KrayTran:
He did father a child with a former princess from the other country. The current crown prince is his own son.
Did he say he wasn't his son but his younger brother? Something about putting on a fatherly appearance when he wasn't a father figure..... He killed the princess from another country.
Anemone 3 minutes agoAnemone:
KrayTran:
He did father a child with a former princess from the other country. The current crown prince is his own son.
Did he say he wasn't his son but his younger brother? Something about putting on a fatherly appearance when he wasn't a father figure..... He killed the princess from another country.
Prince Duan is the ML's half-brother.
The current crown prince of Great Xia is the ML's biological son. Shanyi (the dancer + holy maiden from Yan State) is not the biological mother of the crown prince of Great Xia, nor was she a princess of Yan State.
Shanyi was the Holy Maiden of Yan State and she had romantic ties to prince Tu Er / the prince of Yan State / the nephew of the Emperor of Yan State / Yan State's strongest fighter.
The Emperor of Yan State was unpopular. He wanted to continue the war with Great Xia to focus the energy and hatred of his people / military against Great Xia instead of against himself. But the people of Yan State were tired from years of warfare. The Emperor of Yan State needed an excuse to re-kindle the country's fighting spirit and to continue the war against Great Xia in a way that would not implicate him - so that the people would not blame him for the continued war.
The Emperor of Yan state therefore sent the woman who was loved by his heir (his nephew / the prince of Yan State / Yan State's strongest fighter) and who was the country's Holy Maiden as an envoy to Great Xia. During this mission, she danced for the Emperor of Great Xia (the ML). But she was secretly ordered by the Emperor of Yan state to use this visit as a means of getting close to the Emperor of Great Xia so she could assassinate the Emperor of Great Xia. The Emperor of Yan State and Shanyi both knew that this secret mission was doomed to failure (since Shanyi was just a young woman who was not trained to be an assassin) and that she would be killed by Great Xia for the crime of attempting to assassinate the Emperor. The execution of Shanyi (Yan State's Holy Maiden and the woman who was Prince Tu Er's beloved) would cause all of Yan State (and especially Prince Tu Er) to have a strong reason / motivation to continue the war against Great Xia without putting the blame for the war on the Emperor of Yan State. The fault could be placed on Shanyi, Great Xia, or the Prince Tu Er, but not on the Emperor of Yan State. In order to force Shanyi to carry out this suicide mission, the Emperor of Yan State threatened to harm the man she loved (Prince Tu Er) if she did not obey the order.
Shanyi was not in Great Xia long enough to sleep with the Emperor of Great Xia, get pregnant, and give birth to a son nine months later before being killed. Also, her visit to Great Xia and her death occurred only a few short years before the FL transmigrated into the story. Not long enough ago for her to be able to give birth to a son who is the crown prince's age.
Separately, many years before the FL transmigrated into the story, the Empress Dowager arranged for the ML to be drugged and raped by an unnamed woman (her identity is not mentioned and is presumably meaningless) in order to produce an heir that the Empress Dowager could raise to be her future puppet Emperor, which would mean that the Empress Dowager would not be reliant on the ML (the Emperor of Great Xia). She could kill the ML and replace him with his biological son (the crown prince) if the ML ever became too much of a problem for her. The woman who raped the ML plays no further role in the story after giving birth to the crown prince. If she didn't die during childbirth, she was likely killed by the Empress Dowager to tie off a loose end.
But he tells the FL that he kept himself pure?
He specifically said he never touched the woman and that he hated acting like a fake father. I assumed the crown prince was one of his younger siblings because he'd turned down all the woman. 😅
Do you have timestamps or quotes? From what I remember, the ML did not say that.
In episode 15, after the FL reveals that Xie Yong Er is pregnant, the ML tells the FL, "Heaven knows I never touched her! I've been sleeping on the floor of the study for two months! My whole body hurts! Someone [the FL] knows perfectly well whether I touched her or not." Then the ML realizes that Xie Yong Er must've gotten pregnant by sleeping with someone else, and that she had recently been throwing herself at the ML in order to try and hide her infidelity by having sex with the ML and making him think that he was the father of her child.
From what I recall, he never said that he had never had any sexual relations with any woman, which would be impossible given that he has a biological son.
However, it does seem like the only time he ever had sex with a woman before the FL was when it was clearly not consensual / he was raped. In episode 19 we saw in a flashback that he was drugged and unable to move, and that the woman who was ordered by the Empress Dowager to rape him still proceeded even after the ML told her to stay away from him. Given the age of the crown prince, this rape likely occurred relatively early on in the 16+ year period during which the ML was living inside the historical story. Presumably the Empress Dowager would not have needed to resort to this method if the ML was already sleeping with his consorts / concubines willingly by that point, so it seems likely that he had not slept with any of them prior to this rape. This makes sense given that: (1) the ML was young (only 14 or 15) when he transmigrated into the story; and (2) all of the people around the ML were fictional characters that the ML learned to be wary of and definitely could not fall in love with.
After the rape, it would make even more sense for the ML to avoid having sex because of the trauma he endured and also because it would be obvious that the Empress Dowager would either harm any other children that he had or would use them against him. This would apply for all of the concubines and consorts that the ML had over the years after he was raped, including Shanyi (for the very brief period that she was his concubine) and Xie Yong Er. The FL became the only exception.
In episode 19, the ML asked the Empress Dowager, "You don't actually think that I would develop any fatherly affection for him, do you?" And he was referring to the crown prince (his biological son) in that instance. IMO, we (the viewers) are meant to understand that the ML will never develop any affection for his biological son (at least not in a way that he would allow the Empress Dowager to see) because: (1) the crown prince is a living reminder of the rape that the Empress Dowager forced the ML to endure; (2) the crown prince is a fictional character; and (3) if the ML developed any affection for the crown prince, the Empress Dowager would obviously use it against the ML. We are not meant to conclude that the crown prince is not the ML's biological son. We are very clearly shown that the Empress Dowager arranged for the ML to be raped in order to produce an heir for her own use.
Yes I know he has a half brother as well as a bunch of other siblings we never seen again after those lessons.
Correct.
Yes I know of who Yan states assassin backstory is.
That's good. A lot of viewers were confused and mistakenly thought she was the crown prince's biological mother.
You said his 'mostly likely dead wife' was from another country but there isn't other countries in this plot.
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
There are three countries in the historical story world: (1) Great Xia; (2) Yan State; and (3) Qiang Kingdom.
And I didn't say anything about the country of origin of the woman who raped the ML. I said she was ordered to rape the ML by the Empress Dowager and that her identity is never mentioned / is likely meaningless.
Ah I rewatched that part in 19 and I guess I thought he was getting poisoned by the crazy maid.
In fairness to you, we don't know who poisoned the ML on the Empress Dowager's orders or who gave him the poison-trigger from time to time. It's possible that the same maid was used to handle all of the Empress Dowagers schemes - poisoning the ML, triggering the poison, and drugging the ML so that he could be raped as we saw in the flashback in episode 19.
I am not sure what episode they talk about him being a gentleman and pure.... which wouldn't make sense if he had a son. I remember she had him up against a post. Its odd they never spoke about it really xD Or maybe she thought the original soul made a son the whole time 🤣
Maybe you are thinking of what the FL said in episode 15, rather than what the ML said?
The FL commented that, in the original story (where no transmigrator took over the Emperor's character), the Emperor was always surrounded by women (implying he regularly slept with his consorts / concubines) so if one of his consorts / concubines accidentally got pregnant (by having sex with another man) it would be easy for her to cover her infidelity by sleeping with the Emperor. But CEO Dan (the version of the Emperor taken over by a transmigrator from the real world) always keeps himself pure and never lets anyone touch him (the FL touches him while saying this, emphasizing that she is an exception to this rule). So Xie Yong Er is having a great deal of trouble covering up her infidelity.
However, the FL at this point still thinks that the ML only transmigrated into the story and took over the Emperor's character two hours before meeting her. She doesn't realize that the ML has been in that role for 16+ years and that the crown prince was conceived after the ML took over the character. She also does not know that the ML was raped in order to conceive the crown prince for the Empress Dowager's benefit, and that the ML not allowing most people to touch him is partially a result of the trauma he endured when he was raped and touched against his will while he was drugged and unable to move or stop it from happening.
Plus, the ML responds to the FL's comments by telling her that whether or not he is a gentleman depends on who he is with. Obviously implying that although he has no interest in sleeping with his other consorts and concubines and would only behave like a chaste gentleman with them, he might behave differently with the right person (i.e., with the FL).
