Wei Wuxian's Life and Trauma
Apparently, everyone else's actions are because of trauma and political pressures and can be excused. THEREFORE! Since WWX will never talk about how much he was hurt in the past, because it is just not the kind of person he is, I WILL BE HIS EQUIVALENT OF LAN "HERE IS EVERYTHING MY DIDI SUFFERED" XICHEN. (Except that WWX's suffering is actually because of the actions and inactions of others, while LWJ's suffering was because he regretted not standing with WWX on the righteous path, and not in any way WWX's fault, but I digress)
Sit down, and get a drink. This is a long ride.
We will go chronologically because it'll help me keep everything in mind.
Orphaned at a young age: He loses his parents at a young age. It's never specified how young. We know he was found by Jiang Fengmian when he was 9, but his memories of his parents are vague at best. He has a rare precious one or two moments he remembers. So, I am going to put him losing his parents around a 4-6 age range. This is easily dismissed, but the fact that he was an orphan who did not have guardians to care for him is serious. And that makes everything that comes after so much worse.
Living in the streets: So, he spends anywhere close to 3-5 years in the streets. This is incredibly traumatic for him, and we know that he suppressed those memories to the point of not remembering them. But, he definitely struggled with food, shelter and clothes for the entirety of that period. His phobia of dogs is born because of these years, and he remembers the terror of it and the pain. This fear is never abated.
The Jiang family (This is... long.): So. When he is 9, Jiang Fengmian takes him to Lotus Pier. And he grows up having to navigate a political and personal minefield on four fronts. He's either a bastard or the son of a servant. He's either the Head Disciple or the outcast with no true place. He is brought up - groomed - to believe that he owes them, never even learning that Jiang Fengmian owed Cangse Sanren a life debt.
He is whipped multiple times, with a spiritual weapon that leaves him with scars all over his back. He has to listen to the verbal abuse from a spiteful woman who takes out the unwarranted hate and jealousy she has for another woman on a child. When he grows up, he grows up believing love is a yoke around his neck, a debt he has to pay back.
Jiang Fengmian does nothing to stop Yu Ziyuan's abuse. Jiang Cheng cannot look at Wei Wuxian as anything except competition, something he has overcome, and cannot understand that Wei Wuxian's actions are not centred around him. Jiang Yanli, while kind, encourages him to be disregarding of his own feelings to Jiang Cheng's benefit and is either naive or willfully ignorant.
And Wei Wuxian, tragically enough, lets them. He takes the punishment for nothing but existing, for apparent crimes that everyone commits but only he is punished for. He doesn't complain to his sect leader. He doesn't call out Jiang Cheng on the horrid things he says callously and even tries his best to accommodate him. He complains to Jiang Yanli, but it is never about anything serious. It is playful and clear that he doesn't expect her to do anything about it.
The promise to Jiang Cheng is to be his subordinate. He is loyal to the sect, to the point that when Wang LingJiao demands his hand as compensation, he is ready to comply in exchange for the sect's safety.
Burning of Lotus Pier and Subsequent Events: Now. Plot happens. The Wens come. Yu Ziyuan lets the hatred and jealousy in her heart control her as ever, and whips him multiple times as she spouts vitriol at the boy. Wei Wuxian's home, the only home he had ever known, is attacked. Now, Yu Ziyuan, bitter to the very end, leaves these last words to this child.
"You damn little brat! I hate you! I hate you more than anything else! Look at what our sect has gone through for your sake!"
"Wei Ying! Listen to me! Protect Jiang Cheng, protect him even if you die, do you understand?!"
She knows Wei Wuxian's loyalty. She knows he is righteous and moral. She exploits this, knowing he won't deny her, sparing him no kindness.
Then Jiang Fengmian comes, and we see the so-called favouritism that he holds for Wei Wuxian.
"A-Ying, A-cheng...you must protect him."
There are no good wishes for him. Only a final command, to protect Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng chokes him. And Wei Wuxian does nothing, not because he believes he caused this, but because he knows nothing he says will help Jiang Cheng. So he, who was whipped and was still in pain, lets him do what he wants.
When Jiang Cheng is captured and brought back to Lotus Pier, Wei Wuxian's desperation to find him made me cry. Whipped, exhausted, choked, and he pays no mind to any of this in his bid to find him.
After this, he is constantly in high-stress mode. Finding Jiang Cheng, keeping him safe, keeping him alive. Because Jiang Cheng wanted to die because he lost his core, and Wei Wuxian was ordered to protect him. He was to do something and do it immediately.
The core transfer: No anaesthetics. Two nights and one day, awake through the pain. Awake to watch the golden core peeled away from him. Awake to feel the gradual suppression, sedation, settlement of his surging spiritual powers, until they became a pool of dead water, unable to rise ever again. A surgery with only half a chance of survival.
He chooses to do this, knowing what it means. I won't pretend he is in any way in a good state of mind to make this decision, not groomed as he was, not with the last orders of his guardians in his ears. But, it is not accidental or impulsive like Jiang Cheng. He chooses, deliberately, to give up his core at great detriment to his skills, his health and general well being.
Less than five days after this surgery, he is caught by Wen Chao, tortured, and then -
The Burial Mounds: A place teeming with resentment, with fierce corpses everywhere you turn, and Wei Wuxian has no golden core. Three months in a place with no sunlight, food or water, in constant danger. Did he sleep? What did he eat? (This is why I didn't tell you, people, to sit with a snack. Don't think about what he ate in the Burial Mounds.) How long did it take for him to take a convoluted idea he suggested solely to get out of the class held by a teacher with an unfair bias against him and turn the idea into reality? How did he heal? How much did it hurt?
How much did it hurt, when he was thrown into hell on earth but walked out with red eyes and a ghostly flute?
He leaves the Burial Mounds, and he knows the world won't approve of his cultivation. Why wouldn't he believe that Lan Wangji, the man who assigned him punishment after punishment when they were teenagers wants to punish him for straying from the so-called righteous path?
The War: He fights in a war and wins it for the cultivation sects. The Wen Sect had a large number of members high in both rank and cultivation, but they are no match to his Demonic Cultivation. Through it, all, hiding secrets and pain close to his heart, and maybe the latter wasn't intentional as much as it was what he has always done.
Hell is hell and war is war, and of the two, war is worse.
He spent years pretending he is simply too arrogant or too powerful to need Suibian even as he tossed and turned at night, knowing he could never reach the stars, convincing himself with thoughts like debt and it was owed anyway.
The Wen Remnants: And then, he realises that he fought the war, did everything he did, to eradicate the Wen Sect, only for the Jin Sect to take its place, torturing innocents. So, he protects them and decides to keep them safe from the world that would see them dead. He returns to the very place where he was thrown to be tortured, so that they may be safe.
And when Jiang Cheng demands he turn them over, turning blind eye to the life debt they owe the Wen Siblings, he gives Jiang Cheng the easy way out and secedes from the clan. Everyone talks about how Jiang Cheng expected Wei Wuxian to be by his side, but no one says that Wei Wuxian had hoped for the same too. But Jiang Cheng chooses to turn away, and that is that.
Qiongqi Path, Bloodbath of Nightless City, and Death: Again, the plot happens. Qiongqi path, where he is accused and ambushed, and the man who invited him demands he stop making trouble when he wasn't even the one who started it. He loses control, and Jin Zixuan dies. (edit: I want to express, that it was monumentally stupid of Jin Zixuan to lunge at WWX in that situation. This man fought in a war. I have an uncle who was in the army and fought in a war, and I remember for around 5 years after his retirement, he still had his fight instincts when someone lunged at him, least of all Wei Wuxian who probably had to be at constant alert in the burial mounds, and was in a high-stress situation. Wei Wuxian tells Jin Zixuan to stay out of the way. Jin Zixun brought 300 cultivators, cleared out the entire area of resentment. He very much meant to kill him. How the fuck did JZX expect WWX to react?)
Wen Qing and Wen Ning, who he cared for, who he swore to protect, give their lives to keep him safe. But Jin Guangshan manipulates Wen Ning to lose control and uses this to call to murder all of the Wen Remnants.
Wei Wuxian demands they keep their word, only to be attacked. The battle starts. Jiang Yanli comes and is injured, and asks Wei Wuxian to stop. He does. Only to be attacked, again, by the brother of the man who first attacked him, but Jiang Yanli saves him, taking the sword herself.
He is traumatised and begins a bloodbath.
Despite all this, despite being attacked, again and again, he understands that the Yin Tiger Tally was a mistake, and sets out to correct it. He destroys it and dies in the spiritual backlash.
Wei Wuxian is the one who had the most horrible traumas in his life. He loses everything. But despite all this, he never, not once allows those traumas to decide his actions. His actions are always, always made with righteousness, or are desperate bids to protect himself. He is empathetic, and as a person, doesn't like to dwell on his miseries.
But, this is precisely why he is the protagonist. While every antagonist we get to know in MDZS - Jiang Cheng, Xue Yang, Jin Guangyao - has their traumas, they are nothing in comparison to his. But he never uses this trauma as an excuse. But as readers, if we can't even recognize the hurt he had been dealt, what is the point?
But Karma has a cycle. For all the good he did in his first life, for the righteousness he holds in his heart, he gets a soft epilogue, and he deserves it.
dailybridgerton
prguitarman
snowghoul
pixelskylines
