The Princess Royal (2024) Half Time Reflections
For as long as I can remember the cultural soup that we’ve been swimming in has said that individual happiness is the ultimate goal or the standard to a well-lived life. Vague on the details of what that looks like, it’s been left to individuals to be the arbiter of their achievements with very mixed results. (Although excellent fodder for storytelling) The desire to be happy is indubitably a human impulse. Everybody wants to be happy but increasingly there’s little agreement about how one gets there. Further to that, happiness seems to be about self-gratifying emotions that are as fleeting as the satisfaction of having eaten a good meal.
Unlike most viewers of C dramas, I’ve been watching The Princess Royal on the back of Legend of the Female General. It’s been instructive. Not only is the former a far superior exemplar of storytelling but thematically at least, The Princess Royal succeeds in ways that the latter fails dismally to do. Both purport to be “female empowerment” stories with very mixed results. Certainly there’s the overt message that “women can do anything men can” although that flies in the face of what’s actuallyembedded in the overall narrative. In fact, there’s something else more “subversive” going on than meets the mantra. The “telling” says one thing but the “showing” says another particularly because there’s a marriage at the centre of everything.
Female empowerment stories set in ancient times seldom work in my experience. On some level it’s amusing to watch women of the nobility in opulent headgear and layers of apparel strutting around lamenting about being canaries in cages while the vast majority of women in those times would be pottering around their homes cooking, cleaning and raising children with men breaking their backs on some form of manual labour. Many would also be out in the fields helping with the planting and harvesting of crops. Talk about “freedom” and “taking back what’s mine” would be completely foreign to such sensibilities living hand to mouth existence. Even for elite women and the vast majority of men such thought would be incongruent to their worldview. So yes, it’s rather jarring… to hear these kinds of radical ideas escape the lips of C drama characters.
Thankfully The Princess Royal is somewhat more sophisticated than Female General. A princess ie. the daughter of an emperor would certainly be better placed to demonstrate that political power can overcome traditional beliefs in the role of women in society. Except that it’s not primarily because she’s a woman that they’re annoyed with her but that she shows a blatant disrespect for her elders. Despite the posture Princess Pingyue aka Li Rong is bold and not stupid, she can’t achieve everything all on her own. Not only is effort required on her part but the help of men — and one man in particular. A clever resourceful man who has the benefit of hindsight at his fingertips. I am struck by something that her consort says to an ally in a jealous huff — “I can give her whatever she wants”. During a session of pillow talk he brags to her in similar fashion — whatever the other guy can give her, he is well able to do the same. While others see her as wearing the pants in their marriage, he knows better. Without him she is a moving target for her political opponents fighting a lost cause. Even more importantly, neither of them can get anything done without the emperor’s approval. In the case of Qin Zhenzhen, the daughter of a highly regarded military family — there’s no way she can leave the palace intrigue unscathed if she did not have the love and permission of the Crown Prince, Li Chuan who could quite easily have forced the issue. It would be well within his rights as the future monarch.
Like a lot of short C dramas exploring second chances, I suspect that this is really a show about the two men who are Li Rong’s love interests because like all recemt C dramas this is at its heart about marriage and family. The two men tap dance around her like a couple of peacocks preening their feathers and by virtue of her status gets to choose her mate after viewing the performances. Like many dramas, it isn’t really who is the “better” man in terms of qualifications but which man loves her more. It doesn’t matter that she wavers between the two for most of the first half because that serves as a trial for both men who are constantly vying for the job as her consort. It turns out that it’s less of what they can give her than what they are willing to give up/ sacrifice to be that man.
In the previous lifetime (for want of a better word), Pei Wenxuan believed (mistakenly (as it turns out) that letting Li Rong go and finding her “own path” was the right thing to do — to ensure her happiness. In effect what this meant was that she fell prey to the charms of Su Rongqing who turns out to be the chief suspect in her demise. Now that he’s been given a second chance to get it right. Not surprisingly, Pei Wenxuan is fighting tooth and nail to hold on to her. He’s a man with the ultimate cheat sheet coupled with strategic thinking armed to do battle with anyone who gets in their way.
So is it fair? That the leads get to have a another go at this? And why them? Because they have the “correct” point of view? Probably. The more probable rational is that their relationship or marriage is tied to the fate of the nation. The stakes are far higher. Whether it stands or falls depend on whether those two can get their act together. It’s no exaggeration to say that the country’s future depends on the team work that comes out of two people who not only like each other but take on the thankless task of house cleaning.
Right from the start the mild-mannered Su Rongqing is positioned as some kind of “alternative”. Is he really though? Because it seems like even in the previous lifetime, he was an interloper. He was literally the third party 小三 in their marriage and was permitted to gain a foothold in royal affairs as a result. In the present timeline his intentions are always clouded by doubt particularly because of his unabashed commitment to his clan above everything else.
The problem with Su Rongqing isn’t because he is an obvious beard stroking villain per se but lies in the fact that he is a man with divided loyalties. That, I would imagine, is setting the stage for something far more sinister to come. Right from the start he has stood with his family. By choice. He styles himself as the “good” son, the future face of the Su clan and the self-sacrificing younger brother. He is torn between wanting to be a legitimate successor of the clan and the love of a princess. Time and time again he has chosen to stand with his clan whose claim to neutrality is a farce. There’s nothing inherently wrong picking a side but a certain kind of resentment creeps in and foments. Temptation knocks now and again. Su Rongqing toys with the idea that his chance could come if he’s patient enough. Why can’t he have everything?
It’s politics stupid. The politics of division to be more exact. And division destroys families.
Politics are the bread and butter of the nobility. The elites of that milieu world thrive on conflict for a whole range of reasons. It’s not difficult to see why the emperor here is so adamant on crushing the power of the clans, and the empress’ clan more specifically — the Shangguan family. After a while one wonders who is really running the show. Not to mention the effects of systemic corruption that is and the consequences for the grassroots. The empress herself illustrates what happens when the marriage takes a back seat to outside interests. As a result she has lost the love and trust of her husband. As the empress of the country, playing a de facto power broker to ensure the Shangguan clan’s hold on the levers of power inevitably comes with a high price tag.
Of course what should be and what actually happens is why that (and ours) world is in the state that it’s in. its also why people are desperately unhappy. What the leads failed to do in their “first life” is communicate and negotiate within the confines of marriage. It’s what Pei Wenxuan failed to do as a husband which left his wife vulnerable to unfriendly external forces. The idea of spouses being “one flesh” (as introduced in the Old Testament) is more than just about consummation. For a marriage to succeed, the couple needs to be a united front and for unity to be a reality, clear honest conversations have to be an animating feature.
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