP), he didn't just randomly stumble on that guy and he went to him with a very clear purpose. bc the dragons were part of the Old World, so he goes to him to ask if he knows more about the three moons that were destroyed in the war and if there's a way to go to the lunar palace, where a fragment of zibai's soul resides. either way, the contract he offers azhdaha is thus: i will take you to the surface world if you promise not to harm humans. if you do, i will seal you back into darkness. whether zhongli himself loves and cares about humans is debatable at that point, but ultimately irrelevant intially bc he's doing this for zibai. (inclined to think that he does actually care about humans at this point already bc it adds a very nice layer to the narrative structure where love is something that gets inherited and passed on (from zibai, to zhongli, to azhdaha))
the demon gods (archon) war starts. [insert azhdaha and zhongli positional tension here (i've talked abt that before, whatever)] guizhong dies. the place the two of them ruled over is called guili plains in their memory. azhdaha loses his mind and hurts humans, zhongli seals him away.
the archon war is won. zhongli ascends and makes a contract with the HP to protect and love humanity above all. by this point, that's what he's been doing anyways. we don’t talk about the fact that the HP killed zibai 😊 god. he names the nation he founds after the moon in zibai's memory. 璃月 (glazed moon), after 岩间琉璃…云间月… (jade amongst rocks, moon amidst clouds). and he names his constellations after the jade ritual tools that are used to communicate with the lunar palaces.
it is at this point (fast forward 3600+ years) that zhongli gets introduced to the player. when the player first meets Zhongli, he is a consultant at a funeral parlour in liyue harbor. he is elegant, unhurried, and somewhat absurdly knowledgeable about everything. he also has no money. the first proper thing you learn about him, narratively, is that he has chosen to step down from his position as the geo archon and surrender his divine power — that he has decided, after six thousand years, that humanity is ready to stand on its own. it reads initially as a kind of graceful retirement. someone who has fulfilled his duty and knows when to stop.
then you get into the erosion stuff (him acknowledging that further following this path laid out by the HP where he has to sacrifice his friends for humanity) and about the tsarista contract stuff and hopefully after reading this word vomit, the first chapter of teyvat is thoroughly reframed in your mind <3
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