Lost You Forever 2 (2024) Ramblings 2
There are touches of brilliance everywhere and I lament at times at what it could have been under different circumstances. Performances by Zhang Wanyi, Yang Zi and Tan Jianci are a standout. Tan Jianci especially infused a supporting character with so much complexity worthy of a male lead. Xiang Liu may not have ended up with the woman he loved but he won the hearts of audiences everywhere. It’s the role of a lifetime with the perfect actor bringing it to life.
On some level Lost You Forever is a contra or anti-fairytale in so much as it eschews all the usual fairytale tropes. Sleeping Beauty doesn’t marry the would-be king and live with him in the palace. The nine-headed serpent might be the beast that needs slaying, yet he loves Beauty to the extent of sacrificing himself so that she can be happy with the man she has chosen. The beast doesn’t get the girl but dies valiantly on the battlefield on his own terms. Coming-of-age means that one has to leave childhood behind. Except that Xiao Yao does get her happily-ever-after of an ordinary existence unburdened by responsibilities because of the love of others. Therefore we are left with a lingering sense of ambivalence regarding what’s been gained. Notice how quiet everything is. No fanfare. No hubris. A muted wedding ceremony.
Alternatively as we ponder the resolution, it could be that there’s no complete rejection of the fairytale narrative but elements of it. Someone has to have some kind of happily-ever-after but that comes at a very high price.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with fairytales but these days, just about everything that comes out of C dramaland is one. So Lost You Forever is a breath of fresh air. Still there’s nothing to say that it isn’t just a fairytale with a bite because Tushan Jing could have remained dead in the water. Cangxuan could have died from a poisoned arrow. Unification of a people is neither here nor there. If the various territories in dispute have a common culture and language as well as a shared history, reunification makes sense especially if it prevents further intra-regional upheavals. However centralized governance has its drawbacks so the utopian whitewashing here feels like propaganda.
Cangxuan discovers all too soon that just because the throne is his, it doesn’t correlate that the girl becomes his. Even while the hot seat is barely warm, he accepts that he must do the expedient thing and marry “correctly” to strengthen his grip on the political landscape. Unfortunately it takes him far too long to accept that life is a zero-sum game. Particularly because his greatest rival (as he perceives it) is such a disappointment. Who can blame him? Pushover Jing can’t deal with his own family. Kindness is a virtue when you’re dealing with the vulnerable and the ignorant but remorseless evil must be dealt with decisively. Then there’s also the driving force behind Cangxuan’s desire for the throne — to protect Xiao Yao and himself — it must grate that after all his efforts, she ends up in the arms of another man who can’t even tell that he has a rival in Cangxuan.
It’s up to Grandpa to remind him over and over again. Nobody can get everything they want. Adults know this. Like it or not, Cangxuan has made a decision from which there is no return. He cannot marry the woman he loves. It’s not just because Tushan Jing is in the way so is Xiao Yao. Oddly enough, it never occurs to her that her beloved cousin is in love with her. His affection for her is interpreted platonically from start to finish. Perhaps it isn’t that odd because in her mind he was meant for bigger things while she longed for the simplicity of hearth and home.
The story wants us to believe that not marrying Xiao Yao is such a great loss by the way Cangxuan obsesses over it. In his mind it is. But in reality I wonder if she’s that much of a catch that he should torment himself so. Also I wonder if what he’s really fixated with is the “not having” part, the notion of “what could have been”. It’s a popular trope obviously in a de facto love triangle. Characters who justify bad behaviour due to their obsession with that one person who is out of reach are plentiful in Asian dramas. They have an overinflated perception of that person’s value because the obsession blows things out of proportion. That’s why deception and murder are par for the course. Why would anyone waste time on someone who won’t give you the time of day? The answer is… it’s not about the object of desire but the one obsessing. No one likes losing.
The same can be said about Xiao Yao although I wouldn’t make too strong a case. She too is obsessed with her pain. It’s a bad case of “Physician, heal thyself” so she tries. She believes Tushan Jing to be the one because he’s willing to give it all up for her. It’s a gaping wound she’s trying to fill although the antidote doesn’t seem adequate to task. Certainly not without some help from allies.
Xiao Yao is someone trapped in the past. She obsesses over it to the point that it clouds her judgment. Just because she’s the protagonist doesn’t mean her perspective is necessarily the “right” one. Her real asset, aside from being a physician is that she is beloved by many. It is true that because of her years of living among the common folk means that she isn’t the spoilt entitled daughter of nobles so it’s not surprising that men with sense would be drawn to her. Still her fixation with being abandoned starts to wear a bit thin especially when people have made hard choices to ensure her survival. Her own parents were forced to face each other on opposite sides of a territorial conflict. Their worldview was extensive. Hers is small. Nonetheless there’s no denying too that orphans like her were collateral in an ideological battle that’s not theirs.
It has to be said too in her defence that the people around her kept things from her even after her return which in no small part contributed to her continued infantilization. People always mean well but secrets have a way of prolonging pain rather than helping. Part of growing up is about facing up to realities of the unpleasant kind and working through them
History doesn’t repeat so much as it rhymes. A slogan I’ve been hearing quite a bit the last few years and it’s an idea with merit. There are parallels between Xiao Yao’s situation with Xiang Liu as there was with Mum and Dad. She has feelings for him and he for her which goes without saying. That same predicament could have loomed large. As it was he nipped it in the bud. I imagine that’s what the scene of him visiting her parents’ old cottage is about. Two people on opposite sides of a long-running feud should not be together. It’s a tragedy in the making. This is not Romeo and Juliet although I don’t think Shakespeare ever intended Romeo and Juliet to be some kind of template for thwarted true love. Mum and Dad were the classic star-crossed lovers but Xiang Liu ensured that history would not come knocking collecting old debts.
If you ask me whether Xiao Yao loved Xiang Liu, I’d say… yes — with absolute certainty. If she didn’t, he wouldn’t have tried so hard to erase himself out of her existence with such brutality. Xiang Liu is no fool. The nine heads are not purely decorative. Whenever she’s hard pressed for answers, she would go to the sea in search of them. Her magic mirror (with Beauty and the Beast resonances) is filled with images of him. While he’s happy that his feelings are reciprocated, he wants her to live without regrets and longing for what could have been. Unlike Romeo, he could easily have grabbed the girl and transported her somewhere else out of reach without the blessing of loved ones. It’s a piece of cake for a man who floats around in a oyster and flies around with the aid of an eagle-like creature.
This is why people love Xiang Liu. He’s an unsung hero. People feel the injustice of his predicament. Unlike what’s often said, he did fight for love. He chose to love by giving it up so that his beloved could live on her own terms… so that the spectre of the past would never haunt her again. Perhaps we forget that in a fairytale that not everyone gets what they want. Evil is vanquished thankfully. Obstacles removed. But let’s not forget that the little mermaid sacrifices herself so that the prince can live with his princess in blissful ignorance.