I see people talk about how Navier and Heinrey are bad people all the time but I never see anyone talk about how they're also bad rulers.
Even if you ignore the fact that Navier doesn't seem to care about slaves and the poor she still doesn't care about her people. She had no problem abandoning her people for bird dick and when she found out that her new hubby was kidnapping children from her previous empire (aka the people she claims she cares about) she didn't do anything, she just scolded him for a few minutes and then went back to being lovely dovey with him.
She has absolutely no problem with pardoning criminals as long as the atrocities they commit benefit her. She doesn't care that the ice magic she got was stolen from children, she's just glad she got it somehow. She also decided to just appoint her daughter as the empress of her ex husband's empire without caring if they people even wanted Lari as their empress.
And Heinrey is even worse. This mf has been preparing for war for years, he wasted so much time, money and resources on a war that never happened. Imagine being a soldier, training day and night and preparing for a war that will benefit your kingdom, you can't see your family because of how busy you are but you're doing it in order to give them a better life, only for the king to cancel the war and halt all the preparations because he fell in love. All these recourses and money went to waste when they could have been used to help the people.
Heinrey also has no problem murdering, torturing, threatening and imprisoning anyone to dares to criticise his precious wifey. Even if the people bring up good points and are rightfully skeptical of a new queen, who used to be the empress of the enemy btw, he just shuts everyone down and threatens them. He doesn't care what his people think or feel, all that matters is Navier and her only.
He also changed his kingdom's status to an empire putting a target on the whole nation. But of course he doesn't care, as long as his wifey is satisfied he is good.
Both Navier and Heinrey are selfish, self absorbed and classist assholes who only care about themselves and no one else. The only people "they care about" are sycophants who kiss their asses and everyone else can die for all they care.
Oh, how lonesome Venus must’ve been, emerging from sea foam and taking human form. How her knees must’ve wobbled as she stood, bearing both the weight of gravity and the burden of being perceived.
My biggest pet peeve, speaking as an Asian person, is when Manhwa authors write a historical story inspired by European kingdoms but clearly have no knowledge about the politics, succession and anything related to the topic especially how it works in a western context.
I‘m not expecting authors to have a PhD in history in order to write their colourful sparkly comics, but even a little understanding would elevate the world building and really make their selling point about it being “political” a bit more understandable.
female characters shouldn’t have to be a “smart kind pretty queen girlboss” to be liked. let female characters have flaws. let female characters be mean or cowardly or vicious or have a terrible personality. let female characters kill people. let female characters be ugly or have scars or have terrible sense in fashion. let them show weakness and cry. forgive female characters. cry over their trauma and make excuses for their actions. praise female characters for the bare minimum. love female characters even at their worst.
Despite the fact that Sigmund Freud is one of the most despised figures I’ve seen on the internet (not without good reason), he really is the one getting the last laugh, because pop media just loves to keep proving him right.
The more I think about how women—and the rivalry between them—are portrayed, the more it reminds me of a particular theory he proposed: the Madonna–Whore complex. The gist of it is simple: where male sexual attraction lies, there is no respect; where respect is found, there can’t be sexual attraction. The two cannot coexist within a man’s mind.
Let me explain the two better.
The Madonna, named after Mother Mary, represents purity, virtue, innocence, and motherhood. She is the woman a man wants to marry because she is believed to make a perfect wife and mother—therefore earning his respect, but not his attraction.
The Whore, as the name suggests, is a woman who is sexually devious, manipulative, and promiscuous. She is the woman a man seeks out and lusts after—the one he wants to sleep with, but never make a wife or the mother of his children. She has his attention and attraction, but not his respect.
While Freud’s focus was on explaining the thought process behind men and, specifically, infidelity, I’ve noticed this pattern appear in other ways—particularly in the romance genre, which is largely targeted at a female audience.
Most of the time, the rivalry between women in media is between the “Madonna” and the “Whore”: one is desired, the other is respected.
The female lead usually falls under the Madonna category, while the villainess or antagonist clearly fits the Whore archetype.
The most glaring and obvious example of this would be Lore Olympus. Persephone is the perfect little goddess who is so “pure” and “innocent” that she doesn’t even know what “sleeping her way to the top” means. While we could debate whether Hades ever truly respected her as a person, the flimsy attempt is there—whereas he never put even a sliver of effort into his relationship with Minthe.
The way these two women are portrayed in opposition also reinforces this Madonna–Whore dynamic. While Persephone eventually “metamorphoses” into a so-called “girlboss” and openly discusses sleeping with Hades, that transformation happens much later in the story. After her rivalry with Minthe had long become irrelevant.
Minthe, on the other hand, is introduced as a manipulative woman who is only after Hades’ fortune—a promiscuous woman because she has dated men besides him. She knows she’s sexy and understands her sexuality. While Hades once mentioned wanting to propose to her, he still stood by and allowed his sister-in-law to berate her and make racist comments about his potential wife. He didn’t love or respect her—because how could he? In the story’s moral framework, Minthe doesn’t deserve to be loved.
Another favorite example of mine would be The Remarried Empress.
Rashta and Navier also capture this dynamic perfectly. The story goes out of its way to emphasize that Sovieshu could only ever love Navier, while Rashta was merely his side affair. Navier represents the Madonna—the woman meant to be married, not merely bedded. Rashta, on the other hand, embodies the Whore archetype—portrayed as manipulative, cunning, vile, and promiscuous, existing only for that purpose.
Thanks for listening to my Ted-Talk. (If I wrote down all my thoughts we would still be here for the foreseeable future.)
Luo Binghe: do you ever wish you were a bird that hurt its wing by flying into Shizun's bedroom window and he'd come outside and gently fix your wing with his big hands and feed you worms.
Shen Jiu to me is a very sad, angry and prideful child. It’s like he’s been frozen in the emotional development stage where a child stops expecting adults to protect them and starts surviving on their own terms. The problem is, without any safe figure to guide him, he’s built his sense of self entirely out of anger, pride and control because those are the only tools that made him feel less powerless as a child.
The reason I think Shen Jiu never defends himself in the story is because defending yourself requires believing that someone will listen or care about the truth. Shen Jiu learned early that no one in his world would choose his side, so instead of fighting that uphill battle, he skips straight to a closed-off, “you don’t deserve to know me” stance. That’s very childlike but also tragically self-perpetuating, because it alienates the few people who might care.
Secondly, like a child quick to lash out because they feel cornered, Shen Jiu often jumps to anger the moment he senses judgment. As someone who grew up in an Asian household I’ve realised that kids who’ve learned that sharing their feelings leads to punishment learn to mask their emotions. Shen Jiu is just like that, he keeps his deeper hurts completely locked away, even from people who might care, because testing trust feels too dangerous.
The tragedy is that this creates a loop:
He hides his hurt → others assume he doesn’t have feelings or doesn’t care → they treat him colder → he feels confirmed that opening up is pointless.
And because he’s emotionally “stuck” in that defensive child mindset, the idea of someone actually reacting kindly if he opened up feels almost laughably impossible to him.
Also, pride, in his case, isn’t just arrogance it’s self-preservation. If he lets people see him as vulnerable or explain himself, they might see the scared child he really is. And that’s terrifying for him, because he associates vulnerability with exploitation.
Shen Jiu’s pride is his armor, his silence is his defiance, and his anger is the only part of himself he feels safe showing.
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