Mercy

Anyways, I will accept the lashing as a trade off for my girl’s tears. We can now start afresh.

LMFAO!!! You are delusional. Please avoid my comments. Thank you.

One thing I find strange about discussions around historical dramas is how quickly people confuse explaining a character’s behaviour with excusing it.

Yes, we know the era matters. A character’s beliefs and actions will inevitably be shaped by the society they live in. But “that was the norm back then” does not make something immune from criticism.

Something can be historically accurate and still be cruel. Something can be socially accepted at the time and still be wrong. We can understand why a character did something without agreeing that what they did was right.

That applies to everything from the way women were treated to the way slaves were treated. The fact that those things were normalised within certain societies doesn’t mean viewers have to switch off their critical thinking when watching them.

Two things can coexist: a character can be shaped by his circumstances and still make a bad choice. We can understand his motivations and still criticise his actions.

And for the love of God, it’s a drama. 😂

Pointing out that a character did something wrong is not “cancelling” the drama, condemning the entire historical period, or saying nobody should watch it. It’s called having an opinion about what you’re watching.

We can criticise a character, disagree about their choices, discuss the historical context and still absolutely love the drama and give it a good rating.

Enjoying a story does not require pretending every character did everything right. Nobody is hating on your precious ML or attacking the actor personally. Know the difference.

Are you actually okay? Because the level of personal anger you brought into a comment about a fictional character is genuinely bizarre. You don’t know me. You know absolutely nothing about my views, what I criticise in my own country, or what I say about these issues outside this drama. Yet you read one comment and somehow constructed an entire moral profile of me around it. That is the actual virtue signalling here.

And since you brought up “presentism”: understanding historical context does not mean historical characters become immune from criticism. “That was how things were at the time” explains a practice; it doesn’t automatically make every character’s decision within that system beyond criticism. People throughout history questioned the norms of their own societies. If everyone had simply accepted every law or custom because “that’s how things were back then,” social and legal change would never have happened.

I’m also not sure why you think pointing out a character’s hypocrisy requires me to personally endorse every law and social practice in my own country. Those things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I can watch a historical drama, recognise that arranged marriage and imperial authority existed within its setting, and still say, “This particular character is being hypocritical because he hated having his own autonomy taken away and then used his power to take someone else’s.”

That’s called analysing a character.

And yes, I am perfectly capable of being grateful that practices such as historical chattel slavery are no longer legally sanctioned in the way they once were while also recognising and criticising exploitation and other abuses that exist in the modern world. Those positions are not remotely contradictory. The fact that you apparently need to drag Nigeria into a discussion about a Chinese drama character does not make them contradictory.

Most importantly, you don’t know me. So the lecture about my supposed hypocrisy, virtue signalling and moral superiority is particularly ridiculous. You became far more interested in attacking the person making the comment than actually engaging with what the comment said.

It’s a fictional character in a fictional drama. People are allowed to analyse, criticise, dislike, defend and debate fictional characters without having their nationality, character and personal morality put on trial.

If you disagree with my interpretation of LJQ, discuss LJQ. Leave me out of your bizarre attempt to psychoanalyse a stranger from a drama comment

Exactly. So I don’t understand why people are being defensive 😭

OMG!!! You nailed it. A golden cage is still a cage for real.

People who read the novel said he did after they had a child.

It is wrong even if it is ancient times. If everyone during those times thought all of these actions were right and never challenged them. We won’t have what we have now. We have what we have now because people saw these flaws in those eras and challenged it.

I would also like to point out the major hypocrisy in the ML’s actions regarding marriage that people are overlooking which is that he personally hated being forced into an arranged marriage that failed, and he barely escaped a second one because he despised having his life controlled without his consent. You would think that trauma would teach him better, yet he turned around and used an inescapable imperial decree to trap the FL in the exact same way. Fans love to glaze over his actions simply because he's the male lead, defending him because "that's how things were back then" or praising him for making her his primary wife instead of taking her as a concubine back when she was a powerless slave.
However, giving someone a higher title doesn't erase the complete lack of consent, and refraining from exploiting her past status was basic decency, not a grand sacrifice. Whether in that historical era or real life, forced marriages didn't automatically turn into romance; without genuine affection or agency, the far more realistic outcome is lifelong bitterness and resentment. Not everyone in this situation just comes around. An imperial decree uses absolute authority to override her choices entirely, and a title might grant social prestige, but a golden cage is still a cage. When the person who claims to love you becomes the direct architect of your entrapment, it isn't romantic—it's toxic control wrapped in a prettier package.

He did not do anything noble by marrying her against her consent. She is not a slave. Concubine, wife, same. Same as long as it was through force. He did to her what he hated his parent’s did to him. In real life there is a probability that she would never come around even in that era. But because he is the ML, she would. That does not make what he did right. We saw how it did not end well with his first wife. He should have known better.

That does not mean it is above criticism. Most importantly, many times, both parties were in the same shoe. In this case, it is the person who claimed to love her that took away her agency. That’s why it hits differently.

Does the relationship she has with her parents the same with the noble girls? Do you think her parents would have forced her to marry Scholar Han if she didn’t want to with what you have watched so far? Were dey not even thinking of rejecting the decree until they were advised not to?

Whether he could choose her as a concubine then does not mean he did the right thing. It would have been wrong then and still wrong now. She is a person not a property. He is not doing her a favour by marrying her. She did not give consent. That is the most important thing and used a method even her cleverness would not be able to savage. The problem is that you think that by making her his wife, he did something noble. No, he did not. She is a person with agency.

People just don’t know how to separate things. Whether he is the kindest human on earth does not make what he did right. I don’t know why anyone needs to argue this.

I don’t know how to break it to you. It is not the same. She has a better relationship with the scholar than the ML. His family and her family too have a good relationship. That relationship has watered the ground for the betrothal. If you followed, her parent’s started talking about the marriage before scholar Han. Both parent’s discussed and planned it. She is perceptive too, there is no way she is in oblivion.

Thank you. I don’t know what people are defending.

Absolutely. They are already comparing what he did and what the SML did as the same. SMH

She has the right to not choose him. She mustn’t be with him. That’s the point.

It is different. Scholar Han’s move does not pose serious threats if she eventually does not accept. Her parent’s can help her handle that too. Plus, there is no way she has not gotten a hint from her parent’s one way or the other. She is perceptive.

😂😂😂😂