#hana lee: a study in erasure

[lizzybeth1986]

Skills vs Passions - What's the Difference?

(Read the rest of the "Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure" series here!)

Previous: China, Cordonia and "Home"

I had mentioned, way back in my first essay of this series, that descriptors used for Hana are vastly different from that of the other LIs. The three male LIs got descriptors that emphasized their personalities and loyalty to their loved ones.

Hana's descriptors, on the other hand, came down to two things - what the MC could be physically drawn to, and what the MC could use her for.

Hana can be dedicated, devoted, open minded, explorative. You don't have to look too far to see a consistent display of these qualities in Hana, throughout both series. Yet none of these words - nor the many others that could even slightly capture her personality - are used to describe her.

What the team views as appealing in Hana, boils down to two things. What the MC can find fuckable if Hana is a love interest, and what the MC can use her for if she isn't (though to be honest, even the MC that romances her still benefits disproportionately from her labour).

Her looks...and her skills.

Ironically, even with this lack of care and forethought, Hana's story still manages to retain some nuance when it comes to exploring the things she learned. They are not things she randomly became perfect at. Nor is the process of how she became good at those things, identical.

Most times, there is a story behind how she became that good at those activities, a process that Hana often worked and struggled towards, before she could be the "Jill of All Trades" of TRR.

Her journey to acquiring all of these skills is not the same. If we do not acknowledge the differences in those journeys, we are doing her story a grave disservice.

Acquired Skills.

(Note: In this section I will be leaving out Hana's more intuitive skills, such as stealth, cunning, deep research and resourcefulness, and focusing more on the ones she had to learn. This is because her intuitive skills fit better in a different essay that I will be working on soon)

There are several things the above screenshots share in common.

One is that they are all things Hana learned as a part of her training to become the perfect debutante, the perfect noblewoman, the perfect courtly wife, the perfect hostess. In the Cordonian Waltz scene in TRR1 Ch 7, Hana speaks of being pushed from an early age to learn all the courtly and social arts. She speaks of being "groomed [every day] to bring fame and fortune to my family", primarily because they were devastated she was not a boy and the only way she could possibly be of use to them was by acquiring these skills. These weren't just hobbies she was encouraged to cultivate - they were things she had to do well, do perfectly, whether she liked doing them or not.

Another - and perhaps easier to miss - similarity between all these pictures is Hana's expression in them. Neutral. Unmoved. Bored. None of these activities actually appeal to her, or are things she is happy doing.

We will find out later on, that that was exactly the point. In her parents' plan for Hana's life and future, Hana's own needs and identity are practically a non-factor.

One of Hana's major epiphanies about her childhood, is the recognition that what she wanted, should have mattered. That her needs deserved to be met just for being her needs, not because it served a purpose for anyone else. On more than one occasion Hana tells us that "enjoying myself never factored into my parents' expectations of me".

How damaging can this obsession with making your daughter the perfect noble wife - to the exclusion of any other possible life - be? Let's find out:

Hana isn't just expected to excel in skills that mean very little to her. She isn't just forced to prioritise - again and again and again - the enjoyment of others over her own. She isn't just made to consider the needs of some nebulous future husband, to the point where she cannot even ask herself what she wants.

Over and above all this, she is never allowed to be her authentic self. She is never even allowed to figure out what that authentic self would be. From an early age she is deprived of toys and pets and real consistent friendships, ensuring a complete isolation, ensuring she doesn't even have the opportunity to safely indulge in pretend play. (That she manages to scrape together whatever she can find to make her "toys" is only a testament to her own tenacity; she should never have been put in such a position in the first place). Her parents robbed her of those early, exploratory years.

She has been told how she must be and what she must do; she never has the freedom to decide whether that is something she is even comfortable being. In the context of this scene Hana may be using this skill to help another woman, but the fact remains that even in expressing her femininity, Hana is constantly expected to perform - as if her authentic self was never good enough.

It is no wonder then that the moment she finds herself no longer answerable to her parents, Hana fears that she will discover she's nothing more than a "collection of skills...with no one underneath". TRR3 shows Hana in a full-blown identity crisis once she is completely outside her parents' influence.

In her post "How Parents Fuel Identity Crises in Their Children" on the Good Therapy Blog, psychotherapist Beverly Amsel talks about the effects controlling parenting can have on a child's sense of self thus; "When a loving parent is so certain that he or she knows what is right for the child and does not consider that the child may have valid, different ideas about what he or she wants, needs, and feels, there is no space and no invitation for the child to develop the ability to express his or her own self with separate ideas, feelings, and needs. Over time, as the child grows to adulthood and is exposed to more ways of thinking about things, there is typically a good deal of confusion about identity, thoughts, and feelings. Unless there is an opportunity to develop a separate sense of self, there will likely be a lot of anxious thinking about what is real but little ability to think for oneself in a self-reflective way."

Fortunately for Hana, her time in Cordonia does seem to present those sort of opportunities. There are story threads in TRR3 that address this identity crisis. But does it culminate into something that benefits her, or only the people around her?

Things She Does For Those She Loves

Before we move into passions, it's important to acknowledge a category that toes the line between acquired skill and interest. These involve activities that she's not entirely passionate about, but still derives some enjoyment from doing.

Her enjoyment of these skills is usually less about the activity itself, and more dependent on her fondness for sharing or socializing through it. Despite her mostly-isolated childhood, Hana is by nature a very social person. She is enthusiastic (though initially a bit wary and fearful of rejection) about making friends, loves sharing her knowledge and skills, and does not hesitate to reach out even to people who don't treat her well and accommodation them into whatever she's doing (eg. every single time she included Olivia in something in TRR2). So it makes sense that there are certain things she enjoys doing because it involves her helping someone, or allows her to spend time with them, or helps her relive precious memories.

On some level, you see this with some of her skill scenes. Often a scene will end with Hana following up a confession about her lack of interest in a particular activity with a line about how sharing that knowledge makes her happy. But you also see this enjoyment in other contexts.

Another context where she truly enjoys doing things, is when they're of a competitive nature. She thrives on the thrill of outwitting opponents and friendly rivalries. A great example of this is the dance-off she does with Maxwell in TRR1 Ch 18, where she enjoys pitting her skills against Maxwell's so much that they both agree they'd be great as a dancing duo. You also see this whenever she's competing in games with her trusted friends. This is perhaps why you see at least a handful of sequences where she expresses an interest in sports.

But perhaps the activities she enjoys the most - that aren't for herself - are ones that have her share space with someone she loves and trusts. Cooking and baking rank high among these skills. Baking began as a domestic skill that would serve her well in a noble household, but she loves sampling batter/dough and practically glows on seeing the other person's enjoyment of her craft. Her creating her own recipe for hot chocolate is especially interesting because it's a skill that she values highly, and that she only shares with people very close to her.

Hana's interest in fashion design also has interesting origins. She is skilled in embroidery and knows fashion trends well, and has learned from her grandmother to make her own clothes. Of particular note is the black-red-gold qipao/cheongsam that was the last dress she ever made with her grandmother. Her attachment to the dress is so strong that she experiences intense distress when Lorelai threatens to take it from her in Valtoria. She also loves designing dresses for loved ones - for the MC herself, we see her conceptualize and design dresses at least twice (a traditional-inspired outfit in Shanghai which is appropriately titled "Hana's Heart", and a blue and white dress for their engagement photoshoot).

Through these examples we can see instances of Hana finding joy in things she didn't have as much interest in, just through the process of sharing that experience with someone else. It's great, on the one hand, because Hana is no longer alone and she gains a renewed perspective on something that came from a very painful part of her life.

On the other hand, "I find this more fun now that I'm doing it with you" comes with its own downsides. If you use it too often, you're in danger of using it as a copout that centers the person she is teaching rather than her own journey.

And if you're a writer that makes efforts for her story with great reluctance...such an explanation will rapidly change into an excuse to be lazy with that journey.

Passions

Among the many, many, many skills Hana was made to learn in the bid to make her the perfect debutante and the perfect noble wife...just a few rank as ones she does wholeheartedly, joyfully, passionately. But they are perhaps the most important.

After all, these are skills that Hana had honed for herself. They're meant for her consumption and her enjoyment, and she often shares them only with people she trusts.

Not only are these things, interests that she enjoys and lovingly cultivates...but she is also fiercely protective of them. She will not allow anyone - not even her parents - to turn something so personal into a public spectacle that she's uncomfortable with. This is most clearly seen when she tells us about rebelling against her parents for piano performances. At a very young age, Hana recognises the value of her music, and she pushes back against any attempts to cheapen it or turn it into some warped form of social currency. She takes ownership of her gift, and from that moment on anything she does with that talent is done on her own terms.

Like music, reading was a skill cultivated to make her an attractive prospect for noble matches - only for Hana to find pleasure in the act of reading herself. Here again, building a passion for reading allows her to rebel in her own unique way. She smuggles in books that she knows her parents will find either too frivolous or too objectionable - often by hiding the books, or modifying the purpose of the book to them so it would sound appropriate.

We must remember - this is a woman who still feels nervous breaking rules even a year after she has left her parents' home. It would take such a woman considerable amounts of imagination and courage, to be able to do what she did in an environment as restrictive as her's. For Hana to be able to do this, she must have really valued the joy that reading books had given her.

Flowers are an extremely important part of Hana's life. Symbolically, they are part of her mother's House Crest, and personally, she is someone who is naturally drawn to flowers. In TRR2 Ch 4, she confesses to devouring the words of The Language of Flowers, and knows the symbolic meaning of each one by heart. She can even make her own bouquets. During the Costume Gala in TRR3, she dresses up in a heavily floral gown as the Goddess of Spring.

One of the most captivating sequences that captures her love for flowers in the TRR2 Conservatory scene, where she takes the MC to see the spectacle of a night-blooming flower unfurling under the light of the moon. It is especially fascinating that her already latent passion for flowers grew further with the help of another passion - reading.

Another thing you will clearly notice about each of these "passions" is that when she speaks about them, she is expressive. Liam confirms this in his Diplomacy scene in TRR3, where he tells the MC that her passion always shows in her eyes.

The proof for what Liam says here is in every one of these scenes. In the scenes compiled under the "Acquired Skills" category, her expression rarely changes and her tone is indifferent. In contrast, we are exposed to a variety of moods when she talks of these things that she's so passionate about.

She seethes with anger at the memory of her parents forcing her to perform the piano to crowds, whispers conspiratorially about forbidden literature, loses herself in the scent of flowers. These are moments where Hana acknowledges her individual pleasures, and expresses pride over the way she guards them from people who will not respect what those things mean to her.

These are things she knows forwards and backwards, but not because she was forced to cultivate and perfect those talents. They're things she knows because when Hana Lee is truly interested in something, she will plunge herself into it, body and soul. These are things that gave her comfort at a time when she had no one, and they form the happiest memories she has had for her childhood so far.

These are passions that are so intricately a part of her that it is impossible for her to give them up. Not for her family, not for her friends, not for her wife - no one.

Conclusion

The base of Hana's story has always been rich with possibilities. There were various ways the writing team could have written it to benefit her story. At the hands of a skilled writer who loved the character for who she was rather than for what the MC could gain from her, the writing of these talents could have been used to further enrich Hana's journey and give her a chance to find herself. Unfortunately, the writing team at the helm of TRR were neither.

Over and over again, the writers used Hana's plethora of talents to make her useful to people, rather than turn the focus of that arc back on her. The MC learns these skills and goes up the ranks, the MC benefits from Hana's offers of help, the MC is the one who becomes a Duchess and Champion of the Realm. Even on a level of resolving her issues with her parents, the writers have her prove that she can still be useful to them without getting married to a man. In the eyes of her writers, her skills are still meant to make her useful to someone - just that the person at the center changes from her parents to the MC.

Because the MC is positioned as someone who "enlightens" Hana to how harmful her situation was, and because the narrative expects Hana to be forever grateful to her - the MC is allowed to use her and take credit for Hana's hard work (eg. The windmill move during the polo game) and get away with it.

When you put all this evidence together, and then go back to the descriptors I put up at the very beginning of this essay, you will see what the team's intention with her, always had been. To create a woman the MC could be attracted to, a woman whose skills the MC could use to advance her own interests...while still being viewed as her hero and saviour. Despite being one of the few people to get the most detailed account of her upbringing and struggles, the MC still chooses to view her in the most simplistic ways, still praises her for her skills and "perfection" rather than support her in any consistent way (more on this in other essays).

The fandom wasn't much better in this respect either. Lots of TRR fans still see no real distinction between the skills Hana had to struggle to learn, and the interests that made her truly happy. The writing team itself contributes to this inaccurate conflating of her interests and skills by having multiple characters label her 'perfect' over and over.

This results in a situation where those hard-earned skills and those moments of joy are conflated together, and spoken of like they are the same thing. But they are not. To speak of the two as if there were no difference, is to ignore completely the difficult, even disturbing, history behind how she acquired them.

The skills the MC grinningly labels her perfect for, are skills that emerged from a very traumatizing environment. Her joys - that many in this fandom so mockingly placed alongside the things she forced herself to do - were perhaps the only opportunities she had to take back her agency and claim something for her own.

To pretend that the two are one and the same is a gross misrepresentation of what was actually depicted in canon.

Next: "Perfect!Hana": Author Bias and the Importance of Framing (coming soon!)

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #hanaleeappreciationweek #HLAW #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #HLAW Day 2 #HLAW Day 2: Skills vs Passions #lizzybeth1986 #content: meta

[hanaleeappreciationweek]

HLAW 2023: Masterlist

(This gorgeous poster is the handiwork of our brilliant host @sazanes!!)

Day 1: Throwback

Art

Hana Lee by @pixi3ferry

The Dress by @sazanes

Edits

Vampire!Hana and Alien!Hana by @masked-alien-lesbian

Fanfic

Crossed Bonus by @queenmiarys

Probably A Bad Idea by @angelasscribbles

Cordonian Karaoke: Hana and Hana Take 2 from Cordonian Karaoke by @angelasscribbles

Petals and Thornes (series) by @lizzybeth1986

Chapter 6: Moments in Between from Marshmallow by @twinkleallnight

Meta

Hana Lee: A Study In Erasure (series) by @lizzybeth1986

Day 2: Skills vs Passions/Chocolate

Skills vs Passions

Art

Competitive Hana! by @sazanes

Headcanon

How Hana Got Her Many Skills by @thecapturedafrique

Meta

Skills vs Passions - What's the Difference? from Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure by @lizzybeth1986

Moodboard

Dance Moodboard for Hana by @lorirwritesfanfic

Chocolate

Art

Hana's Chocolate vs Liam's Vanilla by @cassiopeiacorvus

Fanfic

Eurochocolate by @masked-alien-lesbian

Day 3: Music/AU

Music

Art

Hana and her Keytar! 🎹🎸 by @sazanes

Headcanon

Hana Lee: Music Headcanons by @lizzybeth1986

Fanfic

A Ballad to No One by @lorirwritesfanfic

AU

Edit

Wood Nymph!Hana by @masked-alien-lesbian

Fanfic

HLAW Snippet from Dark Elf by @angelasscribbles

Day 4: Relationships/Homes

Relationships

Fanfic

I'll Be There For You from American Girl by @angelasscribbles

Worthy by @noesapphic

Headcanon

Relationships, Homes and HCs by @angelasscribbles

Hana's Engagement to Peter by @thecapturedafrique

Moodboard

Moodboards for "Out of the Chrysalis" by @lizzybeth1986

Homes

Art

Hana Lee with a Lotus by @pixi3ferry

Manhua Reader by @sazanes

A Tea Party by @mariemarieohcontrary

Headcanon

Hana's Origins by @lizzybeth1986

HC: Relationships and Homes (and an AU) by @masked-alien-lesbian

Day 5: Hana's Perfect Wedding

Art

Hana's Perfect Wedding!! by @sazanes

Headcanons

Headcanon: The Wedding of Duchesses Kiara Thorne and Hana Lee by @lizzybeth1986

Hana's Ideal Wedding by @masked-alien-lesbian

Hana(ra)'s Perfect Wedding by @thecapturedafrique

--

A huge thank you to ALL our participants - we're in awe of all the stuff you've put out and we honestly can't wait for everyone to see your pieces too!!

We know a lot of you struggled to get your pieces out, and would like you all to know that if you'd still like to send in something when you're done...we would be happy to include it in the masterlist!! Do tag us!! 💖💖💖

We would highly recommend all of you who see this masterlist check out every piece in this masterlist 🤗🤗🤗🤗

To find the HLAW 2022 masterlist, go here.

#hana lee #hanaleeappreciationweek #HLAW #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #HLAW 2023 #HLAW masterlist #HLAW 2023 masterlist

[ohsnapitzlovehacker]

First of all if you haven’t been reading @lizzybeth1986 ‘s newest series, what are you doing?? Secondly, I went overboard in my commentary and notes (oops) so all of this is in direct response of the essay: China, Cordonia and "Home".

This is just a copy/paste live-blog of what I feverishly typed in an attempt not to forget what I wanted to say after I finished reading. Spoiler alert, I had TOO MUCH TO SAY 😭

<<read more in place for your scrolling ease>>

Probs not intentional but it really feels like the writers set Hana up to fail, my Godddds

In every other place where Hana could have mentioned where she came from, they made her use terms like "home" or "where I come from". An example of this is the conversation at the ruins in Ch. 13, where Hana can say, "I've visited ruins around where I'm from, and they're just as beautiful as these".

I always thought there was a plot reason they never gave a specific origin of country for Hana way back when, but it never crossed my mind that the writers just didn’t know themselves 😑

Keeping that in mind, let's look at how Shanghai itself is written. Unlike Italy and NY which got 3 chapters each, Shanghai had only 2. But it's still possible that in those 2 chapters we'd have plenty of background material about Hana, right? Right??

obviously can’t speak for the current employee demographics at Pixelberry as it’s been since 2018(??) since I kept close and excited tabs on the writers, and said writers have been laid off or quit, but I believe at the time of TRR 1-2, there was a sizable amount of writers who identified as Asian and so it boggles my mind that when it comes to some of their Asian characters—hell, Asian love interests!!—that they wouldn’t put in the extra research and care to give these plots and characters more depth and substance. Like hello??? BIPOC representation still needs work but you’re a whole ass game company who prides yourself in your diversity and inclusivity and you couldn’t create that needed representation?? HelfreakinLO??

Gonna keep jabbering to myself because I’m thinking and reading and the MC design they picked to be on the cover of the TRR books is the East Asian design so obviously they’d cared enough for visibility reasons for that but still…

<<a new line of thought>>

In reference to the Shanghai cuisine section, this is a gross simplification of what Lizzy carefully explained (brain go burrr) but all I could think was “dang, Hana has some disrespectful AF friends?!?” Like I don’t care for cannon Drake and MC has slowly appeared on my would-like-to-kick list, but the sloppily written narrative makes me laugh and wonder how Hana doesn’t go ape shit around this group of so called friends. Because wow.

Tea Service (free): China is known for its tea culture and esp its tea houses, that are often hubs for political and cultural discussions.

any and all links in this meta series I have clicked and interacted with but I just wanted to note this section because gong fu cha is a new-to-me concept and I want to know more so YAY LEARNING

Shanghai should have been treated differently. This was Hana's home. This was the place she likely spent all of her childhood and most of her young adult life growing up in. What we should have been seeing was her house, her childhood haunts, places that made her feel safe and happy. Folk tales she grew up on, local traditions she may have participated in (I mean, isn't this stop at the tour during the time of a festival?). And if for some nonsensical reason the writers wanted to alienate her from her own city, don't brush that aside like it means nothing

tell me you can’t write your female LI without telling me you can’t write your female LI 🤷🏾‍♀️

<<not sure what this was in direct reference too but I’d like to note that a few minutes after fuming to myself and reading some more, this exact note was addressed in the essay ASGSGDHD>>

Asian culture is not a monolith like wyd???

This is hardly the only indication of Hana having her Chinese heritage erased. In TRH, almost no mentions are made of her home city or home country. In Book 1 there is a heavy focus, again, on the European-influenced skills she grew up learning like horseriding and dainty tea parties.

it’s the missed opportunities at every turn for me. TRR’s popularity aside from everyone’s favorite trope (mine too) of commoner x royalty, this series could have been a force to be reckoned with and instead we have retconning and repeated character assignations and plot holes galore and the centering of men and white (female) fragility that serves no purpose except maybe to appease the reader fanbase, and it’s all such a waste and I hate it here 😭

For a person whose story was not only about self-discovery but also finding a sense of belonging, not meeting that need in her "single" playthrough is an awful reminder that nothing in Hana's story is written with her in mind.

funny how we have like a8 billion whole books spanning the TRR universe with PLENTY of opportunities to explore and expand upon Hana as a person and not an afterthought and it’s been squandered. Go on PB, give us nothing 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

A possible argument for the latter situation at least...is that the team may not have known enough about China or Shanghai, and may have been reluctant to step on the toes of people who did. In which case, why choose a country you don't know, and don't want to do proper research for? Because calling a city that's capable of moving entire buildings with the help of robot walkers, isn't one that anybody in their right mind would call "ancient".

nothing to add, just wanna scream YES in solidarity because these were my thoughts. Like…yeah, I have nothing to add. This speaks for itself.

#hana lee: a study in erasure #talking that ish #I’m sorry but tag space was limited #I had to mosey over to a whole entire post LOL #ENJOY PEOPLE 😭

[lizzybeth1986]

.

#so when i started my hana lee: a study in erasure series (for those who haven't read it yet and want to it's the pinned post on my blog) #i promised myself i wouldn't respond to comments until the series got over #i suffered burnout later and couldnt finish it but still stuck to this dumbass promise 🤦🏽‍♀️ #but now im working on the last few essays #and i think ill try reblogging all the responses i got over the weeks #thanks so much everyone who read all the essays in this series #your comments meant so much to me both at the time i was writing and even now 💖💖💖

[lizzybeth1986]

Masterlist for More Recent Meta

My old essay masterlist was written during the time I was still actively playing Choices, and often went into detail on the diamond scenes of certain characters. But in more recent years, I began writing essays stemming from asks I recieved. I couldn't put them in that masterlist because it was too full by then, and over time all my essays/meta posts became difficult to track. I thought it would be a good time to compile them in a separate place.

Many of these essays were written around 2019-2021, and a lot may have happened since the writing of those. So do understand that some of them were written at a time when the full story was not out, but the arguments behind them often still hold.

I will keep adding to this list as and when I find more essays.

Choices and Race

Fear of the Second Book (ft. Sloane Washington)

CoC and Fandom Hypocrisy (ft. Xanthe)

Colorism

What White Woman are Allowed that WOC aren't (ft. Aurora Emery)

A Litmus Test to See Which Characters Writers/Teams Care For (ft. Zoey Wade)

PB and Fronting Diversity

LGBTQ+ Issues and Choices

My Issues with The "Playersexual" LI Term

TRR

Cordonia and Sexism

Cordonian Nobility and Their Upbringing

Madeleine

TRR's Alternative LIs: The Romances that Didn't Happen

Character Specific Essays

Shane

The Character Who Provided A Counterview

Sloane

Rebel Goddess: An Appreciation of Sloane Washington

Nadia

Nadia Park: The Moral Epicenter of Perfect Match

Hana

Hana and the Effects of Controlling Parenting

Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure (an ongoing essay series)

How Retconning Madeleine Harmed Hana

Using Hana's Pain to Generate Sympathy for Penelope

A Breakdown of the Madeleine-MC Confrontation

Kiara

To Be Not Heard: Kiara, Penelope and the Question of Validation

Kiara Theron: The Character that the Fandom Loves To Hate

Why There is a Disdain for Kiara

PB's Obsession with Keeping Kiara Away From Liam

Liam

Monuments, Memory, Meaning: King Liam and Historical Sites

Drake's Retcon

Who is A Forced LI

The "Sucky King" Argument

Princess Lena

Hayden

The Beauty of Hayden's Harajuku Scene

Hayden's Breaking Point: Unexpected Tantrum, or a Long Awaited Catharsis?

The Hayden Young Project (an upcoming essay series)

Scene Compilations: Book 1 | Book 2

Essays (coming soon!)

#long post #masterlist #essay masterlist #shane parker #sloane washington #hana lee #kiara theron #king liam

[lizzybeth1986]

Tag Game

Thank you @choicesfrog for the tag!

Currently Reading: I recently subscribed to Audible, and am currently reading + listening to Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism. I love it so far!! Also rereading White Tears, Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad.

Choiceswise, it's been a year or two since I've uninstalled the app, but from time to time I read TRR and PM on YouTube mostly for my fics and meta.

Favourite Colour: Purple!

Last Song: "Zehenaseeb" from the Hindi film Hasee toh Phasee. Composers are Vishal Dadlani-Shekhar Ravjiani, and singers are Chinmayi and Shekhar Ravjiani.

Last Movie: Manichitrathazhu (Malayalam film).

Sweet/Spicy/Savoury: I have a major sweet tooth, but when it rains I do love a hot savoury snack like a pakora or a samosa xD

Currently Working On:

The next essay in the Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure series

Some story ideas for HYAW

The next chapter of Eleanor's Kitchen

The first chapter of Three and a Half Weeks

A bit of research for a new meta idea on the alternative LI "relationships" in TRR (Liam and Olivia, Drake and Kiara, Hana and Madeleine, briefly Maxwell and Penelope). Basically on what canon already presents, why they didn't happen, and how fandom responded to them. Idk if I'll actually go forward with it, but if enough people are interested I'll try doing it after HYAW and LSAW.

Tagging: @ohsnapitzlovehacker @grapecaseschoices @beyonceswigs @cassiopeiacorvus @noesapphic @mariemarieohcontrary @twinkleallnight @thecapturedafrique @thefirstcourtesan @ao719 @angelasscribbles @sazanes @lorirwritesfanfic anyone else who would like to participate regardless of tagging!!

(also if you've already done this and don't want to do it again - or just plain don't want to do it - no pressure! 😁)

#tag game

[lizzybeth1986]

Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure

I've written all kinds of essays for Hana over the years - on her scenes, on her characterization, on how her writing can be improved. As the Royal series comes to a close, I'll be doing something slightly different. I'll be doing a series of essays exploring her, the way she's written, and the way fandom responds to her. How does she fit in, as an LI, as a courtier, as a foreigner who originally came to win Liam's hand - same as the MC? How does the narrative view what she does, or what's done to her, or even the things that matter to her? How does the fandom reinterpret her, if they feature her at all? As a woman in a court full of very powerful women, what power does the narrative allow her?

This essay series won't be about improving her writing. Nor will it be about convincing most of the fandom of her value. It's been four years. Four years and seven books, with the final book out next week. Both the fandom and the writing team have already proved, in that time, that they consider other, whiter women worthy of focus, attention and respect. 

This essay series is about putting that treatment on record. There is a lot to be said about how erasure works, when you look at Hana's writing from beginning to end, and when you look at how she's treated in fandom spaces/content. There is a lot to be said for the whittling away, the casual retconning, that Hana has had to put up with. This essay is about exploring what was once written in the text, and breaking down how it was ignored, wiped out or even rewritten over time - in ways that harmed Hana's characterization rather than benefited. It's about how most of the fandom, time and again, pulled her down to prop their favourites up. 

This essay is really a tribute to a character that had a lot of promise, still has plenty of potential, but not a lot of support from either writers or a huge chunk of the fandom.

Series Masterlist (sections may be subject to change):

So, Who Is Hana Lee? 

A Book-by-Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part One

A Book-by-Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part Two

LI!Hana and Friend!Hana

Power Dynamics Pt. 1 - The MC

Power Dynamics Pt. 2 - Ladies of the Court

Power Dynamics Pt. 3 - Xinghai and Lorelai

Protagonist Centered Sexuality

China, Cordonia and "Home"

Skills vs Passions: What's the Difference?

"Perfect!Hana": Author Bias and the Importance of Framing

Fandom

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(I hope to have this done over the week, and will possibly be putting up two sections per day. Fingers crossed!

If you'd like to be tagged in this, do tell me! I'll be tagging a number of people who have both asked to be tagged in this in the past, and people I've spoken to about this series.

If you don't want to see this content, you can mute/block the tag #hana lee: a study in erasure)

#hana lee #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #hana lee: a study in erasure #masterlist

[lizzybeth1986]

Protagonist-Centered Sexuality

(Read the rest of the "Hana Lee: A Study In Erasure" series here!)

Previous: Power Dynamics, Part 3 - Lorelai and Xinghai

CW: Mentions of Bullying, Homophobia, Bi-erasure.

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"To be clear, Hana is bisexual, but at this point in the story, that's something she's still figuring out for herself!" - Kara Loo

I don't think there's any better way of starting this essay than the story behind this quote.

(Note: Some who were around at the time of this story mentioned that that the team was under pressure to say Hana was bi instead of gay, partly from discourse with "people who took offence at Hana being coded lesbian". Being in the fringes of this discussion at the time, I cannot completely confirm the veracity of this, but just for clarity I thought I'd add this context as well. For the purposes of this essay, though, I will be mostly referring to Hana as bi and focusing to a larger extent on depictions of bisexuality, but will attempt to discuss whether that is reflected at all in the writing).

Sometime in October of 2017 (a few weeks after TRR2 released), a player had posed a question to the Choices Support Team. Does Hana Lee have a canon sexuality? The response was... bizarre - if I were to put it in the kindest way possible - even if you were someone who barely paid attention to Hana's scenes:

There was plenty of backlash over this response, of course, because when the hell had Hana ever tried to "pursue the prince" and how the hell would that make her straight! Kara Loo, one of the book leads, almost immediately posted a response, apologizing and maintaining that "this doesn't reflect how we view bisexuality at Pixelberry". It was clear from her post that Hana wasn't out to herself yet, forget anyone else, and it seemed to hint at a journey of sorts.

It's 2021 now, and we're on the seventh and final book of the series. The word "bisexual" hasn't appeared in the story once.

Mechanical vs Canonical Bisexuality

Different types of media write about expressions of sexuality in different ways, but the distinct discomfort that comes with openly talking about queer-related issues can be found across the board. A lot of visual media, esp film, has had a long history of erasure when it comes to LGBTQ+ representation, leading to either a lack of depictions of those stories, or having them heavily couched in innuendo. And even though there is more openness to such rep now, the discomfort often remains.

It is possible for showrunners/filmmakers/writers to attempt to cater to two very distinct audiences: the homophobic audience that is uncomfortable with even a hint of something that isn't heteronormative, and the LGBTQ+ audience that would like to see themselves in the characters they watch. Several strategies are employed to gain the attention, and money, of both: queerbaiting, queercoding or queercatching, all of which involve some form of catching the latter audience's interest with tantalizing hints about a character's sexuality, while still being vague enough to make it "safe" for the former type to watch. (Do watch Rowan Ellis' video essay "An Evolution of Queerbaiting: From Queercoding to Queercatching".) An infamous example of this is how J K Rowling announced Dumbledore being gay after her books released, yet you would never learn this outright from either the original HP books nor in the subsequent Fantastic Beasts film series.

For games however - especially choice-focused RPGs - the mechanics of this are somewhat different. For instance as a queer woman playing Choices, I can tell which sexuality is the default and which one is barely written with any thought at all...but what I'm complaining about wouldn't fit too well in the category of "queercatching" because a gay/bi/pan character's relationship is still at the center of the story, if I should so choose. So how do I explain why I'm so dissatisfied with what I'm getting, if at least I'm getting a full relationship with a woman out of it?

This is where we separate the way relationships fuelled by the mechanics of the game, from LGBTQ+ stories that are stitched into canon. Verilybitchie, in her video essay "How Bisexuality Changed Video Games" (seriously, watch it. It's a real eye-opener) goes into detail about this, but here's a small screenshot just to give you a rough idea:

(The essay breaks down many, many concepts - such as how sometimes the games view bisexuality and polyamory as almost interchangeable, and how some of the games negatively equate polyamory to cheating by taking away the option to be honest with the partners. One of the reasons this video focuses on bisexuality is to show how monosexuality is often viewed as a norm in the game mechanics themselves, even equated to faithfulness. But that is not relevant to this essay).

Mechanical Bisexuality - basically put - moulds the sexuality of your romanceable characters to suit yours. If you're gay/bi/pan, and want to romance a same-sex character, they will respond to you romantically and based on what they say in those playthroughs they may be either gay or bi. But if you play the same  game as a straight person, you will probably never know. There are ways this can be done well, and still be respectful to those  characters. But if done badly, this means that the romanceable character's sexuality is important only in relation to the player and not on its own. Which is to say that as long as you're using fictional bisexuality for my coin as a queer player, but not bothering to explore bisexuality as a lived experience, you're still engaging in a form of bi erasure.

Canonical Bisexuality, on the other hand, establishes a character (who is not the player) as bi regardless of the player's choices. Which is to say that their sexuality - like in real life - exists independent of the player-character's actions or desires, and is a part of their character history by default. Again, this doesn't mean it's completely perfect - Verilybitchie's video shows us examples upon examples of how a lot of canonically bi characters are villainized and othered in gaming culture. But if used well, it can be extremely empowering to see a bi person proudly and by default establish their identity within the framework of that game. 

The video establishes three main criteria that a game must meet to be viewed as showing canon bisexuality - the showing of bi attraction across the board, not centering the player-character in the character's bi identity (ie I should see it even in playthroughs where I'm not romancing the character) and - the most important - we shouldn't take into account Twitter canon.

What is Twitter canon? It's when the developers/story leads "out" the character in their interviews, but continue to not address their sexuality in canon. As Verilybitchie explains it, "game developers are much more likely to call their characters bi in interviews than in the actual games themselves. Using the word "bi" is not everything, it's not the be-all or end-all of representation, but games do tend to avoid the word "bi" like the plague. You know, like in real life!"

What Kara Loo essentially did, in the example above, was exactly that. Twitter canon. 

LGBTQ+ Rep and PlayChoices

Before we go into whether Hana has a journey related to her sexuality or not, it helps to take a brief look at how queer characters are depicted on the basis of both being aware of their identity, and being public about it. In a game like Choices that has long considered its diversity in representation its USP, you will have at least one LI who is considered canonically gay/bi, at least two books have a trans character, and in a book with a gender-customizable MC, every LI should be assumed at least bi. That isn't even counting side characters who are canonically gay, bi, pan, aroace and non-binary.

So it's not about whether these characters exist. That is the game's setup. What is important then is the way their queer identities are contextualised. And I find that this manifests in four different ways (note: I'll be sticking to LIs here):

1. Mechanical Bisexuality: In Choices, the texts that show this most, are the ones that have gender-customizable MCs. Because the MC could be either male or female (or nonbinary, in one case), it is assumed that the LIs are automatically bi (there is a section of the fandom that would rather view them as "playersexual" but I'm going to pretend they don't exist). In books where the LIs are viewed by their writers solely as male romancing female MCs, the heteronormativity is apparant in the way they're written, esp their sex scenes (eg. when you see carelessly-written pronoun changes for a gender-customizable character). However, we do have examples that show the writers clearly putting some level of thought into that LI's interactions with a male MC. Think of how PM2 has Damien's ex Alana refers to him wanting a "partner" rather than a girl/boyfriend, or the scene where Ethan Ramsey has sex in OH1 with a male MC. However, these strategies are sometimes used in tandem with ones that make the character's queerness less apparent to players who may not be comfortable: think of how, in both OH2 and BSC - Rafael Aveiro and Dallas James' other partners/ex-partners are given the same gender as the MC, meaning that their sexuality would rarely or never be addressed across canon. There is also a disrespect from PB itself in the way coded sexuality is viewed - think of how, for instance, TE allowed for us to choose the MC's sexuality in the beginning, yet in the service of a diamond scene claimed "you can change your mind" and used the split-attraction model as an excuse for this framing.

2. Out and Proud: Queer characters who are either confirmed or assumed to already be out in public. Often this includes characters who romance female LIs in genderlocked books but who never reference their sexuality in the books and aren't treated any differently when they openly romance the female MC. Generally it is assumed that they are comfortable in their identity and publicly identify as such. In most cases, PB does this as a way to not talk about sexuality, but in comparison to the categories following, it can be somewhat mitigated by the implication that this character is out and proud.

There are examples where the character can hint at, or talk about their journey though. Lily Spencer (BB) starts out dating another woman, and tells us by Ch. 3 that she was a "nerdy, bi black girl growing up in rural Wisconsin". You have Emma Hawkins (HSS) mentioning her coming out to her parents, and Zig Ortega (TF) casually coming out to his friends when he says he finds James' friend Teddy attractive. You also have Teja Desai (RCD) speak of romantic escapades with a girl in the first book, and confirming she is lesbian to her friend Seth in the second. We have two transpersons (Aisha Bhatt of BP and Andy Kang of ILITW), two nonbinary people (Cameron of HSS and Wren of AME) and one aroace (Zephyr Hernandez of TE) who are also comfortable in their identities and give us small insights into their journeys. These moments and dialogues may be fleeting, and may have very little to do with the character's current arcs, but they add a lot of rich detail to the characterization and give us an insight into their journey as queer people.

3. In the Closet: Characters who are out to themselves but still in the closet. Usually, they are aware of their sexuality, have been for a long time, but cannot - for personal or professional reasons - come out. The MC is often faced with someone who knows they are gay/bi, but is navigating a relationship with, or supporting them while they deal with whether they can be so in public or not. Struggling with coming out can be a character arc in itself for these characters, and notably PB has focused on some of their journeys.

An excellent example of this is Kaitlyn Liao (TF). In Book 2 she tells us she's been aware of her sexuality since school but had never been in a relationship before the MC ("I knew I liked girls, but it seemed like a total fantasy that anyone would like me, you know?"). The entirety of the second book is dedicated to her coming out - first to her friend from Texas, Arjun, then to her parents - one of whom takes time to get used to this truth, but who unequivocally supports her at the end of the book. You also have Eiko Matsunaga (MoTY) who cannot come out at her workplace but is outed by the homophobic Vanessa. This is also a subplot often used in some of PB's historical stories (as well as the next category) - Annabelle Parsons (D&D) and Gemma Montjoy (TUH) imply their awareness of being attracted to women, but have to keep their sexuality a secret because in their time their identity is not only deemed unacceptable, but also invisible (at least in Annabelle's case).

4. The fourth category is what I sometimes dub as "Baby Gay/Bi/Queer".

Unlike "In the Closet", these characters start out unaware of how they identify, and their realization that not only does the (female, in all these cases) MC capture their attention in a way they don't expect, but that it goes beyond her into who they are and who they feel romantic attraction for. In at least two of these cases, those LIs (both are lesbian) openly say they will never again lie with/date another man.

I won't talk about Hana now, but I will briefly touch upon Sabina (ACOR) and Ava Lawrence (MFTL). Sabina lives in ancient Rome, was married off as a child and is under the thumb of an abusive man. She is a deeply traumatized woman when we first meet her, and the MC must peel through her many layers of pain and repressed anger to finally help her find freedom. A fan-favourite Sabina scene references the poem "One Girl" by Sappho, the poet from ancient Greece so intimately tied to the history of LGBTQ+ literature that two terms came both from her name (sapphic), and the name of her birthplace (lesbian, from Lesbos). Ava, on the other hand, is still in school, overcompensating in her relationship with Mason, battling her confusion and feelings for the MC, before coming out to their classmate, Bayla. In a rare instance of inspired writing from the MFTL team, Ava describes the words as being "ripped out" from her, and Bayla becomes a source of comfort and solidarity when she reveals that she, too, is a lesbian. She is paired either with her or with the MC, who is also written as canonically bi. We are also told that she comes out to her parents later on, and gets their support.

As you can see, Sabina and Ava being "Baby Gays" allows for some great scenes, where they can strongly assert their identity as lesbians and find a happy future. The problem lies in how the writing teams often write them and their journeys as if they are outside the scope of the story, not valuable enough for consistent exploration. In their respective books, both Ava and Sabina are often written out of the events and rarely given much attention. Financially they are given far less chances to rake in money because the scenes are so few and far between, and structurally, they are overshadowed by their male counterparts. Of course that is a factor that affects female LIs across the board, but in the case of this particular type of character, it is even more damaging.

It is important, especially for these characters, to have more space and attention given to this arc in particular, because it is their central arc. We are watching their coming out journey, their discovery that they are not straight, in real time. And it is essential in such cases - if you're a company that cares about representation - to allow that arc to blossom outside of the MC, and to center these LIs first and foremost in this story. And it is important because they tend to be the most vulnerable - often coming from familial/societal structures that don't allow them to even question what their families expect them to feel (in at least two of these examples). In their stories they deserve support, they deserve space to explore that aspect of their identities - with or without the MC - and if narratively possible, they deserve to know that they are a part of a large community. Depriving them of this can send a damaging message, esp if you're a company that benefits from being viewed as acting "inclusive", with a "lack of heteronormativity" in your stories. (HAHAHA)

Hana as a Baby Bi

Hana gets her first proper kiss, ever, in TRR1 Ch. 16 (optionally). She sleeps with someone for the first time, ever, in TRR2 Ch 18. While this is par the course if you're not the person the MC was joining the competition to win (Drake, too, gets his kisses and love scenes late in the story), the story is insistent that these are things she's never experienced before. What does this mean, and why was it necessary in Hana's case to take this long?

If you choose every single romantic option with Hana in TRR1, you will notice a slow, but subtle progression. She blushes and doesn't directly comment on how this affects her in almost all these scenes, but from her room to the Cronut shop to our dancing lessons to playing piano, to...finally...confessing her feelings before the Coronation, we find Hana slowly getting comfortable with the intimacy of touch.

If we were to go by Hana's own account, most of the girls/women she'd interacted with thus far hadn't shown much of a desire to interact with her: they're described as either privileged, pampered women who saw her as a rival (much like Olivia and the other noble women do in the beginning), or as people too wrapped up in their own interests to notice her (as she hints in the dressage scene). Even a "nice woman" is a novelty to her.

The MC turns her notions of how other women act on their head as soon as the two meet, and we find that every word that indicates attraction, and every touch, seems to surprise her with how much it affects her. In the bakery where they have cronuts, she is shocked enough by her own response to immediately withdraw her hand, and she seems to have an experience she didn't at all expect when she teaches the MC the romantic Cordonian Waltz. But by the time she plays piano for the MC, she seems to feel more comfortable around her, allowing the touches to now linger. By the time of the Beaumont Bash, she is enthusiastic to retry her first kiss, showing us just how much she's progressed in establishing a sense of comfort with this woman she is learning to love.

Romantic, sensual touch is a novelty to Hana not only because she's new to the idea of a woman being with her. It's because she is new to the whole concept of sexual desire itself, beyond the books she may have read. She is so new to what it's like to passionately love and be loved by someone, that when she finally confesses her feelings to the MC in her Ch. 17 diamond scene, her words come out confused and almost inarticulate:

In the second book, while she is comfortable with kissing and light makeouts in most of their diamond scenes, she places boundaries when it comes to sex, because the experience is not only new but something she can only feel comfortable doing when she's confident of her relationship with the MC (as implied by the way the narrative stops short of sex in her last two individual scenes before her proposal). But this is perhaps something I will be addressing later on in this essay.

Touch and romance with the MC is central to how we read Hana's sexuality - mostly because it's the only way we can get a clear idea of her sexuality journey overall. The narrative doesn't want to even think about it otherwise. There is no dialogue that refers directly to it, no interactions with other people that directly references her having feelings, no indication of this part of her identity. So a lot of my reading of Hana as a woman learning other sexualities besides "straight" exist...is based mostly on her interactions with the MC.

There is one huge catch to this, though.

There is no scene of Hana's, across the seven books of this series, that references her sexuality - lesbian or bi - by default.

The Discomfort Around A Sapphic Hana

To elaborate on that last sentence - most of the scenes I mentioned above? Are part of diamond scenes. With friendly options. Some of them have more friendly options than romance, in fact.

In the sub-essay on LI!Hana and Friend!Hana, I made a comparison between the three confession scenes at the Coronation Ball. It was clear that the MC would learn about the male LIs' feelings for her by default, and can have Hana openly confess in the free option for the scene, but you have to push the romantic options consistently for Hana to state it in her diamond scene. Her "confession scene" can absolutely be played without ever once referencing her attraction to the MC, simply by the MC friendzoning her first. And unless you choose a romantic option in TRR2, Hana never, ever talks about this attraction for you again. Perhaps the only indication of her feelings that happens by default, is Olivia's calling out of the MC prior to Coronation Ball ("It might be fun to buddy up with Hana...but at the end of the day, she's going to go away heartbroken. And have you ever considered that you might be the cause?"). It hardly even sticks because it's brushed off so casually afterwards.

It is possible - even easy - for you to go through this entire series and the subsequent one, without hearing a single word from Hana herself, about either her love for the MC, or what it means for her to realize that she can love women.

What is absolutely striking about this when you look at these bits of writing as a whole, is how much the comfort of a straight (and possibly homophobic) female player is prioritized in the way Hana interacts with the MC. Hana's love for the MC has to be tailored to fit the player's comfort - Liam's and Drake's do not. A Hana who is told that the MC doesn't love her back is supposed to return immediately to "best friend" mode - no lingering sadness, no regret, her feelings are simply not allowed to have value on their own.

This is disturbing in itself. But perhaps this would be mitigated by seeing Hana's sexuality play a role in other exchanges that may have at least a romantic aim, right? So let us further explore other possible relationships, even the ones where she has no interest yet must enter in with the intention of marriage:

Peter

The Cordonian Waltz scene with Hana in TRR1 is perhaps the only one where Hana's queerness is at the center - or at least hinted to be. There is a compelling collision between her growing feelings for the MC (if you choose to romance her) and the memory of a man who almost married her - who we never see in the actual book, but who is referenced in later scenes as a looming example of her "failure".

Hana speaks of Peter with a mixture of gratitude and pain - she is careful to tell us that he was a nice man who handled their situation more kindly than she expected him to, but is also aware that he had the privilege to expect sweeping romance from a relationship in a way that she never could. Her description of their engagement cuts into the pain of living in the closet - not only does she not love the man, she also feels immense confusion and guilt at her "inability" to do so ("even though I told him what he wanted to hear, I couldn't hold back the tears"). Whether or not the MC flirts with her in this scene, this story (thankfully) features, and has all the power and intensity that you'd expect from a scene about a queer person in a closet.

Back when TRR1 was the only book out, many players found this scene hinted strongly at Hana being lesbian, and I'm inclined to agree. There is an emotional intensity that suggested a realization that she couldn't love a man, couple with her attraction for a woman. And while honestly Bi Awakenings can be just as powerful, I can see why it would be read this way more.

(This is not the only time we learn about Peter. Hana's subsequent stories about him tell us one very interesting thing about her life with her parents - that she is not only closeted, but also a virgin. At truth-or-dare, she describes her first kiss with Peter as a staged performance that crashed into disaster when he missed and punctured his lip on her earring. The first time the MC seriously makes out with her, Hana tells her that her relationship with Peter had always been chaste. Canonically, she has never had sex nor actual sexual contact before the MC. This puts her in a doubly vulnerable position because not only is she in the closet, but she also has no rubric for what sexual dynamics are like, and that can change how certain LI scenes could be read. For instance, when the MC who is engaged to someone else sleeps with Hana, there is an added layer of exploitation, considering there was no readiness for sex when they were not official.)

We are never given a default scene that even picks up on the threads Hana leaves with this story. But ironically, Peter is referenced twice by other women to label Hana a failure. It really goes to show you what the team thought the most important takeaway from this scene was.

Liam

The two things to keep in mind with any interaction that features Hana and Liam is that 1. They're both LIs, and 2. Hana is a lady of the court, and ladies of the court are often given limited interactions with Liam (at least, if you're not Olivia) because the focus of his story is so trained on the MC. So they're friends in group scenes, have a handful of interactions independently, can speak positively of each other to the MC - but there is never going to be any closeness that can be misinterpreted as romance.

Hana's stated purpose when she enters Cordonia is that she hopes her chances at marrying Liam will be better than that of marrying Peter. Yet, romance wise Liam is a non-factor for Hana early on. There is no question of her having romantic feelings for him, and because Liam's story is (from the beginning) primarily about the conflict between doing his "duty" and loving the MC, there is no expectation from his end either, which means the transition into stating they are friends happens pretty soon after the social season ends.

We have dialogue from both of them speaking about each other even outside of group scenes (Liam telling us why he appreciates Hana as a friend in NY, Hana telling us an adorable story of Liam helping her on her first day in Cordonia) but very little that references the brief time when she was supposed to woo him. Which is alright, because it hints at an easier and less painful dynamic than what she had with Peter, and a far less annoying one than what she has with Neville.

Unfortunately, however, the narrative seems to add her not being picked as Liam's bride on her "failure" list, which is egregious when you realize that literally no other woman from the same social season is measured by that ridiculous, sexist standard. It also points to a disturbing aspect of the worldbuilding in general, but I'll get back to that a little later.

Rashad and Neville

These two characters enter at a rather interesting point in Hana's story. She is either interested in the MC, or not interested in any relationship at all, but faces threats from both her parents and Madeleine to either get a male suitor or leave Cordonia. Even the MC, regardless of her feelings for Hana, is viewed positively in this scene only if she stands in as Hana's wingwoman, with her optional offer to be a suitor not even seen as a viable option. No matter whether there is a romance or not - the MC seems strangely distant from the very real possibility that her potential lover may be forced to marry another man, which is a real contrast to the possessiveness and scorn Drake's MC can optionally show when it comes to Kiara.

The one good thing that comes out of this subplot is an awareness from Hana, that these two are not viable options for her anyway. Straight off the bat, she can by default consider them boring, and the few times she speaks about them she can articulate what she finds dissatisfying in her interactions with them. Rashad recedes in the background once it's clear that Neville likes her more (though he briefly features in TRR3 to help Hana with a contact for her father's business). She is eventually allowed to push back at Neville, independent of her argument with her father, and let him know exactly what she thinks of him (on the flip side? She does this in defence of Drake, and Neville becomes the main antagonist in Drake's TRR3 subplot from that point on).

As I mentioned in the previous essay, Neville is Hana's final straw when it comes to obeying her parents. He is disagreeable enough to her that she has to put her foot down. Whether or not the MC takes an interest in her, Hana clearly feels marrying Neville is beyond even her limits of endurance, and the prospect of marrying him coupled with her defence of the MC is part of what propels her to defy her father in Shanghai (Sadly, what could have been a default coming out moment is instead turned into an vague argument about friendship and self-reliance).

This may work...as long as it is a springboard to Hana's self-discovery both within and outside of her romance with the MC. If it is something that opens her up to either dating, or figuring out who she is and what she likes romantically. Which...doesn't exactly happen.

These are the men we see with "relationship possibility" in Hana's story, yet it is clear that she has no romantic interest in any of them. The dynamics with some of the men (esp Neville) revolves around her discomfort with those relationships. We do not see any other examples of this furthermore in the text, and often this is used as an example of how she can't possibly be bi (which is honestly a legitimate argument when you take into account what we said earlier about "Twitter canon"). The MC is the clearest indication for her preference for women...except that it centers the MC more than her, and mostly depends on the player's comfort with her sexuality to even be seen.

With that said, do we have any examples of her having anything romantic with women? Women who aren't the MC??

Madeleine

"But Lizzy," I can hear some of you say, "what about Madeleine?"

Which is a fair point. Every LI had an alternative LI (though Maxwell's was scrapped almost as soon as he became an LI) and Hana was no different. Madeleine was very clearly intended, by TRR3 at least, to be Hana's alternative LI. On the surface, this should sound like a good thing, right? Hana's sexuality and feelings for women could be acknowledged beyond the romance with the MC, right??

Well...if you like bully-victim "romances" that revolve around the bully, I guess.

If you squinted, maybe you could see something that would pass for a hint of romantic symbolism in TRR2 (the bachelorette activity Hana had planned for Madeleine hints at her believing the two are supposed to have a date after the chocolate fondue party), followed by a handful of scenes in TRR3 where Madeleine could imply having a crush on Hana (these scenes only appear in her single playthrough). In between these two things...is Madeleine's admission about wanting to "break Hana".

I've already addressed the chocolate incident and its implications in the essay of "The Ladies of the Court", so I'll be skipping straight to the "romantic" implications of that scene and how that "romance" is framed thereafter.

Many Madeleine stans often treat the chocolate incident as a one-off, which is not only wildly inaccurate but callous in its minimization. Madeleine in her position as Queen-to-be, constantly reminded Hana of their power dynamic and in fact threatened to send her back to China if she didn't manage to get a suitor. The source of a lot of Hana's anxiety in TRR2 revolves around very real threats Madeleine had made. The chocolate incident wasn't just one bad thing Madeleine did that one time, but an escalation in a string of abusive and threatening behaviours. Which means that once the writers established Madeleine and Hana as possible endgame (as they clearly wanted to do), they were faced with the choice to either address what Madeleine had done to her and have her face consequences, or retcon it completely to make the romance easier for Madeleine. They chose the latter.

On the surface you can tell exactly which trope the team might have been going for - the Armoured Closeted Gay/Bi that usually involves a gay/lesbian/bi character dealing with their discomfort of their sexuality by harming another gay/lesbian/bi character. (We've seen a variation of this in ILITW, with Lily Oritz and Britney - except that the situation revolved more around Lily's unresolved feelings for a bully who was once her friend, and she had the freedom to choose differently when Britney disappointed her at the end. It's still problematic, but Lily is given a healthy sense of agency within this dynamic). This trope often involves bullying, which is justified as them coping with their confusions and possible self-hatred. There are ways to ensure the victim is centered in such a dynamic and not the perpetrator (which you can see, to an extent, in an example like Lily's), but it can also center the bully and ignore the victim's perspective. In Madeleine's case, this trope was part of a bigger "redemption" arc - one in which she was a patriot with a neglectful and overly critical father, grieving her lost chances and learning to find purpose in her new job - with Hana being subtly positioned more as a prize for her dedication, rather than as a person with her own opinions and agency. It shows in the way their interactions in TRR3, when the narrative was trying to subtly push the ship, are framed.

There are five distinct scenes total in Hana's single playthrough that hint at the possibility of this relationship in TRR3. Madeleine's "stupidly perfect" dialogue in Fydelia, Hana and Madeleine cross-referencing each other in their scenes at Costume Gala, Madeleine's nonapology and offer for a dance in Vegas, Madeleine's reaction to the Hana MC asking if she's "jealous" prior to her wedding reception (she reacts a bit flustered about Liam - the man she was going to marry - and Hana, versus her casual dismissiveness at the same question from a Drake or Maxwell MC). I'm not including the finale conversation, as that was an attempt from the team to backtrack on the ship completely, post backlash, and therefore features excuses that contradict canon to make Madeleine's reasoning sound legitimate. Three out of these five feature Hana, and you'll find a common thread in at least two of those scenes:

In both scenes, Madeleine hints at her attraction for Hana, but Hana is only ever allowed to be surprised and at the very most say that she never expected that from Madeleine (and while Hana can - thankfully - sound a slight bit suspicious of Madeleine's motives in Vegas, the "tricks" she mentions do not match the intensity of what Madeleine actually did in TRR2. Which makes sense, considering they were already retconning the chocolate incident altogether). The end result usually has Hana say...very very little about what she feels.

There is only one scene among these five that even allows Hana to vaguely imply any interest in Madeleine at all, in fact - at the Costume Gala while talking with the MC and Olivia:

The writers made a subtle distinction between her compliments for Madeleine in her single playthrough, and Kiara in her LI one, by having them be more personal for the former, and more neutral with passive language for the latter. But it is one in four scenes that have Madeleine talk more, express more, articulate her feelings more, with little space or agency left for Hana. Hana almost feels like an afterthought in these scenes.

In each scene that features the two in this "romance", Madeleine is the one whose thoughts and feelings matter. She feels Hana is "stupidly sweet and perfect". She thinks Hana's company is more bearable than most people's and that she would "be willing to let bygones be bygones" when the MC speaks of her earlier behaviour. She feels that mayyyybe she mayyyy have wronged Hana. She is asked if she feels jealous of the Hana!MC. She feels her abominable behaviour towards Hana would actually be justified if Hana had been "fake" like she'd suspected. And you will see this even in the way many fans who support the Madeleine x Hana ship frame the "romance" - Madeleine's feelings are explored more, Madeleine's actions are justified, excused or downplayed, and Hana's feelings and journey are clearly not as worthy of exploration.

We hear so much about what Madeleine thinks of Hana and almost nothing of what Hana thinks of her (until the epilogue, and even then Hana is allowed only a few lines about needing time to forgive Madeleine, while Madeleine's assumptions and excuses dominate the conversation). So even in the one other relationship that would have confirmed Hana's sexuality, the feelings of the woman who harmed her have far more value.

This leaves us with the MC, who is the only person Hana is actually allowed to express a clear attraction for, and who functions as the catalyst for her LGBTQ Awakening (another trope, which shows a queer character emerging into a realization of their own sexuality), yet there is no real space for Hana to move forward if the MC isn't interested. There is no real attempt to have her awakening lead anywhere if it doesn't benefit the MC. The narrative wants to give the MC the credit of being Hana's first, in every way possible, but cannot be bothered to move it away from the MC if she doesn't want to be.

And even if the MC decides to romance and marry Hana, the fact that they're a queer couple is hardly ever addressed. Questions that Hana could have as a wlw, are hardly ever brought up. In TRH1, while the writing changes to accommodate alternative ways of getting pregnant for a wlw couple, a lot of the dialogue seems to remain the same as it is for the male LIs (esp the ones about "making babies" and sex). When she marries the MC, the narrative forgets that Hana was ever in that damn closet to begin with!

In the end what Hana gets is a story that moulds the importance of her sexuality according to the comfort of the player, but that won't allow her to explore her sexuality on her own terms outside of the MC. It's a sexuality that centers the protagonist, rather the the actual person experiencing that journey. The only two romances PB allows her are about the other person, and very rarely about her.

But romances aren't the only way one can highlight a sexuality journey, though they are one of the most effective. Being part of the LGBTQ+ community...is also about community: about realizing that there are many others like you, and that you can find solidarity among people who have experienced similar journeys, about the LGBTQ+ culture of the place you're staying in. So...does TRR attempt to do at least that?

Heteronormativity and Cordonia

There are ways you can address sexuality if you don't want to push forward a romance. Have the closeted character meet other queer people. Have them join communities dedicated to LGBTQ support, and engage in activities that support queer people. Hana is a voracious reader so having someone recommend her books by queer authors wouldn't have looked out of place either (ACOR did a variation of "lesbian character reading lesbian literature" by having Sabina and the MC read out Sappho's poetry). Have her rethink feelings she may have misinterpreted as closeness or hero-worship of someone (eg. maybe a famous female celebrity) to realize that what she had was a crush. Sure, this may not center the MC, but if Drake can spend chapters whining about his sister and Maxwell can spend more chapters believing in the goodness of his obviously-evil dad, then dammit Hana could have been allowed space to see her sexuality beyond how it could benefit the MC.

Not only does the narrative NOT do any of this, but they also reinforce heteronormativity in several sequences, while aggressively retconning previous indications of it so to avoid addressing possible past homophobia.

I've mentioned before that the Cordonian Waltz scene is perhaps the closest Hana gets to speaking about her sexuality, in a roundabout, unaware way. While her engagement with Peter, and the reason behind their subsequent breakup is the center of her story, it is just as much about her parents' heteronormativity - where they would throw only men at her for marriage, where Hana had clearly never even thought loving a woman was possible before, where the traits her mother assumes to be attractive to suitors tend to appeal to men in the court (acting like a damsel in distress, for instance). Everything about her parents' training screams heteronormativity.

The Cordonia of the first two books seems to reinforce this somewhat. It is depicted as a stiff-upper-lip sort of society that focuses on "propriety" and is squeamish about PDA, and most of the relationships we get to see in its world seem to reinforce heteronormativity. Perhaps the closest someone ever gets to openly mentioning they're queer is Maxwell in his TRR2 finale scene, where he speaks about flings with "people", which gave rise to the hc that he was pansexual. Hana herself gets to engage with a queer character or two (such as Marguerite from TH:M in TRH1) and even gets to encourage Kiara during truth-or-dare when the latter is asked to choose women she can date.

In TRR3, the narrative seems to lean more towards theories about TCaTF (equating the Great Houses to the Five Kingdoms, showing us weapons from those times, having more Duchesses than Dukes and having Liam remind us that one of their most iconic rulers was a woman), which didn't seem as heteronormative (eg. Tevan can casually talk about his male and female suitors in the middle of battle, Annelyse is openly flirting with Kenna when they first meet). In addition to this, the choice to make the reception from the public, of the Hana x MC relationship, the same as the other LIs...allowed readers to view Cordonia itself as a society that views relationships that are not openly hetero, as normal. Queer dynamics are okay, I guess, as long as the narrative doesn't have to work to show it.

Unfortunately, the lack of real thought and planning that strategy suggests, leads to moments that would seem out-of-pocket or strange in such a world, yet not treated that way.

A clear example of that is this scene. Cordonia at this point is supposed to not discriminate between men and women, and okay with same-sex relationships. Yet Hana - the closest we have (until the hints about Madeleine) to a canonically queer character - is considered a failure for two men not choosing her! In a narrative where, optionally, she is marrying a woman and on the verge of becoming a Duchess! And this persists even after her goddamn marriage when the queen of a neighbouring country can mock her the same way!

This is bad enough already. But from the same chapter emerges something even more insidious - the erasure of Hana's own background, especially the components of heteronormativity we saw in her Cordonian Waltz scene and the argument with her father:

"New money" was never a factor in Hana's family's reasons for choosing the matches they did - direct or implied. The gender of her expected partner was. Not once did Hana's parents ever try to put forward a powerful, titled woman of old money, and this story was filled to bursting with them. Hell, even the Cordonian Waltz scene shows us that Hana was never even allowed to think in the direction of loving women! Yet the narrative thought it appropriate to wrap up Hana's arc with her parents - whose isolation of her and control over her relationships led to her being unaware of her own sexuality for years - by erasing that very important detail.

The narrative itself treated even Hana's wedding as an afterthought. She was never really viewed as another bride, never given all the perks that the MC got. Their wedding was written (like Maxwell's) with glitches galore, including the infamous "husband and wife" label from the officiant that openly ignored the player's own choices just a few chapters before. And as I've mentioned in previous essays, the writers made no distinctions between bride!Hana and bridesmaid!Hana at the reception, resulting in the uncomfortable image of Hana doing bridesmaid duties in her wedding gown. One book later, people were teasing Hana and the MC about all the sex they were having to make babies, and the only real difference between Hana's single and married playthroughs...was that married!Hana could learn she couldn't get pregnant. In her single playthrough, despite the core theme of her story being self-discovery, she was hardly given any life of her own.

When this is the way the narrative itself treats Hana's sexuality, what hope is there that they will allow her any sense of community with her queer identity, outside of the MC??

Lesbian or Bi?

It is a testament to how little Hana's sexuality mattered to the writing team, that even after the end of TRR3 the fandom was still debating over whether Kara's Twitter canon had any weight.

It didn't need to be this way. They could have made Hana's confession to the MC actually default. They could have allowed her to actively show interest in a woman (or a woman and a man) and center her in the story with that alternative LI, rather than treat her as a prize in a former antagonist's story. They could have even peppered the story with hints that she was going out, meeting other people, learning on her own that she was not straight and letting us know clearly what she identified herself as. And while sure, this may be too much to ask from a company that often sidelines its female LIs, the fault still lies with them for making her a person so deep in the closet that she had to come out to herself first. (Which, btw, they never allowed to openly or subtle reference in canon).

Hana was called bi by a story lead of the book. The same story lead claimed she was going through a journey of discovering this, yet nothing in her actual story supports that. She shows no attraction to any man in the books, but we also never see her show any real, obvious, consistent, canon-supported attraction to a woman that isn't the MC either. The only other possibility of a relationship revolves around someone who'd found joy in harming her, with little to no agency for Hana. Her sexuality was spoken of as "something she is still figuring out for herself" yet it's been six books since and we've heard nothing about what it is she's figured out.

The narrative would have lost absolutely nothing by making her a canonical lesbian, or even a canonical bisexual, yet pushed her into a version of the "mechanical bi" template where she could either show her attraction to ONE woman in particular, or just keep that aspect of herself hidden forever. And while one may assume that her "figuring out" of her sexuality happened offscreen, it is clear that her writers were too uncomfortable with her sexuality themselves, to provide clarity, to even want to give it any value beyond the MC's needs and desires.

In closing, if I were to sum up how TRR treats Hana's sexuality, it would go something like this:

Hana isn't allowed past romances. Hana isn't allowed future romances. Twitter canon claims she's bi yet only has her briefly talk to four men she's not even interested in. The only woman she's allowed to actually date is the MC and even that is moulded for the MC's comfort levels. The only other romance she's "allowed'' is with someone who wanted to break her, and she's hardly even allowed an opinion on that person's interest in her. Her parents are shown to be homophobic but when the team wants to soften them further they erase their homophobia. And then she is never, ever, EVER allowed even a sense of community with other queer people because the fucking world they built is actually so fucking heteronormative!!!!

It is clear, therefore, that even Hana's sexuality is written in a way that it's never about her - it is written for the MC. If the MC romances her, Hana's whole sexuality story begins and ends with this one person, with no future reference to what her closeted past was like or how her journey progresses beyond her marriage. If the MC rejects her, the narrative never bothers with what happens next for that story. It is the MC who romances her that benefits from her attraction, and the MC who doesn't want her love that benefits from her silence.

Hana's story of her sexuality - as with many other aspects of her writing - begins in uncertainty, but ends in erasure.

Next: China, Cordonia and "Home"

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #long post #lgbtq #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale

[lizzybeth1986]

Power Dynamics Pt 3 - Lorelai and Xinghai

(Read the rest of the "Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure" series here!)

Previous: Power Dynamics Part 2 - Ladies of the Court

"Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control." - Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.

So far, we have spoken about the kind of power dynamics the narrative builds for Hana in the Cordonian royal court, and in her personal equation with the MC. But any discussion on Hana and power dynamics would be incomplete without exploring the root of it all: her parents.

We do not see Hana's father Xinghai until the middle of TRR2, or her mother Lorelai until the second half of TRR3, but they are essential to her story. Hana's entire arc revolves around realizing that their control over her is harmful, getting out, and starting life afresh in Cordonia. What was truly interesting about her arc - especially in the beginning - was that it wasn't a linear process, but one that involved her unlearning the lessons of her childhood, little by little.

(Tap to Enlarge)

Book 1 views Hana's parents as a unit - we don't know their names, we have no clue about their backgrounds and they're very rarely mentioned individually (a prominent scene that mentions just one of her parents is the phone call before the Applewood Jamboree, where she is shown speaking to her mother - and a stray dialogue on Drake's birthday mentions her father's cat). Here, their opinions are never featured by Hana as being separate from each other's (later in TRR3, she speaks of their marriage as being strengthened by having the same drives, ambitions and goals).

We also aren't aware of the full extent of their treatment of Hana from the get-go. The narrative starts small, showing us the aftermath of her broken engagement rather than the actual experience, or having Hana tell us matter-of-factly that she didn't have toys to play with. It is in the Lythikos and Regatta sections that we get a clearer idea of both her upbringing and how it has shaped her personality, and it is in Applewood that she takes her first tentative steps in telling her mother how she feels - which leads to them pressuring her to return. Until Lythikos we do not fully understand the extent to which her parents controlled her activities and her future, until the Regatta we do not get how differently she views the term "failure" from everyone else...and until the Coronation we have no rubric for how truly dangerous even the smallest rebellion can be for her. The unravelling of her way of life doesn't begin until the middle of the book.

There is a reason why the midpoint of this book works so well in Hana's case. It shows us how she acquired the skills we now benefit from, as newcomers, while not forgetting the cost of acquiring them. The MC here is both a recipient of the skills Hana provides, and a catalyst for change in how Hana perceives her world. That change is not - will never - be immediate, it is gradual and painful and emerges in bits and pieces.

Over the years I've run this blog, I've heard Hana's childhood/upbringing being spoken of in a number of ways. Some have compared it to other female characters, like Annabelle and Aurora (in a "see? They also face pressure from their family, but they're sassier!" way). Some view it as simply "not being allowed to do stuff", or as simply "sheltered". But unless we unravel the layers of sheer psychological control that went into her upbringing, we will never really truly get what a person like Hana would be up against, nor understand the strength it takes to leave.

If I were to condense Hana's past, her upbringing, and how that impacts her thinking, I would divide it into these three levels of controlling parenting:

Isolation

Isolation is often viewed as a pivotal tactic in any controlling relationship, because it deprives the victim of perspective. It can be used "to weaken their victims, prevent them from hearing others’ perspectives, and to bring them into line with (their) own beliefs and requirements" (SpeakOutLoud). If the victim doesn't have adequate access to the outside world, or to material that could help them, it is harder for them to understand how this is damaging to them. Sometimes this involves absolute isolation where they are not even allowed to leave the home, but sometimes it manifests as the person in power choosing who and what the victim may have access to. 

It is implied to us often in TRR, then stated upfront in TRR3/TRH, that Hana grew up with no real friends. In TRR3 she tells us her parents encouraged her to meet peer-age kids from other noble families, but only as alliances, not in any close relationship. They even encourage her to continue her friendship with the MC, merely because the latter has more access to Liam. Even her "playthings" reflect just how isolated she is - she was never allowed real toys, and often had to use regular household objects for her pretend-play. The only family member outside of her parents we hear about, is her Chinese grandmother (and we hear about her only once. A great-grandmother is referenced in a TRR3 diamond scene but we never hear about her again). This means that for most of her life, her parents were the only people she was in constant contact with, the only people she could trust, her only "friends". They had an ownership over her that went beyond just being "obedient to one's parents". Which makes the possibility that she could grow out of their beliefs and value system that much harder. 

Indoctrination

Typically, indoctrination is used with reference to imparting religious beliefs in a way that doesn't allow space for other views, or when talking about cults. But I use this term here specifically because "brainwashing" doesn't quite encompass the level to which Hana's parents used her education to render her powerless on her own. Think of the "Mother Knows Best" song in Rapunzel. Gothel deprives her "daughter" access to the outside world or the tools to understand it, and then positions herself as Rapunzel's protector, all while using the girl's powers to retain her own youth. Which means that when Gothel tells her that denying Rapunzel her freedom and agency is really about protection and love, Rapunzel has little choice but to believe her even though Gothel is the one she needs protection from.

If we look closely at what Hana tells us about her childhood, it is clear that they purposely limited her learning to skills that would help her in courts in Europe, and equip her to run a noble household with a husband in the future. Her worth is evaluated both on her success in these courts, and on her ability to attract people from that environment. They choose where her future lies, how to get her there, and anything outside of that is deemed unnecessary to learn. Her purpose, clearly, is to be useful to her parents and her house - either as a musical prodigy, or a debutante at the most powerful courts, or as the wife of a noble from a respected House, whose clout would in turn benefit them and their businesses. What is missing from her education are skills that would allow her to choose her future, or in a dynamic where she is the one wielding power.

This means that their ideal for Hana's future was one where she'd be forever dependent, either on them or on a spouse of their choosing. It is almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy - they first deprive her of any learning that didn't benefit their goals, don't allow her to learn her own survival skills, make it impossible for her to even imagine a life without them...and then turn around and claim she cannot survive alone!

Control

With isolation, Hana's parents restrict her physical access to places and people. With her education, they restrict her access to only material that makes her useful on their terms. But we see other types of control at play - emotional (Lorelai uses an interplay of both love and fear in her interactions with Hana), and financial (they can strip her of funds, her home and even the clothes off her back if she isn't obedient enough). When Lorelai speaks of disowning her in TRR3, she means that Hana has no right even to things she had made (like her black cheongsam).

What kind of words from Hana could trigger such strong reactions? Let's take a look:

Hana's rebukes do not involve harsh judgement, do not assume her parents' intentions, and perhaps state the facts in a way that is rather generous to them. But even this mild criticism brings about a strong reaction - they claim Cordonia/the MC has made her "headstrong", they perceive her criticism as a sort of betrayal. The kind of betrayal that warrants her being cut off from the family.

This places Hana in a situation where she has to constantly earn their approval to survive, constantly live every moment of her life on their terms, constantly see her own needs as lesser. There is an element of fear in the simplest things, the slightest feeling that she could be out of line. Look, for instance, at the end of Hana's only solo childhood scene:

This scene, told from Hana's perspective, hints at how nervous she feels even in the simple act of showing affection ("you decide to risk a hug"). The entire scene has her tentatively negotiating with her mother over simple things, and has her view her mother - even at that young age - in a mixture of love and fear. She understands already that she doesn't have the freedom to even express how she truly feels. We also get a glimpse, from this scene and some others, how little a younger Hana has learned to expect from her parents when it comes to showing affection (eg. her constantly saving a place for Lorelai at her tea parties even when the latter never makes it. Her joy in TRR1, when describing how a broken arm made her happy because her parents gave her rare moments of affection and care).

What is so striking about many controlling, or emotionally abusive relationships, is the sheer invisibility of the abuse, which makes it easy for some to downplay the impact. The Tumblr blog, @the-courage-to-heal , spoke of Tangled as an example of how the execution of covert abuse makes it difficult for victims to escape, saying: saying: "You can't escape if you don't even realize you're in an abusive situation. You can't leave if you think you need your abuser to survive and you can't get help if they isolate you from anyone who might see the truth". We see numerous signs of the damage done to Hana over the course of the series, of which I will only highlight a few examples:

1. Perhaps the biggest effect of her upbringing lies in how Hana hardly even knows who she is. Having being bombarded all her life with skills (without ever considering whether she wanted to do them), Hana spends most of her life not truly knowing who she is or what she likes. She finds it hard to make a distinction between things she was taught to appreciate, and things that truly make her happy (eg. In Hana's playthrough of TRR3, during the wine-tasting scene in Castelserraillian, she tells us about Old Zinfandel and how valued it is as a beverage...however, later on with her fiancée, she is able to admit now that she hates it). For a great part of her young life, Hana was never allowed the space to explore her environment on her terms, and therefore isn't sure who she is until she leaves home.

2. Hana struggles with decisiveness. She says this openly in a discussion with Olivia at the Costume Gala, and a lot of it seems to emerge from her needing to navigate what she wants, and what her own beliefs are, in the first place. A lot of this boils down to how she deals with the freedom to make choices, something she didn't have with her parents. When speaking about wedding prep in the beginning of TRR3, Hana speaks about how (even though she made 200 PinStop boards) she could never even imagine a wedding that included or respected her choices, because it was a foregone conclusion that her parents would decide on those arrangements as well.

3. Her sense of failure, even in the face of her accomplishments and skill. In the Yacht scene in TRR1, Hana speaks of how "my entire life, I've done nothing but lose", a sentiment she echoes at the start of TRR2 while pointing out that for all her skills, she was unable to win Peter or Liam. The narrative, however, claims through her TRH2 dossier that she has developed an increased level of confidence in Cordonia, but we're never really shown how.

4. Related to Pt 1, her perfectionism. She is often shown obsessing over detail, and going to great lengths to make everything "perfect". In Auvernal (TRH1 Ch 9), she speaks of this tendency as emerging from a desire to win her mother's love, and laments that it is so much a part of her now that she cannot "turn it off". "I still feel like I have to be the perfect lady in every situation".

5. Hana also tends to be the most nervous, among the group, about breaking rules and not following protocol. Even after her marriage/settling in Cordonia, we see her telling Maxwell that she "always feels guilty when [she] breaks a rule". In the early books, we see her show nervousness when it comes to messy eating and dancing freely, before realizing how good it feels, and her first fight with her mother over phone leaves her feeling equally shocked and triumphant.

6. In Hana's playthrough of TRR3, an engaged Hana is shown worrying about whether she is being too controlling, when she makes certain decisions for her wedding. In both the first and second chapters, she is shown repeatedly asking the MC if she is speaking over her or ignoring her needs. She has no clear idea what a healthy sense of control looks like. In turn, she tries to overcompensate with her partner. Any control seems bad to her, until the MC helps her differentiate. Sadly, this plot thread was left behind after Ch 2, and never brought up again.

7. Most people view Hana as a "damsel in distress", constantly in need of protection, never standing up for herself. Some even view that as the only "personality" she has. Yet in a dialogue option in TRR2, Hana describes to us how Lorelai had her perfect faux-clumsiness down to an art, so that her suitors could see her as a delicate damsel-in-distress they must rescue.

8. As a parent, Hana is hyper-aware of the impact of neglect or not giving time for her child. This shows up briefly both during the MC's pregnancy in TRH1, and in the Heir's first year. Unfortunately, this was relegated only to a handful of diamond scenes, and for the most part she was meant to echo all the other LIs. But based on what we saw her say during the pregnancy, Hana intended to be there for her child in a way Lorelai wasn't, and not project what she wants on her. Whether single or not, when Lorelai hypocritically advises the MC not to rush into a betrothal for the Heir, Hana is visibly hurt and calls her out on this, giving us an insight into the damage Lorelai's choices have wrecked on her.

When you place Hana's story in this context, and see how deep their level of control went, one cannot deny the strength it must take to survive in such an environment, forget about rebelling. And yet, this is the same environment where Hana learns to carve out little pockets of freedom for herself. Not only does she develop interests to be passionate about, she also recognizes their true value and fiercely safeguard them. One of her best scenes is the Piano scene, where she remembers - in anger - how her parents wanted to "take the first thing I ever actually enjoyed and make it theirs". She goes to the length of deliberately screwing up a performance to ensure her parents never use her skills like that again.

Another common thread one can see across the series - especially from TRR2 - is how she cultivates her interests without her parents' knowledge, just by convincing them of its usefulness in another area of interest. You see this in the library scene, as well as in several diamond scenes - where she enjoys reading material that could be scandalous but claims it is about something else (eg. Science fiction being rebranded as astronomy books). This aspect of her background is one of the few things that has survived retconning and erasure over the course of the series (and even then the narrative doesn't always handle it with care - eg. The TRH2 dossier's mention of a goth phase Hana had in her adolescence, came out of nowhere and was never truly explained).

What do these small yet significant rebellions tell us? It tells us that despite her parents' attempts to mould her in the shape of their grand vision, she still retained a fiercely creative spirit. It is this creative bent of mind that allowed her to think beyond what was merely expected of her, and it was this same creativity that kept her sane in what must have been a truly lonely childhood. That small independent streak gave her a wisdom beyond her years, and in a lot of ways (such as with her piano skills) she was able to identify, at a very young age, exactly why she had a problem with her parents' entitlement over her talents. We see this kind of emotional maturity and creative thinking even in her interactions with other courtiers, particularly when it comes to giving advice to Penelope in TRR2, or in her way of solving problems. Even before Hana is consciously aware of her parents' emotional abuse, she has already worked on ways to thrive within that restrictive framework.

Now that we have a clearer idea of the larger implications of Lorelai and Xinghai's parenting, we can now view the first two books from this lens. Because if there is any place where the books seem to even attempt charting a journey - it's in these two.

The Process of Getting Out

As I've mentioned in the beginning, Hana's parents' are referred to, throughout the first book, as a unit - with a few exceptions. We are told that they were "devastated when they didn't have any sons" and pinned all their hopes on Hana, and that the embarrassment of her broken engagement led them to send her to Cordonia in desperation. Even though we never see them or hear from them for all of TRR1, they are a strong, suffocating presence in Hana's story. We hear about their extravagant, yet out-of-depth attempts to make Hana the center of attention (her luxurious but empty yacht party, or their original idea to get Liam a bull elephant as his Coronation gift). From the MC's perspective, they start out ordinary, if a little image-conscious, and from Lythikos onwards their level of control builds and escalates until we realize, at the Coronation, just how hard on Hana they are. It's hard at first to guess this from Hana's words herself - after all, she had grown up in that environment, and most of this until now seemed normal.

What changes are three major things. One is that for the first time, her parents are not physically there, keeping track of her every move. The other is that she seems to finally make friends, rather than allies (though tbh the core-group's closeness revolves mostly around the MC). The third involves her feelings for the MC herself. The MC is clearly written in her story as a catalyst - she makes her rethink her thoughts on other women, whether she is attracted to men, even on what counts in her past as normal. If we are nice to her when we first meet, she confesses that she finds us different from every other lady she has met ("Not many girls are like you…"-"Helpful?"-"Nice"), and she witnesses us standing up for her, at a time when we're hearing about her biggest scandal. If you choose the diamond scene, even the MC telling her that break-ups are normal can be a shock to her. Moving forward, she is even more surprised by how the MC's merest touch makes her feel. As soon as the MC enters the scene, Hana's priorities shift from winning the social season to guiding the new person through this alien environment.

If you take most of her diamond scenes, the MC offers a fresh perspective on what she's been through so far (most notably in the Yacht scene where she can help Hana view the term "winning" differently). And even if you don't, she faces new experiences with the group (eg. eating messy at the beach party) and is inspired by the MC on several fronts - her independence, her carefree nature, her (if you choose the right options) effortless charm. And it is by default that the MC encourages Hana to stand up vocally for the first time, to her parents. Whether we choose to learn her childhood history or not, it is clear that by the end of the social season, Hana can clearly see how trapped she is, and she clearly wants to start making her own choices.

Yet, when her parents - threatened by their daughter's newfound "rebelliousness" - claim that Cordonia has made her headstrong and send a carriage to take her back home, she leaves without a fight. It won't be until 13 chapters later, that we actually see her finally, openly confront one of her parents.

What changes for Hana in the course of those 13 chapters, and why wasn't she able to leave the first time around? Exploring these two questions will give us an insight into the process that went behind Hana's change.

Why it's so hard for her to leave after TRR1 can be summed up in one sentence: she just isn't ready. She has spent a lifetime convinced that she is incapable of surviving on her own, and that she is beholden to her parents and their love. It is impossible to reverse that in one night, or even one social season, especially for someone who might never be hers (even in a playthrough where the MC returns Hana's feelings, the two are certain their relationship is doomed). The financial district in Shanghai is still home, and her family is still the only constant she has ever known.

For Hana to get to the point of wanting to leave, seeing the damage wrecked on her by her parents isn't enough. She has to understand that if she breaks away, she can still survive. She has to also understand that there are other ways she can live her life. And that is precisely why the engagement tour is so integral to her larger story. Unlike the social season, not only is she away from her parents, part of a friend group and in the company of a catalyst like the MC...but this time the same catalyst can (optionally) present her with real, workable alternatives.

In addition to this, the man she is paired with in this book is Neville, who is presented at the outset as undesirable (Hana refers to both him and Rashad as boring, and points out how entitled and self-absorbed he is in the Patisserie Scene). In the case of the other two men she'd been connected to (Peter and Liam), she could at least rationalize marrying/winning them as "nice men", as people she can get along with. While Peter wanted actual love from her and Liam found himself - like Hana - falling for the MC, Hana would have still, perhaps, found them acceptable choices. Not so for Neville - she can already sense what a life with him would be like from their interactions, and he is an unambiguously undesirable person. It makes it all the easier for the MC, if she chooses, to redirect Hana's attention to other possibilities.

The Patisserie Scene in TRR2 Ch 10 is largely symbolic (what with the MC linking pastries to life choices) but it is a big indication to Hana that there is a whole of universe of choices for her to pick from, and that she doesn't need to restrict herself to a path chosen for her. The "pastry personality test" the MC shows her is a fun, light activity, but it allows her to believe in a different future for once, without needing to worry about the consequences. It opens up possibilities to Hana, and gives her the hope that following a different path from what her parents envisioned, may not necessarily result in disaster. And with the presence of someone like Neville (who does represent the kind of future her parents want), it is clear that whatever was holding her back, weren't things she needed in her life in the first place. This is emphasized further in her library scene the next chapter, where she speaks of exploring new and different worlds through books. By their last day in Paris she is not only aware of how damaging her upbringing is, but also that she is no longer satisfied merely following her parents' plans. It is no wonder then, that by the time she returns home, she feels like a stranger.

Up until this point, the narrative does a rather good job of navigating Hana's trajectory. It is handled with some measure of care, and a modicum of understanding of how gradual the process (of letting go of a toxic parental relationship) is. We understand how her childhood moulded her into the person she is, and what pushes her to change. Even when theoretically, Hana is aware that her home is not a safe enough space for her, she takes time to get around to the idea of an independent life. On the surface, this is a perfect depiction of what a person emerging from an abusive parent-child relationship would look like.

But they falter massively once we actually reach Shanghai. Once Hana fights back, and leaves home, things happen pretty quickly - often in ways that center the MC and not her. And this bleeds not only into her fight with Xinghai in this book, but also in the way her story plays out from this point on.

Squandered Potential

It is important at this point to remember that the storyline with her parents is Hana's core character arc. Even if everything else in her story would inevitably be similar to the other LIs, this arc would be her own, which meant its conclusion needed to be satisfying for her. Not for the MC, and definitely not for her parents. Her. Just as Drake's duel scene was, just as Olivia's final stand-off with Anton was. If you failed with the culmination of this, you've failed with her story altogether.

And the narrative fails in every possible way from the moment Hana stands up to Xinghai. While her dialogues in this scene are powerful ("Sometimes you have to find your own way in life. No matter how hard or scary it can be. This is my life, and I need to decide what kind of future I want. Who I want to be") and perfectly sum up her overall journey, the real trigger for it is when Xinghai labels the MC a bad influence. Similarly for her next big arc culmination, which is in TRR3 Ch 15. Hana's big conflict resolution revolves not as much around calling her parents out for everything they put her through, but on proving she is useful even without a man. Which is, ultimately, for the purpose of garnering their support for the MC's wedding. Books in the TRH series tend to have some good moments, such as scenes where her parents can apologize and respect her space, or where Hana can push back when Lorelai hopes for a freer future for the Heir, or even where Hana can explain to the MC how she tries to be a better parent…but many of these are scraps flung her way, and most often only found in her LI scenes.

There are a number of factors that play into why this arc fell short. One lies in the way they structured the buildup for her conflict resolution. You will notice, in both TRR2 and 3, that the buildup is either just one dialogue squirrelled away in a larger scene, or not brought up at all. We have Hana confide in us about Neville's behaviour towards her only once before the actual confrontation scene with Xinghai, and there is zero buildup to Hana's eventual showdown with Lorelai in TRR3 at Valtoria except for a single line in her LI playthrough in TRR3, where it's vaguely implied that she sent her parents a copy of their photoshoot article through Ana de Luca. In two chapters of TRR3 there was a brief plot thread about Hana fearing that she may become as controlling as her parents, but it was dropped as soon as the Unity Tour began. To show you exactly how negligent the team was with her arc, let's take the example of Drake, whose own conflicts were even more personal in nature and even less plot-related. Drake's "Savannah reveal" was built up from Chapter 4 onwards, with new information and cryptic dialogue from Kiara and Bertrand. His duel in TRR3 was built over chapters too, starting with the Cordonian Waltz if the MC teaches him, and with him showing a marked improvement in his courtly manners over time. Even his secret wedding got buildup! Compared to this, Hana gets next to nothing.

You will also notice that in both these major arcs, the writing is tailored to benefit and center the MC. In the confrontation with Xinghai, Hana finally cracks when he targets the MC and blames her. In the ensuing diamond scene, the MC is allowed two dialogue options, of three, that center her in that confrontation ("a good friend", "hot when you're angry"). The MC also doesn't bother to check up on her in New York, where Hana is drained, miserable, almost homeless and uncertain of her future. While the narrative does attempt to fix her problem of homelessness by having the MC offer a place in Valtoria, it is never really followed through - whenever we see Hana in Valtoria in later books, she is written primarily as a visitor, and we are never shown if she's found an alternate home. Similarly, Hana's final confrontation with Lorelai in TRR3 has her proving her worth on her parents' terms. While the MC can choose to help her retrieve her beloved outfit that she made by hand with her grandmother, the overall aim of the Lorelai-Hana confrontation revolves around getting her support for the MC's wedding. Essentially, Hana's conflict with her parents is built in such a way that it only matters when it affects the MC's prospects in court. Once the MC no longer needs their public support, Hana's writers attempted to wrap her conflict up neatly, with a happy-family ending that didn't exactly address the level of abuse involved. This, in a narrative arc that had Hana's mother disown her and strip her of everything she'd ever owned just a few minutes prior.

Another factor involves the vagueness with which Xinghai and Lorelai were written, which resulted in some serious retconning and rewriting over the course of the series. They were written as a unit in the first book, and both were equally involved in forcing Hana's hand throughout the social season, and she mentions them together when she is eventually called back to China. In both Book 2 and 3, we witness several instances where they still violently wield their power over her (eg. Threatening disownment in TRR2, and actually following through with it in TRR3). But even as we were being told this, the narrative was also beginning to soften whichever parent was featuring in a particular book.

This process begins with Xinghai, who is the first parent we see and the first of the two to get a nicer edit in the books. In TRR2 Ch 2, a dialogue option in Hana's diamond scene allows the MC to compare her parents to her one-month training with Bertrand and Maxwell, an analogy that cheapens the level of abuse Hana has faced. Additionally, Hana compares her father to Bertrand, again, before they leave Paris for Shanghai, and the panda scene has him describe a sweet emotional childhood moment with Hana. In TRR3 Ch 15, and the narrative has him support Lorelai's judgement of the Hana's new life in Cordonia, but has him in a more passive role compared to Hana's mother. They also have him come around to Hana's side faster and give Lorelai occasional reminders to stay in her lane, after the family patches up. In the TRH series, Hana's childhood scene and indeed her entire background story revolves around Lorelai's decisions and actions. Xinghai is practically a non-factor in this book.

This retcon may be perhaps easier to accept than the next one, but it does come with problems that the writing doesn't bother to address. Supposing we assume that Xinghai was always meant to be kept distanced from Hana's abuse. Fine. Even in that context, it's still clear that he not only allowed it but actually believed it to be good parenting. He was never forced into his choices with Hana - he went into them fully aware of what he was doing and fully consenting to his daughter being treated that way. Yet the narrative tentatively positions him as the "good parent" to Lorelai's "bad one", without ever addressing his willingness to put his daughter in such a position for most of her life. This already poisons the well and further dilutes Hana's childhood history.

It's bad enough when one parent in this equation is excused. But TRH continues to poison this well by doing the same to Lorelai. While TRH1 establishes the tragedy of Hana's childhood years with that glimpse of her first childhood scene (the tea party where Hana plays with makeshift "toys", leaving a place for a Lorelai who clearly didn't care), the narrative wastes no time in the next book in retconning her actions as well. Hana's second childhood scene, while giving us poignant moments that show a young Hana regard her mother both with awe and fear, also lays the foundation to soften Lorelai in the narrative. The woman who once threatened to strip Hana of everything that reminded her of home, is now "protective", and "worried about her daughter's wellbeing". The mother who was "devastated not to have sons" in TRR1, is now the mother who survived a difficult childbirth and immediately felt a rush of maternal affection in TRH1. Especially in the playthrough where she is a mother, the narrative has Hana express solidarity with Lorelai and Xinghai:

Similarly, in TRF, the narrative had Hana discover that Lorelai was part of the cult Via Imperii, and charitably allowed her to react intensely to the news (she almost gets to address a block of ice as a "cold, hard bitch"). But already the narrative seems to continue pushing forward the "softened" narrative, by having Hana describe herself as "sheltered like a baby goat" (the MC, in one of the options, uses the equally inaccurate term "coddled"), and giving the MC the option to frame Lorelai's actions as "looking out for her daughter".

I cannot emphasize enough how dangerous a retcon like this, is. It takes an already-established narrative about a brown woman with controlling, emotionally abusive parents, and downplays it, over and over, until the damage is rarely ever viewed as real damage. And what's even worse is how often the story uses Hana to completely rewrite her own core conflicts. Just as she is made to lie through her teeth about Madeleine's actions during her bachelorette, she is also made to cast the parents who harmed her in a far more charitable light than they deserve.

The results of handling the abuse she endured with such a lack of seriousness, is right in front of you. In canon itself, but especially in the way fandom responds to her and characters like her. Otherwise how is it possible for us to read a story like Hana's...and view her as "weak", or "passive", or "dependent"? How is it possible for us to read "you didn't follow what we said, so we're taking even the clothes off your back" in one book, and read some version of "my parents wanted to keep me safe" in another...and not be alarmed by the difference? This is a narrative that will take the trouble to remind us of the pains and stresses of side characters, who will in fact insist we coddle them for far, far less. Yet when it stops being convenient for the MC's goals, Hana's parents' actions no longer follow the pattern laid in the first series, and the narrative uses Hana's words themselves, yet again, to rewrite the tale of her own painful childhood. To erase what she went through.

The MC

Before we wrap up this essay, it's important to briefly touch upon where the MC fits in all this. The MC is in the unique position of both benefiting off the back of Hana's tortured past (all the skills that Hana learned, after all, came from her controlling, restrictive, cloistered environment), and being the catalyst for her change. This allows her to be the MC's guide while still placing her on a pedestal. Just as the MC is the antithesis to Madeleine in the courts, in Hana's story she is viewed as the antithesis to her parents. They trap her in their ideal of a perfect life, she encourages Hana to pursue her freedom. They view her as a failure, the MC admires her skills and talent. They try to take her home away from her, the MC (initially) gives her a home to stay in. She is essentially meant to be the wife that will care for Hana without confining her to a fixed role, or the friend who inspired her to find her own path.

But the trouble here is that the narrative expects us to believe this...but doesn't adequately work on the MC's end of this bargain. She often puts the needs and feelings of the people who have harmed Hana over Hana herself. As Queen/Duchess she continues to benefit from Hana's hard work, without actually putting in much effort from her end. Often she remembers events from Hana's life as painful only when someone else is going to through a similar situation. In some dialogue options she centers herself in Hana's parental conflicts, and rarely bothers to check on Hana when the latter is in a state of turmoil (eg. The day after Hana's first fight with Xinghai, or after Hana's diagnosis in TRH1).

And it's not like the MC is incapable of proper support to everyone. After all, this is the same MC that was given the space to comfort a devastated Drake after he acted out during an investigation, or who could repeatedly tell women like Olivia and Madeleine that "looking for help" didn't make them weaker or that they "should put themselves first". This was the same MC who could comfort Maxwell for most of TRH3, and include him in her investigation just to placate him. The only difference was...in all these cases the MC was given the chance to back her vocal support up with action. That is very often not the case with Hana.

As long as the MC stands to benefit from this story (through her skills, through her placing the MC on a pedestal, or even through her connections with her parents), TRR takes care in the way they write Hana. We see this already in how her growth away from her parents is charted in the first two books, in how her first scenes combine imparting skills with her personal history. But as soon as she loses her home and her family, the same narrative begins to get careless, begins to "forget" vital information about the family's treatment of her, begins to prioritize literally anyone else over the one woman who stood by the MC's side all along and who for once would need her complete, unconditional support.

This also ties back to the overarching theme of the last two essays, which is power dynamics. Hana is neither isolated nor controlled by the MC, but her story is constantly made to accommodate, time and again, the MC's comfort - often in ways that should harm her. The MC's equation with Hana is still a power imbalance, just masked and softened by the illusion of friendship. Unlike Hana's parents, the MC isn't interested in moulding Hana into her idea of perfection, and in fact encourages her to embrace chaos, embrace the mess, discover who she is and what she really wants out of life. Yet the hard facts are that, like every other LI, Hana is meant to follow her wherever she goes, and live life on the MC's terms. And while one may argue this is the case with every LI, we must remember that no other LI has touched the depths of sheer powerlessness the way Hana has.

The MC is still more powerful despite being less competent, and fails on numerous occasions to truly support Hana. And it is clear by now that the narrative wants Hana to be less powerful, less valued, and less worthy of real, consistent validation. Making Hana the sweet, forgiving child of two extremely controlling parents, allows us to normalize this other equation. It allows us, the audience, to be grateful alongside Hana, for the MC's spirit, her presence and her friendship/love...without ever having to consider whether Hana benefits even half as much, from the same relationship.

Next : Protagonist Centered Sexuality

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #long post

[lizzybeth1986]

China, Cordonia and "Home" 

(Go here to read the rest of the "Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure" series!)

Previous: Protagonist Centered Sexuality

"If you write about the Asian culture, be accurate between what is the difference between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Thai, Taiwanese, Indonesian, and many individual Asian countries' cultures. While there are many similarities, the differences in cultures will set your novel apart from what is an authentic portrayal to what is a westernized version." - Kaitlin Gow, on Asian Portrayals in the Media

Daryl: You got some balls for a Chinaman.

Glenn: I'm Korean!

Daryl: Whatever.

(two seasons later)

Merle: I nearly killed the Chinese kid.

Daryl: He's Korean!

Merle: Whatever, man.

— The Walking Dead.

Now, over four years after this series began, it's almost impossible for some of us to envision Hana as any ethnicity besides Chinese (or more specifically, Shanghainese). But that wasn't always the case.

Back in TRR1, Hana's origins and ethnicity were a subject of regular debate. "Asian" was a popular guess even back then, and "where is Hana from" was a question asked often. All the fandom could glean from canon at that point was that she was "new to Cordonian society" (TRR1 Ch 6), that it was possible she could have grown up in Europe (Olivia's comment about the other court ladies being from the "best families in Europe" seemed to imply this) and most of her education seemed very European-based (the description of the young girls she associated with, the skills she teaches us). And while usually the fandom tends to look out for a character's appearance, surname and dialogue to figure out their ethnicity, it wasn't quite as easy, in Hana's case.

And the reason for that, of course, is that for a very long time the writers themselves  didn't seem to know...or even care.

Ambiguous (and Sometimes Interchangeable) Asian

It's not just that TRR1 has zero indication of Hana's home, despite "home" being mentioned often in her story. It's not just that most of the cultural markers of her foreignness still revolved around European mores. It was in the way they conceptualized her too. For instance, if you look at the original label for Hana's own sprite, this is what you will find:

(Zoom picture for more clarity)

"Female_ambigious_lady_sweet". Sure, sprite labels aren't exactly accurate with regards to any character in this series (eg. Maxwell's sprite which had elements of a character from MW, was labelled "Middle Eastern", and Savannah's, "South Asian"), but it says a lot that Hana was termed "ambiguous" from the time they created her.

The other indicator is her own name.

Hana is a name used in multiple languages (with a variation in pronunciations) - in Croatian, Slovakian and Czech languages it is a variation of the name Hannah, in certain other languages it's used as a variation of Jane or Johanna. It also seems to have other meanings in Moari (shine) and Arabic (happiness). Among Asian countries, Hana means "flower" in Japanese, and the number one in Korean. But if you try to find a Chinese meaning for this name on Google, it will redirect you to other languages like the ones above, or to an appropriate Chinese word, huā (same character as the one used for "flower"). It would perhaps be hard to find someone Chinese with that name, unless we were to presume it's a Western name to appeal to European courts. But even then, we as readers are the ones putting in the work and the thought here, not the writers.

Lee is used in a lot of places as a surname, including England and Ireland. In a different way, you will find it and its variations in other Asian countries like Korea (Lee) and Vietnam (Lý) - the origin of both come from the Chinese character, which is the same as that for "plum tree". Lí is the Pinyin romanisation of the Chinese character 李, and often used as a surname in mainland China. From what I've read, the romanization of "Lee" - if used at all in China - is used in certain places (like Hong Kong) and certain regions (like Macau and Taiwan), and in these places Cantonese seems to be the main language (though Cantonese uses the romanization "Lei"). Shanghai, Hana's eventual home city, has Mandarin (and before that, Shanghainese) as its main language, and the romanization that seems to be used for this language is Lí.

One may presume that she was originally intended to be Chinese, that her given name could have been more in line with the practice of having a name that could be more accessible to Western culture...but tbh at this point it's the readers who are working way harder at filling in the gaps left behind by canon, than her own writers.

Given the total ambiguity before the end of TRR1, Hana Lee would have probably fit in as a native of South Korea, or even brought up in Hong Kong. Neither of these names point specifically to Shanghai or China, not unless the readers themselves were developing headcanons and family trees to fill in the blanks.

When we look at how she is represented in the story itself, we'll find that while she is established as a newcomer to Cordonia, the writing steers clear of any indications of where her home is. The word "home" itself comes up many times in her dialogue, but never the place name itself. In TRR1 alone, there is only one thing that seems to vaguely point in the direction of Asia at all, and we see it in Ch. 18 during the gift-giving ceremony at Liam's Coronation Ball. We never get to see what Hana's gift to Liam is, but she does tell us what her parents proposed to send him:

Again, elephants can be found in a whole range of places, but the stories of sending one as a gift are ones you will often find in Asia (eg. the idiom "white elephant", which is often used to describe a gift that is impractical to the point of becoming burdensome to the receiver, originates from a story about the king of Siam). In every other place where Hana could have mentioned where she came from, they made her use terms like "home" or "where I come from". An example of this is the conversation at the ruins in Ch. 13, where Hana can say, "I've visited ruins around where I'm from, and they're just as beautiful as these".

In a lot of ways, TRR1 was already writing her in the Ambiguous Asian/Ambiguous Brown mould, making her the exotic foreigner who could teach the MC the mores of European high society, while still being "Other" enough to be "saved" by MC, and therefore put her on a pedestal.

Shanghai

Our first real indication of Hana's ethnicity wasn't even from the books - it was from Twitter canon. If we were to chart this by date, the finale of TRR1 came out on August 18th, 2017, and the confirmation of (half of) her ethnicity came over a week later, on the 25th:

The second book of the series came out almost a month later, on September 22nd. And, conveniently enough, the setting is a world tour that has China as a stop. This is how Maxwell frames it in the very first chapter:

I won't say a lot about the other places we visited in the engagement tour for now - besides the observation that we spent the most time in Paris (4 chapters!), which revolved mostly around Drake reuniting with his sister (though significant progress was also made in the investigation). We will focus instead on Shanghai, which PB tells us is the city where Hana grew up. It's referred to only twice before we go there: once in the Ch. 2 Hot Chocolate scene, where Hana can tell us about the dumplings she liked eating "back home", and then just the chapter before reaching there - which is literally just to say, "hey, our next stop is Shanghai! And btw, that's where Hana's parents live!".

In contrast, the buildup for the Savannah reveal in Paris in TRR2 (Ch. 8) begins in Applewood (Ch. 4) with Kiara's conversation with Drake, and is preceded by Bertrand's confession in Italy (Ch.5). The buildup for NY involves an entire scene where the MC prepares Hana for the uniqueness of her city. Even Italy, which features something for all three main LIs, is built up through a diamond scene about the language. In contrast, while the scenes Hana gets in Paris are her best ever in that book, none of them actually build up to her home Shanghai itself (not even the library scene, which could have included something from China, not just Jane Austen, Emily Bronte and TCaTF! Why weren't we learning about manhuas here? If Chinese literature wasn't allowed for her, why wasn't she specifying that or even telling us about her reading those books as a small rebellion??)

Keeping that in mind, let's look at how Shanghai itself is written. Unlike Italy and NY which got 3 chapters each, Shanghai had only 2. But it's still possible that in those 2 chapters we'd have plenty of background material about Hana, right? Right??

(Hana's and Liam's confrontations not featured)

Let's take a look at certain prominent scenes, on the basis of scene-time and involvement from - as well as focus on - Hana. You have two major arc culmination moments that belong to Liam and Hana, and a couple of scenes with some level of local flavour:

Confrontation with Constantine (free) - If we add the buildup at the dinner, it clocks up to 7 minutes total. This is supposed to be Liam's big moment, where he not only confronts Constantine but calls him out on his harmful choices and commands him to help the MC, if indeed he cannot publicly accept responsibility.

Confrontation with Xinghai (free) - We must keep in mind that this portion is the dramatic end to a series of things that happen in the teahouse - the tea service itself, the update on the investigation into Tariq's whereabouts, the start of a sympathy arc for Madeleine via a personal chat with her mother, and short buildup to the Western Lake diamond scene for Liam. Hana's arc culmination scene itself is 4 minutes, tops. It's short and powerful, but this is in spite of the lack of buildup and real exploration into how her family's been forcing her re: Neville, not because of it. And you'll find this to be a pattern among a lot of her powerful moments. They're powerful even though the writing does them - and Hana herself - a disservice. It doesn't help either that the MC herself doesn't seem to show a lot of concern by default, either after this sequence or in NY when Hana is missing for an entire chapter.

Food Trails (one free, one diamond): One area that seems to have some level of research done on it. By that I mean they looked up the names of street foods popular to Shanghai and their descriptions, and had Hana say those lines. At dinner, we're shown a crispy noodle tower with steamed bell peppers which also resembles certain Southeast Asian dishes with a Chinese influence (in fact PM shows us the exact same dish and calls it i fu mie, which is from Indonesia). The street market scene names popular Shanghainese delicacies such as xiaolongbao and shansi leng mian. Shanghainese cuisine seems to lean more on the sweeter side, so we see that for some of the foods besides the rou jia mo that Drake samples.

It's a pity, however, that the center of both these scenes isn't Hana at all - it's Drake. The crispy noodle scene is about his biases against gourmet food, and learning that the food is worthy of his tastes (literally. The framing isn't "I was wrong and maybe I shouldn't judge food from cultures I'm not familiar with", it's "well, this met my standards"). The street market diamond option may use Hana as the "face" of the scene, but it really is about Maxwell and Drake patching up, with Maxwell playing around with food and utensils to grab Drake's attention, and with Drake finally talking to Maxwell again. Which is stupid because this fight itself was over a non-issue, and honestly should have been resolved chapters ago. Instead it is presented here as a way for Drake to chew scenery, while Hana is made to act more like a tour guide than our friend showing us her home.

This scene lasts 7 minutes, of which maybe 2-3 minutes go into Olivia being a part of the group and insulting the place and the food before she enjoys her own xiaolongbao, and the rest of which goes into the resolution of this fight.

Hangzhou West Lake (diamond): This is a Liam-centric scene of 7 minutes (9 with the sex scene), and largely explores themes related to the new revelation about Liam's father, and his admiration for the MC's strength and survival. Throughout this tour, and indeed throughout the series, Liam has been established as a bit of a historian who loves the stories and symbolism behind monuments, so it's not altogether surprising he was given this scene.

It is, however, the one time I feel the scene should have gone to someone else, or that Hana got a parallel one. The only legend we openly hear about in this story comes from him - of the koi fish that don't give up until they reach the Dragon's Gate. While the myth of dragon koi originates from China's Yellow River, it is one that seems popular in other Asian countries (Japan and Vietnam, but Korea also has koi legends). Hangzhou West Lake itself has its own love legend - that of Lady White Snake. This legend never features.

Even if this place couldn't be given to Hana, it would have been far better if they allowed her to show us another famous place, regaling us with its folklore and her own private experiences. Shanghai has many that one can choose from - both traditional and modern.

Jade Cufflinks (diamond): This is a tiny shopping scene (approx 2 mins), preceded by an equally small scene about outfits modelled on traditional cheongsams. Pleased with Liam's gift of a pearl bracelet, the MC thinks of giving him a gift in return, and Hana recommends engraved jade cufflinks. The cultural aspect is more implied than said - jade is, after all, a symbolically-rich gemstone in Chinese culture. However, this scene, like others, is not even about her as it is about Liam, and there is more focus on the Cordonian coat of arms than on the stone. Which is alright, but that also means that the scene makes use of Hana again without actually letting her benefit.

Traditional outfits: This one is just before the jade cufflinks scene, and is another very small scene. We see Hana wearing a black traditional outfit with intricate embroidery, and red and gold detailing around the collar. It's not given as much importance in this book, and is more an opening to the MC's diamond red outfit. Both outifts were designed and made personally by Hana (with some help in the designing aspect), and in fact the beautiful red outfit that we wear is titled "Hana's Heart" in the description. We are told nothing else about either outfits, but the next book does give us a small nugget of personal history behind her black one.

Tea Service (free): China is known for its tea culture and esp its tea houses, that are often hubs for political and cultural discussions. Hana herself tells us that going to a teahouse was often a reward for a good lesson, so there is some symbolic value to her standing up to her parents to a place she could only visit if she obeyed. Serving tea here is an art in itself (and I feel like the method they were going for was the gong fu cha one) involving many steps including "warming the utensils", the first round of tea which is for the recipients to appreciate the scent of the tea leaves rather than drinking, and a second which is when the tea is ready to drink, etc. The narrative does show a simplified version of this (there is no mention of people smelling the tea, or of warming the vessels with hot water. In fact I don't know if they mention anything besides the teapot and the cups. Btw I found the Tea House Ghost a pretty incredible resource to that goes into detail about gong fu cha), as a backdrop for the group's conversations.

What's interesting is that Hana is not even with the group here, as the narrative has her sit with her father, Neville and Rashad. This is a narrative choice that makes sense - after all the dramatic finish of this scene is Hana's fight with Xinghai. Yet, in the larger context of never getting the opportunity to show us her city on a personal level, the teahouse scene is another example of a scene that explores a culture but writes out the character that has a personal connection to it. So we see the ritual filtered through the view of the mostly-white characters, who either misinterpret its steps (Maxwell), or use that opportunity to extol their own culture (Olivia, though she compliments the tea and instead mocks the MC for liking "teabags", another knock on her social class).

Buying Champagne (diamond): Funny enough? This scene isn't about Hana's home at all. It's about the MC's. The MC gets to introduce her home with the kind of detail not allowed to Hana, and paint it as a place that is different and perhaps better than all the places they've been to so far - including her own home. Besides buying something that would gain us yet another ally, that's the main focus for this scene. What's even worse is that this is the only individual scene Hana ever got in Shanghai. And it wasn't even about her.

Panda Reserve (diamond) - if you buy the extended scene it lasts approx 15 mins including buildup (10 mins if you don't buy). The diamond scene itself involves all the LIs - Liam being adorable with pandas, Drake being wary of them, Maxwell gushing over them and Hana making things out of bamboo for them.

The scene itself has new art, and unlike every other scene I've mentioned about, actually has a personal Hana-related story that is given some level of narrative weight (even though that story does serve to soften Xinghai himself a fair bit). "The bamboo groves" were used to describe the place before we went on the tour, and pandas are the only real lasting memory after (Maxwell refers to this visit when telling us why he got us red pandas). In a lot of ways, of all the scenes I've listed so far, this is the only one intended to create a lasting impression of sorts.

Shanghai should have been treated differently. This was Hana's home. This was the place she likely spent all of her childhood and most of her young adult life growing up in. What we should have been seeing was her house, her childhood haunts, places that made her feel safe and happy. Folk tales she grew up on, local traditions she may have participated in (I mean, isn't this stop at the tour during the time of a festival?). And if for some nonsensical reason the writers wanted to alienate her from her own city, don't brush that aside like it means nothing.

An overall exploration of these two chapters in Shanghai, coupled with the only callbacks being the pets in TRR3, leads us to one shocking conclusion: Shanghai/China didn't seem to be chosen with Hana herself in mind. It seems to have been chosen more for the novelty factor of meeting a few giant pandas, since that is the one thing that we are even allowed to remember after these two chapters are over.

Additionally, while the team may have done some amount of research on the individual components of the scenes, they definitely failed in their overall research on the city itself. A glaring example of this, is this line from Hana's McDermots scene:

Funny enough, if you do even a basic Google search with the word Shanghai, you'll find dozens of articles (including its own Wiki page) that call the city an international hub, a metropolis, "classified as an Alpha+ city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network". Research of this level would only take two minutes at most. Yet somehow, the team thought it was appropriate to use an inhabitant of that city itself, to call it ancient...just to make the MC's home city sound superior. And while some may claim that the dialogue may be about how long Shanghai and Cordonia have "been around", the last line shows that she is clearly talking about the feel and aesthetics of these places. (On the other hand, with this context you can maybe see why a lot of the background art for the Shanghai chapters seemed to show it in a particularly "foreign", "exotic" light, and none of them - besides a hospital and a restaurant - actually show a city background). It's even more baffling when you remember that Hana and her family live closer to the "big financial district". Neither Luijazui nor the Bund (which, from what I read, seems to be the older financial hub) seem to fit the description that Hana is giving her natal home in this scene.

From this, we can pretty much work out a pattern of how Hana is written in a place PB claims is her home. What the narrative essentially does, is explore the city like it's just a tourist location - similar in pattern to Italy and Paris - but keep Hana so separate from it that we see it only as "a stop in the itinerary", and not as her home.

Erasing Shanghai

Once Hana leaves home for good, we never see the city again, and it's very rarely ever referenced. If one observes Hana's scenes - esp the LI scenes post TRR3 Ch. 9 - closely, one will notice the predominance of European traditions and fairy tales in some of her scenes (with the exception, perhaps, of the martial art form Mara suggests for her: judo, which is from Japan). At the Costume Gala, Hana shows us a tradition from her (presumably maternal) great-great-grandmother's time that involves throwing a gold, silver and copper coin into a fountain, to signify the importance of friendship, love and belonging. In the ice room at Lythikos, LI!Hana tells us a fairy tale reminiscent of The Snow Queen. She is constantly equated to fairy tales (eg. Her gift to the MC is a customized blue slipper, definitely symbolic of the MC's "Cinderella-like" rise to power) but those fairy tales are mostly derived from European folk traditions.

On the other hand, TRR3 speaks of Shanghai only twice before Hana's mother Lorelai's entry, and in both cases it's in the chapters just before she appears. Only one of these two scenes is for free - where Maxwell can present the MC with red pandas, while recalling their visit to the panda reserve in the previous book.

(Interestingly, Hana is the one to name these two animals, and the names she gives them come from other Asian countries - Iniya means sweet in several Indian languages, and Pabu seems to mean "puff-ball" in Tibetan. Given the history between Tibet and China, I'm also not sure her giving the red panda a Tibetan name was the wisest choice)

The other instance Shanghai is mentioned, is in TRR3 Ch 13, in the diamond scene where you tour the estate - if you're marrying Hana. Even then, it's a mere mention of Lorelai growing up in Cordonia before moving to Shanghai post marriage. Interestingly enough - for someone who has probably spent 20+ years living in China, and for a person who will eventually become the more prominent parental figure in Hana's character history, Lorelai herself is written in a way that she never acknowledges the place, nor do we get to know much about her natal home which would have been Hana's one connect to Cordonia before the events of TRR1.

TRR3 Ch 15 does try to cobble together some sort of backstory for Hana's traditional outfit, but only as buildup to a "fun" diamond scene:

Once she retrieves the outfit from her mother, with the MC's (optional) help, the history behind it becomes a non-factor almost immediately, and the focus pivots straight back to the MC needing the Lee family's support.

This outfit, perhaps, was perhaps our first indicator of how TRH would erase Hana's Chinese heritage - except it was hidden so well you could hardly notice it unless you were looking at multiple playthroughs. If you don't buy this scene, the story will feature it only once by default (at the wedding, if you aren't marrying her). After that, you never see it again - at the TRR3 finale, she doesn't get to choose between this outfit and her Costume Gala springtime gown, and in TRH Ch. 4 (the last time this outfit ever appears) it is replaced by the short black dress Hana wore for her bachelorette.

This may seem like an insignificant point, if we did not take in the context of the scene where we take the dress back. That outfit was one of her last links back to her natal home, and was the treasured last reminder she had of her Chinese grandmother. Taking this dress away from her meant that symbolically, Hana was being stripped of everything she called her own. In the light of Lorelai's apology later on in the same chapter, the outfit should have been given back to Hana by default, yet making it disappear completely after her parents return to China makes it look as though they realized their mistakes yet took that outfit, and all its rich personal history, with them anyway! Yet the TRR3 Ch. 15 diamond scene is coded such that you'll never see it again after the wedding, and by default it disappears completely after TRH1 Ch 4.

This is hardly the only indication of Hana having her Chinese heritage erased. In TRH, almost no mentions are made of her home city or home country. In Book 1 there is a heavy focus, again, on the European-influenced skills she grew up learning like horseriding and dainty tea parties. We see this even in her childhood scenes, that show her practicing teatime English-style with inanimate objects, and where her mother focuses on preparing her for her debut in English courts, and teaches her Cordonian dances. In the movie based on Maxwell's book, the production team whitewashes Hana by casting a far-fairer skinned Asian actress, Cassandra Leigh. Even the dossier that Amalas compiles on her, lists Cordonian Societies she has a connection to and a goth phase, but not a single word about the place where she grew up.

Also, similar to how Hana is sometimes made to invoke something from other Asian countries (like the martial art form or the names for red pandas) in other books, we see her take the MC out on a sushi date in TRH2 because the MC misses having fish. In fact, we even see a return to the kind of language she used to describe her home in TRR1:

(JUST SAY SHANGHAI FFS!!!!)

These vague indications are, frighteningly enough, a constant in the story. In the few times Hana speaks of her upbringing or growing years, the name of the place never comes up, and furthermore the writing tries to make her sound as if she always grew up among nobility without explaining why there would be so many European nobles hanging around Shanghai (eg. in TRH2 Ch 11, Hana talks of how, "even as a noble" she did not spend much time in the public eye until she got to Cordonia. Even if this was in reference to her introduction to European royal courts, it doesn't make sense that a foreigner wouldn't catch press attention). The book continues the practice of assuming her home city to be "ancient" - in the screenshot above, Hana even implies that Cordonia is more modern.

Out of all the books in the series so far, we see only one example of anything Chinese - and that's in the finale of TRR2, if you're not married to her and if you buy the library for the house in Valtoria:

Featuring manhua in this book was a pleasant surprise, since not only is manhua a Chinese form of comic art, its debut in the 1920s also came about in a Shanghai magazine! (as written in the book Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn, by John. A. Crespi). It was indeed heartening that in the middle of all the European-style skillsets, and rebellions featuring science fiction and Emily Brontë, that the narrative allowed her a moment to indulge in something from her home. Unfortunately, it's the only moment of its kind, and that's not a good thing in a book that constantly shied away from even naming her home city and erased every possible mention of the time we visited it. It almost seems like - once we won the favour of her parents - the narrative wanted Hana to magically turn back into the "ambiguous Asian" that she was at the beginning of the series. And given that TRR2 didn't ever allow us to view Shanghai purely from her perspective, there is really no word to call it but erasure.

Hana's Cordonian Background

Since we've established how Hana's Chinese roots have been treated in the narrative, it would help to look also at how her maternal background is explored. One could claim that perhaps the foreign connection was diluted so that her more Cordonian connections could gain some focus, but is that really what happens in the story?

One cannot say for certain whether Hana's family connection to Cordonia was planned from the start. The narrative ensures we assume that her parents are her sponsors, living in some other country and keeping themselves updated via the news. We never see any other family during her time in Cordonia, and all the things done to make her stand out during the social season (the fancy yacht party at the Regatta, the opulent carriage during Coronation Ball) have their direct involvement and no one else's. In fact, we never even get to know about her mother's Cordonian roots until TRR2 Ch. 12, when Justin informs the MC that Hana's mother is from a minor noble house in Cordonia. We do not hear more about this estate or noble house in this book, as the narrative had Lorelai conveniently written out of the Shanghai chapters by having her attend "festivities" (we're never told what festivities) when her daughter is visiting.

In TRR3, the book where we get to see the sigils and house colours of a number of provinces, including Lythikos, we don't still don't get to know much about the house Hana's mother came from. Between this book and TRH, we might glean only these things about Hana's maternal home:

1. An old lover's ritual that involves tossing a gold, silver and copper coin into a fountain could come from this region. Hana refers to it as a Cordonian ritual, but she also mentions it as one from her "great-grandmother's time" and the MC has the option of referring to it as a local legend as well. Vague, but one can infer it to be a ritual from her mother's place.

2. In TRH1, Ch. 3, one of the Lythikos children hands Hana a flower necklace with a pattern modelled on "the Lee family crest". Again, the confusion here lies in how TRR handles surnames (Walker, for instance, is used for both Drake's mother Bianca and aunt Leona, as well as his father Jackson), but one can infer this crest to belong to her mother's house, since her father is referred to as a businessman rather than someone with any relation to nobility.

3. Lorelai's bedtime fairytales may or may not be specific to her home - we honestly do not know. But since the only source for them is Lorelai herself, one may assume that these tales may have come from there (a stretch, sure, but stretches like these are all we are allowed when it comes to Hana).

Besides these vague hints, we know absolutely nothing. We have never seen the place. We don't know if she has relatives there. We have no idea what its culture and influences are, nor its geography or people. We don't even know its name!

Why do I see this as important, and therefore the double-negligence as unforgivable? Because even though she seems to have comfortably settled in Cordonia, we never have a clear idea where she lives or whether she feels a sense of belonging there, unless she is married to the MC! The MC may have offered her a room in Valtoria before TRR2 ended, but post wedding whenever Hana features, she looks more like she is visiting the estate than living there. We don't even have a real clue where she does live, which is not the case for any other LI in the books who have established living places from before (Liam in his palace, Drake possibly in his palace room as well, Maxwell in Ramsford). For a person whose story was not only about self-discovery but also finding a sense of belonging, not meeting that need in her "single" playthrough is an awful reminder that nothing in Hana's story is written with her in mind.

Home

Hana is the only foreigner in the group besides the MC, the only character with no physical history connected to Cordonia, and the only one to leave her former home in the course of the story and start over completely. In my previous essays I have mentioned how Hana's connection with Cordonia makes her an asset to the MC in terms of knowledge, yet her foreignness makes her relatable because she understands the MC's alienation. Yet, as this essay has established so far, she is the only character who seems to stay essentially rootless, if the MC does not marry her.

It's not as if the narrative has her perfectly fit in the moment she comes to Cordonia. There are clearly certain aspects of the country that catch her by surprise, or that she has little more than academic knowledge of. For instance, she is as taken aback by the taste of the Cordonian Ruby apple as the MC (to the point where she cannot even mask her shock). In TRH2, when the group visit the Castle Thorngate at Castelserraillian, Hana's perspective is heavy on the history of the place, while the other three talk about visiting there and the games they played. Hana speaks - more often in her married playthroughs than in her single one - of Cordonia as the place that she now considers home. However, a lot of this focus on home seems to revolve around her relationship with the MC (which is why she gets to say this more if she's married), and none of it actually attempts to figure out what that home would look like if she wasn't married to her.

It is interesting how - for a character who started out with a foot in two worlds - the old one that belonged to her parents and the new one where she would find the MC and, possibly, herself - the narrative did very little work on exploring those feelings, or even in seeing those places from her perspective. Her birth home, Shanghai, was viewed only as a tourism destination with the pandas being the most important aspect of the visit, and her mother's estate hasn't even been given a name. We don't even know where she lives when she isn't with us.

One may assume that this is the case with all LIs, but that would not be true. Drake, for instance, is identified as half-American in the first book itself, which leads the MC to make an impromptu birthday outing for him at a cowboy-themed bar. We're given story after story after story about his father's love of the simple life and later, his mother's ranch, to the point where he is given his own special "country-themed" wedding before his official one, and his sister's wedding at Walker Ranch leads to a whopping nine chapters spent in Texas. The country culture and vibes are explored in excruciating detail, to the point where we find this group of nobility fall over themselves to make sure they satisfy their hosts' "country tastes".

Finding a sense of home is explored heavily in Drake's playthrough, in a manner very different from Hana's. He is someone who chooses not to fit in, who chooses to stay in a place that makes him so unhappy. He has grown up in the palace and has people there that he has been close to for years, yet the narrative never misses the chance to explore how out-of-place he feels. Drake speaks of having a room in the palace, yet never feeling like he belonged there, and this thread is explored all the way from TRR3 to TRH2. We are even told that Liam encouraged him to find an apartment because he knew how uncomfortable Drake was in the palace, yet Drake stayed because he wanted to "look out for Liam". The narrative focuses heavily on his sense of alienation and tries to ensure that his arc culmination involves him being settled, comfortable and accepted for who he is. What's more - the narrative writes this in a way that ensures that Drake benefits from this storyline, and not the MC - whereas anything in Hana's storyline that doesn't directly benefit the MC is rarely considered worth exploring.

Seeing home explored in such a way in the case of Drake, who at least grew up in this place and had friends, makes the raw truth of what Hana did not get, even more stark.

Another example comes to us from an unlikely source - TRR 2.0, the version of the first book that had revamped the first four chapters. One of the many changes made to this book was to allow the MC to openly express homesickness, but the other foreigner in the court - Hana - doesn't even get any substantial extra scenes. In fact, the narrative even forgets that canonically, Hana arrived in Cordonia before the MC did and would have appeared at the gates with the other ladies. It allows the MC her feelings about coming to a new country for the first time but never even considers that Hana Lee may be going through a similar conflict.

This is not limited to the LIs and MC. Even side characters who have lived in Cordonia get more focus on their homes, and their relationships to these places, than Hana does. We have seen every other duchy at least thrice. Olivia's duchy Lythikos has been shown to us numerous times in the series - including being the center of a 5-chapter holiday-themed book called The Royal Holiday. Not only do the books deal with Olivia's discomfort at how her family is seen, and her need for friendship - it also explores the winter traditions that Lythikos is known for, whether it's the trees that shed poisonous sap or blood hymns, the writers took a huge amount of effort to build this image of Lythikos as a society of survivors. It clearly involved a lot of work: planning, research, writing, art.

Yet somehow they couldn't be bothered to give the one place Hana had roots in, in Cordonia, a name, nor did they place even half that effort on an already existing, real-life place.

A possible argument for the latter situation at least...is that the team may not have known enough about China or Shanghai, and may have been reluctant to step on the toes of people who did. It is possible - though the head writers of TRR both have Chinese ethnicity, there exists the possibility that they may not have grown up in the environment or known a lot about the place. Even so - if it was a case of not knowing the place well enough, why choose a country you don't know, and don't want to do proper research for? Because a city that's capable of moving entire buildings with the help of robot walkers, isn't one that anybody in their right mind would call "ancient".

Another possible argument is that the lack of exposure esp in Shanghai makes sense for Hana, since her parents did mostly try to isolate her. The lazer-focus on European mores could be put down to how badly her parents wanted her to succeed in those courts. Yet this argument wouldn't take into account that she is familiar enough with Shanghai to know her way around, is very familiar with the language, and has even consumed steeet food. She clearly was able to engage with familiar society and people there.

If we were to chart how Hana's identity is viewed in the series, it would go something like this - Hana is an Ambiguous Brown/Asian foreigner in TRR1. The narrative then tells us she is half-Chinese in TRR2, but only for a handful of chapters before beginning to erase this part of her identity. There is more importance given to the exotic animals they see in China, than there is to her own Chinese identity. Once we are done viewing China as some...idk...ancient-era source of entertainment, we don't even mention its name. The other part of her identity - the Cordonian one - is invisible. She is allowed to speak about having a sense of home and belonging, but only if the MC chooses to marry her.

It goes without saying how harmful this level of carelessness is. Representation isn't just about slapping an ethnicity onto a character and calling it a day - where that character comes from - especially if they grew up someplace other than the story's location - is central to who they are. Often, their place of origin determines how they view home, how they view their identity - and leaving it can be both a painful and an eye-opening process. Hana was eventually uprooted from hers in an incredibly painful way, yet the narrative never seems to examine her origins, her struggle to find herself or even her foreignness, for her. Hell - we don't even know for sure where she stays if she's single.

And it isn't as if the team didn't know how to center a character in their own fight for identity - they managed to do so for Drake, even at the cost of the story.

It is also harmful because among the many awful stereotypes Asian characters tend to be saddled with, is the one that treats Asians themselves as a monolith. Which is why when a Korean actor is called in to play the role of a Chinese character, it promotes the view that Asians can be seen as interchangeable and there is no value to those individual cultures as they are. Brian X Chen, in his NY times article "The Cost of Being an Interchangeable Asian" speaks of the largely demoralizing impact of these assumptions in the real world, therefore highlighting the harm of representation that doesn't see that individual identity as worth proper, researched representation. Hana may have been established as Chinese in canon, but the narrative works far, far harder at erasing that part of her, than it ever did on exploring her own identity.

Hana - the woman with the Japanese first name, Korean surname, "ambiguous" body sprite, Chinese home and European education - is never even allowed a deep dive into her identity even when it would have benefited the story. And that is because her struggle to carve her own identity...was never treated as her story in the first place.

After 9 full essays on almost every aspect of Hana, one thing is clear. Not a single thing about Hana's characterization, was ever built by her writers with Hana in mind.

Next: Skills vs Passions: What is the Difference?

#long post #hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #one more essay left in this series!

[lizzybeth1986]

LI!Hana and Friend!Hana

(Read the entire Hana Lee A Study in Erasure series here!)

Previous: A Book by Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part Two

In choice-driven stories like PB's, characters tend to come in tiers. At the top, is usually the MC - it is, after all, their story and is told from their point of view. It's about their growth, it's about them finding their place in whichever environment the story throws them into.

The LIs come next, especially in romantic stories. Very often, the stories are as much about them as about the MC, and in many cases the main LI is why we even have the story in the first place. Often, they are regarded as co-protagonists. Following them are the various side characters who are an integral part of the environment but not romancing the MC, and then the recurring characters. While they may get their own arcs, the priority is usually meant to be given to the LIs and MC first.

Since LIs are subject to the MC's choice, it makes sense that the narrative makes space for their dialogue and actions to be determined by the MC's. It also makes sense that their stories would be written in a way that fits for two diverging situations - one where they are the MC's endgame, and one where they're not. PB's earliest books didn't always have the coding to support these divergences, but as the fandom and the company grew, they were able to accommodate them…at least for the LIs they really liked.

However, one thing that has sadly remained a constant, is how female LIs (specifically - darker skinned WOC and black women) and often male COCs tend to get the short end of the stick in every possible way. Some have been introduced late/given attention late into the story (Leah/LH, Sloane/PM, Ava/MFTL), not properly integrated into the story or written out (Jackie/OH, Shane/Platinum), or just written to be the best friend character with very little thought to their romantic one. Sometimes such characters even have more focus on alterative romances than their own romances with the MC (Luke/D&D gets an elaborate story with Annabelle's sister in the final book, but you don't even get to see his mother if you're going to be his wife). Very often, it is painfully obvious which playthrough of theirs the teams are writing for.

In TRR, you can tell by now that this character is Hana. We have now known her, and the rest of the gang, for seven books. Some of us have known her as a lover, then as a spouse and co-parent...some of us have known her as the friend that the MC could always count on. And very few, like me, have actually spent these seven books following the trajectory of both. 

Hana starts out the series as a nervous, foreign "rival" for the Prince's hand. We meet her in the changing room, half-naked and apologetic about using it in the middle of someone else's dress appointment. You have the option of either being rude to her, being generous, or being besotted. Even if you choose the first, she's written as being warm and accommodating, giving you advice and helping you pick outfits. She isn't allowed to tailor her reaction to what the MC says, the way Drake - in a scene just before hers - can. You may not get the relationship points if you boss around with her, but there is no actual change in her demeanor towards you. 

This goes even for her first diamond scene. It is true that the MC, by default, stands up to Olivia for humiliating her. It is true that this scene shows a level of concern and caring from the MC's end. And it is also true that Hana realizes by the end of the night that the MC is different from a woman like Olivia, and her decision to do her utmost to help this woman hinges on either the free or the diamond scene. But the MC is also allowed to say certain things which could be out of pocket, such as insinuating that Olivia sensed Hana's "weakness". And this is something that wouldn't niggle me so much if the narrative didn't continue to imply that Hana was somehow "weaker" or lesser than Olivia.

The point of exploring these first few scenes, essentially, was to point out the narrative's eagerness to make us Hana's friend. And it makes sense - unlike us she is well versed in the ways of court, but because she is also a foreigner, there is an element of relatability. The MC can feel, early on, like she has a readymade ally in her corner.

The rest of the first book is about the MC's blossoming romances with the LIs (except for Maxwell, though you could hint at an interest), but what's especially interesting to note is whether the romance is developed around the MC's comfort level or not. This is especially noticeable after the Applewood segment, when the LIs start to vocalise their interest in the MC. There are a couple things that help us gauge this:

1. When and how often is the LI allowed to make a final confession?

2. What options does the MC have?

3. Is the confession or final romantic gestures  by default, or do they not come up with the MC isn't interested?

If we, for instance, take Drake and Liam as examples, you can tell the narrative is inclined to view them as romantic interests just by the way the MC is allowed to react to their confessions. 

Liam's proposal, for instance, is a foregone conclusion. He gets to hint at his growing affection for the MC in several scenes, and his confidence that she will make a great queen. His confession scene does have one option to express doubt (the MC says she's not sure) but it has no real effect on Liam's eventual decision to choose her as his bride. 

In fact, if you don't pick that scene, she never gets to tell him anything at all! He goes through almost all of Book 2 under this misconception as well. The concept of romancing Liam is so comfortable to the writers that they base their entire story premise over it - that the girl starts by falling for and wanting to win the Prince, and either gets him or falls for someone else. 

Drake gets to make a confession thrice (if you spend the diamonds, and once if you don't). First at Applewood, after Tariq leaves the MC's room, and then in Ramsford if you choose the Beaumont Office scene. In his finale scene, he indicates to the MC that he wants to kiss her before she gets engaged. Within this scene, that dialogue is by default, and he asks this even if you have told him you're only interested in Liam in the first two scenes.

Two interesting patterns emerge when you look at the MC's reactions to his confessions side by side:

1. While in the first scene the MC can clearly choose just Liam, in the subsequent scenes even the least romantic options imply an interest in Drake. 

2. Most notable is the way she refers to both of them as a unit ("we") in the options where she says no. As much as the narrative assumes her romantic interest in Liam, it also assumes the same for Drake. Book 2 would only serve to be more and more obvious in their attempts to make Drake a default romancer as well.

3. In the options where you can either reject him or confess that you're conflicted between your romantic interests...the narrative leaves out Hana completely. Nowhere are we even allowed to reference her - and she's got an entire romantic arc with the MC by then!

Clearly, the narrative shows a high level of comfort for romancing Drake as well, in fact so much so that he is allowed to ask for a kiss by default in his diamond scene in this book, can strip off his shirt to "distract" the MC in Book 2 diamond scene, and (by default) can make a comment about "spending the whole night alone" with the MC after she is either engaged or in a serious relationship with another person.

Having established how comfortable the narrative is in viewing Liam and Drake as LIs, let's see how they fare with Hana.

Hana gets one sureshot chance to do her confession in, in Book 1 - and that is just before the Coronation Ball begins (she gets another scene that allows for a kiss at the end, but that's extremely easy to avoid). Depending on whether you choice the diamond scene or not, her confession happens either in her bedroom where the girls have ordered room service, or on the stairs. The good news about this is, if you don't buy, Hana gets to tell you her feelings by default.

The bad news is...if you buy, there is a chance Hana will NEVER open up about her feelings to you! For instance, look at the ending of the room service scene if the MC doesn't indicate any feelings:

The scene ends with Hana never telling the MC how she feels (and indeed if you don't choose any of the opportunities in Book 2, she has to work out that tangle on her own, with little emotional support). Moreover, if the MC returns those feelings the scene extends to a possible kiss, but not before this set of options that the MC can choose from:

The second option is something even Drake doesn't get - though it would have suited his "forbidden romance"-like arc in Book 2, and is extremely disrespectful of Hana as an LI. Even in a scenario where the MC can confess she has feelings for Hana, she can still reject her, or tell her to expect nothing from the MC's end. It's almost like the writers showed more concern for the people who wanted to reject Hana while writing this scene, than the people who truly loved her and wanted to romance her. This is their idea of "romantic" when it comes to the lone female LI.

This also extends to how Hana's final scene is written. It shows her with her friends, having one last fun moment with them before she leaves for her home. She drinks whiskey with Drake, has a dance-off with Maxwell, and basically does the verbal equivalent of ripping out and rearranging Olivia's spine. The final moment of that scene, is reserved for the MC:

Hana's scene also includes a "one last kiss" moment during the Coronation Ball, but the contrast to Drake's just minutes later, couldn't be any more stark. Here it is Hana who offers the tentative opening, and it is the MC who can suggest a kiss if that's what she wants. The other two options make it so that Hana, who is in love for the first time, to a woman...has to encourage her like everything between them is normal. If you took the previous diamond scene, chose friendship, then chose one of the other two options here...you'd be none the wiser about Hana's feelings. And that would be normal. The only silver lining here is that at least in the free scene Hana can confess her feelings by default, even if it's a hurried, rushed scene which culminates in Hana slipping back just as easily into best friend mode.

It's amazing to me how uncomfortable the narrative and the writers seemed in writing these two women as lovers - these two scenes are crafted to revolve around the MC's comfort level, not Hana's, something that you won't at all see for the men here. So a person who wasn't comfortable with a woman expressing her feelings could be kept "safe" by scenes like Hana's, but a wlw who didn't want any attention at all from Liam or Drake, would have to put up with their obvious romantic overtures. In the process of doing that, the narrative implies that her feelings, her love, her comfort, is of far less importance.

The second book follows a similar trajectory - except this time the MC becomes an even worse friend to Hana - but the third book (where the divergences begin) takes this a step further...in that even in her goddamn romantic playthrough the MC seems to forget this woman may soon become her wife! As a bride Hana doesn't get to wear anything gold for the only bachelorette she will ever get, and the MC treats her like a bridesmaid on their wedding day. Sample, for instance, how in BertVannah's proposal scene Hana is still meant to run errands and stand in line with the other bridesmaids for the bouquet toss:

She's standing with the bridesmaids...in her wedding gown. This is in the chapter after the wedding, where if you had a Hana playthrough there were glitches galore, such as the officiant referring to the couple as "husband and wife" even though those players already chose what they wanted to be referred to as.

One really amazing Hana scene from the beginning of Book 3 shows her worrying about her becoming like her parents, only because of her enthusiasm for her wedding. Yet by the time we see the actual wedding...nothing about this wedding seems to have her in mind. It is more the MC's show, and Hana is often just a side character, not her full, equal partner.

This situation improves slightly in TRH, in the sense that the narrative tosses a few scenes where the MC can show she "cares", and Hana's LI scenes give us a few more details about her (such as her love for science fiction, more about her complicated thoughts on her mother, and on motherhood, etc). They add most of the subsequent "growth" and "backstory" in her married!playthrough. In her single!playthrough, you see none of this (except for maybe one moment in the TRH2 library scene), and you also don't get to know what she's doing, where she lives, whether she has been able to explore her sexuality outside of the MC/group. She is in a strange sort of limbo, where nothing seems all that different since she's starting living in Cordonia, yet the narrative wants her to behave as if she's truly satisfied with her life. When honestly everything about her in the original series points to her wanting way, way more than this. And while I wouldn't like Hana not gaining character development in any context, it would have been bearable at least, if they'd tried harder to gain closure for her TRR story overall.

One theory that could explain this somewhat is that with certain LIs (who, the team will claim, don't have the level of popularity than the fan fave) they will work a lot harder on the single playthrough than the LI one (for instance in PM2, the only story Sloane is allowed to have is the alternative with Khaan - to the point where even in her reunion with her mother Hayden was pushed into the forefront...this was esp egregious considering that PM1!Sloane mentioned having such a close connection with Kim). Similarly, James and Kaitlyn from TF had elaborate arcs and diamond scenes to bring them together with other partners - Reyna and Anissa respectively (though I must say that the entire group of LIs got great development and rich storylines, so it didn't sting nearly as much). Luke Harper from D&D, possibly got the worst of it - the romance with Annabelle's sister was written more extensively than his marriage! playthrough ever was...considering the lack of focus on his own family, esp his mother.

So...how does friend!Hana measure up? Her sexuality was hardly mentioned, she spends most of her days in Cordonia doing the MC's homework for her, and the narrative never gave her even a home of her own to go back to when her backbreaking work is done. But I'll probably elaborate on this more in the next section - the MC (and the group).

Next: Power Dynamics, Part 1 - The MC

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale

[lizzybeth1986]

Power Dynamics Pt 1 - The MC

(Read the entire "Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure" series here!)

Previous: LI!Hana and Friend!Hana

Among the many excellent works of Hana art that I've seen here, there is one that I think about from time to time. A drawing of Hana and the MC, inspired by the "aren't you tired of being nice" copypasta.

In this drawing, the MC is visibly angry, grabbing a puzzled Hana by the shoulders and shaking her.

"Aren't you tired of being nice?" she yells, "don't you just want to go ape shit???" (I'm paraphrasing).

I remember that artwork often. It's a fantastic piece, and it makes me think. And everytime I've seen it, I've found myself giving the same response.

"She should," I find myself telling the MC in that picture, "and I think one of the people she should go ape shit at, is you."

In the previous essay, I mentioned that characters come in "tiers", with the MC holding the topmost spot. In a number of cases, the LIs are the most important beside them/after them - either because it's their domain or because they establish a closeness to the MC. Other major and minor side characters follow. The latter may get their own storylines from time to time, but more often than not LIs are supposed to dominate the narrative.

Unlike the MC, whose background is often left purposely vague, a lot of the flavour and personality of this environment comes primarily from the LIs. We are familiar with the world of the Attuned through people like Griffin and Aster. We navigate Hollywood through superstars like Matt and Victoria, as well as aspirants like Teja. Chris, Kaitlyn and James are an integral part of the TF MC's first year at Hartfeld. And they come in all forms: the friendly insider who guides you, the skeptic who eventually warms up to you, the goof who uses their humour to lighten tense situations. They make the MC comfortable, they alert them to potential dangers, they add romance and joy to the MC's life, they help them if the MC is in a fix. In a badly written Choices book, it can look like the LI has no life of their own.

However, most Choices books have the LIs' storylines run parallel to the MC's own, allowing for the world itself to have a richer background and history. There are times when the MC can choose to help in this journey, but it is generally accepted that the MC's needs and story should come first. And this is alright - as long as the narrative is consistent.

With that said, let's delve into what the Hana-MC journey looks like.

The Underdog MC

Hana is an interesting case in a story that is set in a fictional country, where at least two characters are meant to be a throwback to a previous series (TCaTF). Hana is familiar with the social season, familiar with the culture, like her peers. But unlike all of them (besides the MC)... she is a foreigner. Her sponsors are in a whole other continent, she has no real childhood experience in Cordonia like her rivals and peers do, and certain elements of this journey (like the sourness of the Cordonian Ruby) can still take her by surprise. The writers truly set her up to be a perfect bridge to the MC's experience - she is aware enough to help the MC integrate, but foreign enough to relate to her. Which means Hana can understand the nuances of the MC's struggle, in a way that born-and-bred Cordonians like Liam and Drake might not.

The MC enters the story as a newcomer to Cordonia - ignorant of its culture, unaware of its norms. As an outsider she is in a vulnerable position - she has to work harder to please the several people evaluating her (the press, the Queen, the King, the courtiers). She begins the social season sponsored by the Beaumonts. And while it's true that Maxwell takes the initiative to bring her to this country…it is also true that most of the work of helping her succeed is done by the LIs - Drake (often on Liam's instructions), Liam (either through Drake, or when he needs to pass important information), and Hana. 

Hana in fact is integral to this MC's success. As you can see above, she not only helps her learn the skills but also usually takes the initiative to ask. The LIs stand in to help whenever the Beaumonts fail to teach her, and Hana helps most in the technical aspects of the events (one may claim that you can do the tasks even without Hana's scenes, but you cannot ignore the fact that canonically the MC is unaware and therefore vulnerable, and she was the Beaumonts' - primarily Maxwell's - responsibility). 

The MC, too, can easily  gain Hana's trust over the course of the series. Hana is after all a foreign woman in Cordonia, alone and friendless, just as vulnerable (if not more - given the scandal of her broken engagement) to bad treatment from the courtiers. She would have to work just as hard to get noticed. It is default to the text that she witnesses the MC stand up to Olivia when Olivia humiliates her. It is also by default that 11 chapters later, the MC helps her stand up to her mother over the phone at Applewood, and is the first person Hana tells the news of her departure to. Hana is written as grateful to the MC for her friendship, trusting her enough to share personal aspects of her life with this newcomer. Between those two default scenes, we have a number of paywalled opportunities not only to gain knowledge from her, but even to just keep her company and listen to her (the Piano scene, the Yacht scene). Unfortunately, as I said, around the Apple Blossom Festival, such opportunities dwindle.

We experience this dwindling further in the next book, but before I talk about that, let's examine the MC's position in TRR2. She is disgraced at this point - the focus of a plot  to eliminate her by dragging her reputation through the mud, in a way that endangered her safety on multiple levels in the previous book. She is even more of an outsider here, because she now has a (manufactured) reputation that precedes her, and is part of a court where the Queen-to-be can issue threats to both her and the woman who publicly supports her. The engagement tour is less about court skills, and more focused on unravelling this plot and investigating the many culprits involved - a servant, a courtier, the King Guard, and finally all the way to the top - the King himself. 

At the beginning of the investigation, Maxwell and Drake (later, Olivia) are at the forefront of the investigation. Hana occasionally helps out in distracting the court so the rest of the group can slip through without being caught (Applewood)...but the heaviest parts of the investigation - and perhaps the most obvious indications of Hana's stealth - happen once they reach Paris.

She stays in the shadows and observes people, often picking up on details the MC may have missed (see above). What is even more notable is that she manages to do this even in highly-tense situations, such as the Shanghai tea party with her father. She manages to overhear and file away the information about Adeleide's favourite champagne, and even in an emotionally distressed state, she still uses that opportunity to pass on information. If the MC fails to gain trust during the Penelope confrontation, it is Hana that Penelope tells the truth to, since she  made efforts in the same scenes to make her feel comfortable. 

At this point in the story, most readers I know didn't mind the Hana x MC dynamics. That included me.

Hana is clearly invested in helping the MC fit in, then in helping her regain her good name. The MC has the opportunity to accept or reject this help, but it's clear that Hana is an important part of her growth of stature in Cordonia. She continues in such a role in future books. So why does this feel so much less disturbing in Book 1, and at least a portion of Book 2?

The main difference here is the MC's acquisition of power. Cordonia operates on hierarchies - the royal family, the Great Houses/Duchies, the minor houses and the commoner populace. This determines not just the lands they acquire but also the level of clout they have in court. People who don't have as much clout don't always get the support they need, and those who do may get the pampering they do not always deserve. Foreigners tend to have it a lot harder, not only because they have to fit in to win approval, but also because - at least in the first book - people either mistrust or underestimate them.

Though the MC enters the social season with the title of 'lady' thanks to Beaumont sponsorship, she is still a commoner and a foreigner, which places her at a double disadvantage. Perhaps this is why Hana was also written as a foreigner, and later as someone whose mother is from a minor noble house - so that the MC wouldn't feel too alone in her alienation. Hana straddles a thin line here: she is relatable, as a fellow outsider, but there is the slightest element of power in the knowledge she possesses and the skills she has acquired. The problem begins when, from the Regatta onwards, the narrative starts considering Hana as more of an asset than a person, and seems reluctant to give her either power or agency. This is what leads to some of the narrative heartlessness we see, starting from Book 2. 

In this book, the MC's disgrace puts her at even more of a disadvantage. So the general expectation in fandom and for most of the narrative, is that her needs and goals - as the victim of a huge plot to discredit her as a possible consort to Liam - will undoubtedly come first. She was a victim, subject to multiple violations of her privacy and attacks on her as a person. She couldn't contact people except in person, for fear of being tracked, and had to regain her good name while still impressing dignitaries and proving her mettle as a courtier. This also means that in certain cases, while the MC could engage in aspects of the LIs' stories,  she would naturally focus on what was most important to her at the time. It was ok for her to be a little self-centered.

Even keeping that in mind, I found her lack of concern re: Hana in at least two areas in this book, rather chilling.

One is the confrontation with Madeleine in Paris, post the latter's bullying of Hana in Italy. I speak about it in more detail here, so right now I'll just stick to why I was disturbed by it.

Madeleine's drunken admission of wanting to "break Hana" collides, very conveniently, with the revelation that Penelope had a hand in the plot against the MC. So in the minds of most readers, well, of course more narrative weight would be given to the MC's interactions with her. Of course this meant that what Hana went through would take a backseat, since according to the narrative the group (optionally) "did their job" by distracting her and making her feel better. 

But this doesn't erase the fact that the MC heard what Madeleine said, including the part where she said she'd continue doing it. It doesn't explain why, when Madeleine lies through her teeth about "hazing", the MC doesn't even react - forget about saying anything. Or why she was so out-of-sight-out-of-mind about it all the way to the epilogue of the series.

I've mentioned before that the TRR2 MC doesn't start out with a lot of power. In fact, the press either ignores her or bombards her with accusations, which is why she needs the skills of a press secretary to win back public favour. But by the time we reach Paris, she has more public approval backing her, and is on speaking terms with the other courtiers. Her word was weighty enough that Madeleine had to hurriedly pivot to "hazing" to save face, so...why couldn't the writers slip in an extra scene? At least have her warn Hana (who was going out of her way to help the MC), that the Queen-to-be wanted to harm her? Why was this such a non-issue?

Another equally disturbing occurrence emerges in TRR2 Chapter 14, a chapter that elevated Maxwell to an LI but had zero trace of Hana (the only "mention" you'd find of Hana in this chapter is on Liam's new T-shirt). As I mentioned in the TRR Breakdowns, this chapter follows an intense confrontation between Hana and her father in Shanghai, that leaves her in such a bad state that she isn't even sure she has a home anymore. Yet it is Hana who approaches the MC to help her, in Shanghai - not the MC worried enough to look for her. 

On the first day in NY, the MC doesn't seek her out, mention her or even spare a thought as to where she's gone. This was the woman who, until the day before, was running around collecting information that would help the MC. Who reached out to Olivia because the MC was friends with her. Who literally gifted her a handmade dress while at her home. The narrative slapped Hana's face over a patch up scene between Maxwell and Drake that the MC could happily agree to...and now the same MC couldn't be bothered to even ask where Hana was??

Even though I was pissed off by this treatment in the second book, it still didn't change the way I thought of the MC. To me she was the same woman trying to prove her worth, among people who originally thought she wouldn't last a week. She was still the underdog.

All this changes when Liam makes her a Duchess.

MC the Duchess

The narrative foreshadows this change in NY, through Madeleine's mother, Adeleide. As the collage clearly shows us, her title makes her more powerful than her daughter. In doing this, the narrative highlights two things:

1. Foreshadowing the MC's own rise to power - even if she is made a Duchess rather than a Queen, she will still be more powerful than Madeleine. I would argue that this is in fact the only reason Krona exists (Notice how, once the MC herself becomes a Duchess, the narrative erases "Krona" altogether and refers to it as Fydelia henceforth)

2. Justifying even a failplay MC's elevation: if a woman like Adeleide, who has neither skill nor interest in running her duchy, can wield power through this role, then anyone can.

At the UN Party, Adeleide is touted as an influential ally, and the MC has to change her entire strategy to win her favour. This is a party with all sorts of dignitaries the world over, so the lazer-focus on Adeleide and the power she holds despite being useless at her job really gives you an impression of the advantages, clout and power you could gain from just having a title.

And you do notice a rather subtle change in the way other characters treat the MC once Liam gifts her a duchy. Even as she is being judged for any mistakes she makes, the narrative slowly begins to give her more power. Her word slowly begins to carry more weight, and more than once the things she says guide public morale (as can be seen at the Five Kingdoms Festival and the Applewood orchard destruction). In the later series when she becomes Mother of the Heir, the narrative essentially nerfs Liam's role as a king so that the MC makes all the major decisions. This is why Kiara's doubts about "reactionary rule" in TRH3 are addressed to the MC, or why in a recent TRF chapter, Eirik claims that the King of Cordonia follows where the Queen/Champion of the Realm goes. Nowhere do we see her seriously engaged in the policy or politics of ruling, but she definitely has all the power.

But one thing is for certain from the beginning of her life as a noble. Even at her most successful, the MC is a person who gets by mostly on the good-faith efforts of her friends and lovers. Whether she has the skills or not doesn't seem to really count much by this point. In contrast, Hana is not just a basket of skills but a good diplomat, an empathetic and observant courtier, and a powerful ally. Even though canon at this point only stereotyped her as "Perfect Hana", it's clear that she has all it takes to succeed as much as the MC has, perhaps even more. It would not have looked too out of place for Liam to give her a duchy too, yet by the end of TRR2, Hana is largely living on the MC's charity, and even this doesn't seem to translate into a permanent home for her later on in the series.

Why wasn't Hana given a duchy? I think that's a question for later. For now…I want to focus on what it means for the MC to be a Duchess, and Hana to be just a Lady.

(Tap the picture to see it more clearly)

I'm sure I don't need to elaborate how involved Hana is in TRR3, either as a friend or a spouse. She is focused on making the Unity Tour a success in a number of ways: from polo moves (like the "windmill" that everyone celebrates the MC for at the Portavira charity match), to diplomacy (for instance, Hana panders a lot to Madeleine in the drinking game scene, and is the only person - by default - who doesn't suspect Kiara. Instead, she speaks of reaching out to her at Lythikos).

But who gets the credit for all this? Who is the one praised for "bringing people together"? Even when she does absolutely nothing of the sort??

In fact, even if her contribution to the Boutique Fight is nothing more than throwing a clothes-hanger at an assassin from behind a chair, the MC walks victoriously into the cathedral, in front of the press and public. Even her choice to goof around in public is viewed as part of her unique charm (eg. The public response to the MC before her wedding, if she says " 'sup"). At the end, no matter how badly she's done or how poorly-attended her wedding, she is still made "Champion of the Realm". Hana, like the other four, is a mere "Guardian". 

The only real difference between the two is that the MC is a Duchess, and the center of attention...and Hana, is neither. Hana doesn't have that kind of power - not even in playthroughs where she is marrying the MC (the narrative remembers only once that she will become a Duchess, and Olivia still refers to her as a failure in Chapter 14). She is expected to do as the Duchess of Valtoria tells her, without the latter needing to think about the implications - for instance, Hana is expected to sweet-talk her former bully without anyone remembering what happened in Italy. She is expected - even as the bride - to wear all-black to her own bachelorette. She is expected to act like a bridesmaid at her own wedding. She is expected to take it in her stride when Olivia mocks her. In fact, the more a person like Olivia or Madeleine gets into the MC's good graces, the less the MC  seems to care about their treatment of Hana. And while one of these instances may be due to a glitch and another only happens in a diamond scene - it just goes to show the utter lack of thought put into this character and her concerns.

This treatment continues right into the TRH series. In her single playthrough, the MC continues to benefit from Hana's hard work and research, with very little indication that she does the same (she is a titled woman with the time and resources to learn about Cordonia's neighbouring countries, for example). As soon as the story establishes Olivia as the "spy" figure, the narrative erases Hana's own history involving stealthy investigations. Hana is relegated either to smaller tasks (eg. the mission to catch Godfrey in TRH2 - she recieves the press but is given little to do in the course of the mission) or is made to look scared/silly in comparison to Olivia. Either way - the MC's "bestieeeeee" is allowed to overshadow Hana, look down on her, and the MC herself pays scant attention to her. The narrative attempts to show us the MC "cares" in a scene or two, esp in TRH1 (eg. standing up to Isabella when she mocks Hana), but this stops after the first book. 

In her married playthrough, the narrative hits Hana with the revelation that her oestradiol levels are so low that even with IUI it would be difficult for her to conceive (it also treats Hana's condition as total infertility, when research shows that conception is still possible). But this is not written in a way that centers Hana at all. It's written more like a quick-fix solution for making the MC alone pregnant, rather than the painful, life-changing moment that it would be, for a woman who wanted children as much as Hana did. It's referenced only one more time, when they're on their way to Texas (possibly out of fandom demand, and even then it is only optional in the second scene). Both times, the narrative has Hana shift focus back to the MC and her happiness. In the chapters following it the same MC can whine about not getting pregnant fast enough in Hana's presence, not once but multiple times. Never once does Hana's own situation come up, and it is virtually invisible after this point.

We find more of the same "scraps of kindness" in the married Hana playthrough of Book 1 - the MC can stand up to Isabella for her, assure Hana that she can never be "secondary" to her during the pregnancy photoshoot and insist she relax during the MC's baby shower. But in the next two books, their dynamic goes back to the usual - Hana continues to serve and pamper the MC, the MC continues to bask in this attention without ever having to return the favour.

But What About The Other LIs?

"But Lizzy," some of you may say, "since TRH all the LIs have similar treatment!"

After a point, yes. For instance, the LI giving the MC a gift for their anniversary while she doesn't even bother to make a card or write a letter? That happens across the board. But let us see if - in the case of a Drake, Maxwell or Liam - this forms a pattern.

Before we go into this, I must go into what it means to "center" a character in their issues. This means that during the time the issue is being explored - whether in the buildup or in arc-culmination - the MC gives most or all of their focus to that character, putting aside their own issues for the moment. It is about what that character needs, how they feel, and even whether they are comfortable with the MC's attempts to help. The narrative doesn't force the character to deflect, or push aside how they feel, but instead allows them to process their feelings in an organic way - no matter how messy that process may be. Unfortunately, this level of "centering" often goes only to the Creator's Pets (Ethan of OH being a very strong example of this). 

Drake is undoubtedly one of those. He is a commoner. Theoretically, that means he should act as a counterpoint to the nobility-filled court, but we are never shown any prominent commoners besides him and all his storylines seem pretty self-contained rather than actively benefiting any community. A lot of the plot points for him are quite self-contained - that is, they exist to serve his personal story and not the plot. As a character...his subplots start out looking like they add a lot of value to the story but in fact contribute very little. Characters with similar "outsider" arcs in other PB stories have often been pushed to the side, their issues deemed unimportant (eg. Shane from Platinum. We must note, though, that this treatment is given the most to "outsiders" who are POC, especially black).

The process of centering Drake in his scenes started as early as TRR1, where the MC could, in her diamond scenes, give him comfort and solace. In fact, TRR1 shifts the focus to him just minutes after Tariq almost-kisses the MC, and continues to do so at Ramsford, where the MC's "important conversation" is not about the incident or the lock, but Drake's feelings. TRR2 doubled down on this with the Savannah and Bastien subplots. The MC, in her diamond scenes with Drake, is often made to chase after him and comfort/distract him (eg. Never-Have-I-Ever drinking game, Hana and MC patching him and Maxwell's relationship at the Night Market, helping him get Liam a wedding gift). This continues into TRR3, where she can teach him to dance, and in TRH, where we spend a whopping 8-9 chapters in his mother's home in Texas, and help his sister in her wedding preparations. In his TRR3 playthrough the narrative takes great pains to remind us that he will be soon be the Duke of Valtoria (Hana only gets this once, towards the end of the book), and even writes him a whole extra "country" wedding to accommodate his discomfort with big fancy events! His arc involves not just a gradual process of becoming popular in court, but also ensures his sister is given the wedding of her dreams. Even now, the reveal that Bastien was part of the Via Imperii centers Drake and his feelings of betrayal heavily.

We also have Maxwell, who started out a prominent side character, but was made an LI by demand. The narrative would often forget he was an LI, and in fact in TRR3 and TRH1 he was given no character arcs, but we can say that in his interactions with the MC, he was centered. In the few times he apologizes for his lackluster guidance in Book 1, the MC is meant to comfort and reassure him. She also often stands up to Bertrand for him, and in their private conversations she attempts to convince Bertrand of Maxwell's capabilities. And while I'm not the biggest fan of how the Beaumont story was usurped by Savannah in TRR3, the MC still gets to work on fixing the Bertrand and Maxwell relationship in a diamond scene (in Chapter 10, she feeds Bertrand lines through an earpiece - words of pride and encouragement for Maxwell, and an honest confession of his feelings and financial state for Savannah).

Pandering to Maxwell truly comes out in full force around TRH2 and 3. In Book 2, he misrepresents Bertrand's involvement in the social season in the film based on his memoir, to convince him to let go of his role, give it to their father and focus on the family. Elevating Bartie Sr to Duke led to his attempt to usurp the throne, yet in Book 3 the narrative completely ignores this. Instead, it has the MC and the group comfort him, listen to him, involve him in investigations and validate his hurt feelings multiple times. He is allowed to go through at least half of TRH3 trying to rationalize his father's behaviour, still trying to view Barthelemy as a good man...even though the latter had already attempted a coup, blackmailed people, and was robbing the Heir's parents of their rightful role as her guardians. Maxwell is allowed to have outbursts at his father on his failure to be a good parent. Even when Maxwell finally understands how evil his father is, there is no self-reflection on the monster that he allowed into his home, to overpower not only his House but his country too. He also never includes his older brother Bertrand in those feelings of hurt and betrayal (this makes sense during the time Bertrand is viewed as supporting their father, but the suspicion and scorn still remains even after it's proven that Bertrand was on their side the entire time).

So while Maxwell may not be given all the benefits of an LI straightaway, he is still largely centered in his own story especially from TRH onwards, and in small ways in the initial books.

There is plenty I could say about Liam...but how the narrative in general views him and treats his issues, would merit its own essay. Suffice to say that while the cruelty and lack of care can't be truly compared to Hana's, there are still parallels. The narrative expects both characters to set aside their own conflicts and struggles, often for the MC's benefit. Hana is never actually given power, and has a status lower than her peers, and Liam is still king but is forced to operate like a Duke, ceding more and more political authority to the MC as time passes.

On the level of validation, the MC is made to find other things "more important" whenever they're in a state of emotional  crisis (eg. Constantine's death, Hana's diagnosis, the reveal about Eleanor's pregnancy, every reveal thus far about Eleanor's death) and never get back to exploring the impact of those things on that LI. The narrative uses Liam's stoicism, and Hana's selfless dedication, to render their own issues inconsequential - thus leaving behind a pattern of unresolved stress and pain that is essentially erased. Otherwise how is it that most of this fandom finds discovering your mother's murderer, or witnessing your father's death, as normal? How is it that the same fandom thinks of a person who leaves her entire home behind after defending her friend/lover, as "weak"?

This doesn't happen often to Maxwell, and it never happens to Drake.

The one main difference between Liam and Hana, is that the TRR1 MC seems at least a little more invested in how Liam feels than she does for Hana, and Hana is made to operate like a "basket of skills" from Applewood onwards. And while in TRR2 it makes sense that the MC would focus more on what she went through...the fact that she can show disproportionate amounts of care to a Hana vs a Drake or Maxwell tells us that giving comfort was a matter of who the writers liked more, not really what worked more for their story. Because if it were really about the story, then both Hana and Liam, who benefited the story more, would be getting as much - or more - attention.

What does this have to do with power dynamics? Quite a lot. I brought up the examples of Drake and Maxwell to make it clear that even though the MC is powerful, the narrative still intends for her to be the proactive partner in certain relationships, and merely bask in the partner's attention in others. Notably, the partners who fit the first description are white and male by default.

I mentioned at the beginning of this essay that attention and focus is distributed hierarchically, from MC to LIs to the prominent side characters. But that isn't always the case in this series.

The next essay also focuses on power dynamics, but in the context of the court and the ladies of the Great Houses. I will be exploring this in three ways:

1. How does the narrative view these women in general?

2. How do their stories relate to Hana's own?

3. How does the MC's evolving relationships with these women impact her relationship with Hana?

We've looked at how Hana has fared among other co-protagonists. It is time now to see how she fares among the side characters.

Next: Power Dynamics, Part 2 - Ladies of the Court

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #long post

[lizzybeth1986]

So, Who Is Hana Lee?

Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure (full series)

These are the character descriptions given for TRR's four LIs. Interestingly, for the three male LIs, the descriptors list one trait that is personality-specific (dashing. sarcastic. humourous), and one that outlines their approach to relationships with their loved ones (honourable. steadfast. loyal). 

What does Hana get? "Talented and beautiful". That tells us nothing about either her personality, nor her approach to relationships. It's about what the MC is drawn to, and what the MC can use her for. When you look at this description from that lens, the writing for Hana begins to make so much more sense.

So besides those two things...what do we know about Hana Lee? Besides the tragedy of her upbringing, the sadness that many people (myself included, sometimes) can't seem to look past? Off the top of my head, I can think of a number of facets to her personality beyond her sad childhood and her sweetness.

I think it's essential we start here, because often in the process of emphasizing the more dramatic parts of her story, we tend to miss out on things that make Hana a fuller character. Here are just a few things that come to mind when I think of her story:

Passionate:

The great thing about this quote from Liam is that you can see how it plays out in Hana's reactions. Compare how she speaks about ice skating in Book 1, to her piano playing one chapter later. You can tell what she is genuinely fond of doing from what she does just because she knows how to do it well. When she is passionate about something, she guards it fiercely (think back to how she got her parents to stop trotting her out for public piano performances). This dictates her approach to people as well. She goes all out for those she loves, even to the point of leaving her entire home after she has defended a loved one to her parents.

Exploratory:

Hana's story, in its simplest form, was supposed to be a story of self-discovery. She spent a large portion of her life alone with her parents, no siblings or friends, and with very few avenues for creative expression. Even as a child with plenty of restrictions and rules to follow, she found ways to explore interests that she knew her parents wouldn't necessarily approve of (we see this in the reading material she shows us from her childhood). As an adult, she is at first confused and fearful of the uncertainty of her future, but grows to be happy about the possibilities for her. It is a pity that the narrative itself restricts this to what benefits the MC later on, but one cannot deny that the core of Hana's story is meant to be about discovering who she is independent of her parents.

Small But Rebellious Streak:

Closely connected to her exploratory nature, are her small rebellions. Very often the narrative shows this through the books she tells us she's read (Wuthering Heights, which was a controversial text back when it was released, but TRH also has her tell us - if married - that she secretly read science fiction books by pretending they were tomes on astronomy). Another good example of this is the iconic piano scene, where she secretly pushes back against her parents for turning her piano skills into constant public performance that she did not consent to. Hana isn't one for grand defiance - she shows her independence through small, secret rebellions.

Competitive: 

This is one of my favourite things about her, in fact. She may be kind and giving but that doesn't mean she won't be a fierce competitor. Her initial reaction to a lot of these situations is to thrive in the challenge and enjoy, to the point where she spiritedly spars with her opponent before "remembering her manners". It's clear that she loves being challenged, and often gets lost in the spirit of a game. She brings this quality to her fighting technique as well.

Stealthy:

This aspect of Hana is at its best in TRR2, when she takes over the latter part of the investigations during the engagement tour. I'll probably elaborate on this in a future section, but very often we find Hana delivering to us information that she's gleaned just from staying quiet and reading the room. Often she's provided us the best tips this way. Her passion for research also helps her in this, when her research has her looking up royalty from neighbouring countries.

It's the ultimate irony, then, that the writing team itself forgets this in their latter books.

Emotional:

This aspect of Hana's is often juxtaposed with Olivia's militaristic notions of strength (Olivia is also emotional on a level, but has grown up learning that she cannot "show weakness"). She cries openly, loves freely, and while she does repress her emotions on some level, she doesn't do it to the scale Liam does. In fact, it is said that you can easily tell from her eyes and body language when she is passionate about something. She is referred to (esp by Olivia, and often in a way that's meant to be insulting) as "delicate". Yet it is clear that her empathy and sincerity sets her apart in court, allowing her to see her fellow courtiers as even they do not see themselves (an example of this would be the scene where she gives Penelope advice in TRR2 Chapter 6). This above dialogue from TRH2 shows her owning her emotional side, and telling us it is as valid as Olivia's "strength".

Prim-and-Proper with A Love for Occasional Mess

While this is also tied to her childhood, it's interesting to note that she's still comfortable in her "manners", but likes to to embrace mess either as catharsis (she shares this tendency with Liam), or when the occasion demands. She is initially dumbfounded by foods such as sloppy joes or barbecue ribs, but gets surprisingly into it once she starts eating. Like Liam, she also views food fights as cathartic, and it fires her competitive instincts.

Kind but Firm

This screenshot is from Hana's first diamond scene, and she holds herself true to this sentiment for the rest of the series. When the narrative allows (which isn't often), she has her own unique way of pushing back - one where she states firmly that she doesn't appreciate their behaviour while not disrespecting them. When she fights back, she likes to do it in a way that causes the least harm but still gets her point across.

So why do people who harm her, or look down on her, seem to get away with it so easily? I'll address that in a later section.

Subtle When She Drags You

(You can tell she'd been sitting on that gem ever since that dinner in Shanghai!)

One of my favourite Hana posts is a compilation of pics depicting Hana poking fun at Drake. It's one that highlighted how, again and again, Hana could surprise you with her humour and her obsevation skills. @callmetippytumbles once said it better than I ever could:

You think that Hana is all soft voice, demure smile and all of the submissive Asian stereotypes. Go on. Think that. Don’t be fooled. Hana is watching. Biding her time. Then she comes out of nowhere and tells you all about yourself and you have no choice but to sit with her truth. She is a savage. I live.

Olivia, too, winds up once at the receiving end of a Hana takedown. In Hana's final diamond scene in Book 1, she practically leaves Olivia speechless when she tells her exactly what she thinks of her behaviour.

Hana may be nice to a fault. May be accomodating, may want to give other people the benefit of the doubt. But she will drag your ass if you absolutely deserve it!

Unlearning What Healthy Control Looks Like

Unfortunately this is an aspect of Hana that only features in her romantic playthrough, and only for two chapters in Book 3. A lot of Hana's growth comes from being a child of controlling parents, slowly understanding that her upbringing wasn't healthy. Because of this, she is overcautious and even anxious about taking control, equating it on two occasions to robbing her partner of a choice. It was one of my favourite 'character development' moments, and it was sad that they never actually did anything more with it in the series.

--

At her core, Hana Lee has always been a character who didn't realize how messed up her upbringing was until she met other people, made friends, fell in love, started doing things most other people considered normal. She is a Chinese woman who was brought up to adopt European mores. She lived a closeted life (both in terms of her sexuality and her general outlook) but still found ways to satisfy her curiosity. She struggles with decisiveness, struggles to understand what is a healthy amount of control, but embraces other perspectives and experiences that are alien to her. She's someone who finds it difficult to completely break away from her controlling parents, but pushes back at them once she realizes how wrong they are. She is inherently a kind person who is surviving in a court that doesn't always respect her.

But if she's so great, I can hear some of you say, then how can you claim she's been erased?

And that's a good question. Despite being a strong, consistent character with some element of a journey, why is she so often considered weak, or dependent on other people, or just plain bland? Why does it feel like very little has happened with her story after she breaks away from her parents?

Well...to understand that, we need to look at how narrative structure positions her. The next two sections of this essay deal with exactly that.

Next: A Book by Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part One

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale

[lizzybeth1986]

A Book by Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part One

(Read the entire "Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure" series here!)

Previous: So, Who Is Hana Lee?

Here I'll be taking a look at how Hana is written in the first three books, before moving on to the TRH series in Part Two. I won't be going too in-depth into her characterization (since I'll be expanding on them in other sections), just exploring how the narrative spreads out her development, and how often she gets focus.

A common assumption about Hana's character development is that it was very well done in TRR1, slightly less so in TRR2 and downhill TRR3 onwards. To be honest, I had thought so for a long time too. But is this really true? 

To help understand the breakdown a little better, I've decided to split the books themselves into sections. 

For Book One, I will be splitting the story into three sections: the Capitol (Ch. 1-6, where the MC enters the competition), Lythikos/Regatta (Ch. 7-10), and Applewood (Ch. 11 onwards). Until Applewood, all three LIs have a similar trajectory in the way their stories develop - the first section shows them as nervous, tentative, wary, trying to navigate this relationship with the new girl...the second shows their trust in her grow...and the third is meant to be where their feelings intensify, before their confessions at Liam's Coronation Ceremony.

Book Two will be split into 4 sections - Cordonia, Italy, Paris, Shanghai. The meat of the LIs' stories can be found in these sections, culminating in the proposal/confirmation of relationship in NY, and the climax at the palace. 

Book Three has a lot of touring, so I'll simply split it by the individual arcs: Conflict, Confusion, Resolution. In a vague sense, each LI is given some sort of conflict, which they struggle with over the course of the book, and it gets resolved a little before the wedding, or at least after defeating Anton Severus. This occurs in varying degrees for at least the three original LIs, but in a very loosely structured way.

Having outlined this, let's look at how Hana is written in all three:

Book One 

Capitol

We first meet Hana in a meet-cute in  Chapter 2, shortly after landing in Cordonia. While the MC's kindness towards her can be optional, Hana views her as different from the other ladies of court by the end of the night. By default the MC can talk back to Olivia when the latter humiliates Hana, and (optionally) the MC can comfort Hana in her room. Their friendship further blossoms by the tea party at HoneyHill Downs, culminating (again optionally) in the first faint stirrings of romance at a bakery, ordering cronuts.

In comparison to both Liam and Drake, the MC's bond with Hana develops quickly owing to their proximity as competitors, and foreigners. Drake takes time to warm up to the MC until Lythikos. Liam is attached from the moment they meet, but is conflicted about his romance with her until the beach party in Chapter 10. In contrast - and even though the two are meant to be rivals - Hana develops a bond with the MC right away, supporting her as early as the Derby. She begins to realize, to her shock, that she feels something for the MC by the cronut scene in Chapter 6.

Hana's introduction works...as a hint at something more. Her first diamond scene, which briefly mentions her engagement, does a good job of this. But it's important to understand that it would have fallen flat if Hana's subsequent scenes in Lythikos and the Regatta hadn't elaborated on the things her first scene hinted at.

Lythikos/Regatta

Three important things happen in this portion of the book:

1. Hana finds herself more aware of the romantic nature of her feelings for the MC

2. Hana begins to trust the MC more, to the extent of playing a piece she composed as a child on piano. It's important to note that Hana is extremely protective of her music, owing to the public performances she was forced into as a child. Remembering how her parents took something she viewed to be hers, gives us our first glimpse of angry!Hana. That's how important her music is to her. So for her to volunteer to show the MC her music...that's a phenomenal display of trust from her end.

3. A pattern of using Hana's skills to educate the MC begins to emerge. It works here, because the MC is a newcomer, but as she gains more and more power, this aspect of the relationship becomes more and more exploitative.

To my mind, the Lythikos/Regatta portion had the strongest Hana scenes in the series. Whether it is free scenes like the ice skating one in Chapter 7, or prominent ones like Cordonian Waltz or the iconic Piano scene, each one invited us further and further into Hana's vibrant, yet lonely, inner life. 

The writing seemed to strike a good balance between her usefulness as a courtier, and her inner conflicts as a person. At least two diamond scenes in this section - the Piano scene and the Yacht scene - were purely about Hana's confusions and conflicts, and while the Cordonian Waltz began with Hana teaching us the dance, clearly the most valuable takeaway was the story of her broken engagement to Peter, and the hints that Hana was clearly Not Straight. 

Sadly, this kind of balance would be rarer and rarer to find with Hana's writing, later on.

Applewood

Remember how I mentioned earlier that a lot of us assume Hana's characterization was good because of the scenes at the midpoint? Well...here's where that assumption falls apart. 

Outside of public appearances and the first real group scenes, Hana barely even makes an appearance, much less has a chance to interact with us. She has one free scene where she pushes back at her mother's demands over the phone (Chapter 14), with our encouragement, but even that is over in a matter of minutes compared to Drake's scenes at the end of the same chapter! 

Another point worth noting is the quality of her diamond scenes in Applewood. She has two individual scenes...and both focus solely on her skills. The pie baking competition focuses more on the extra points we can get from her pie decorations than on her...and the dressage scene that comes when we buy the horse, is a tiny one on dressage techniques. Sure, Hana can tell us stories about her parents' concern over her broken arm or the girls back home who she didn't necessarily like...but it is a small scene squirrelled away between interactions with Drake, Olivia and Maxwell, all of which establish a greater level of progress in those relationships.

Even in Ramsford, the focus is largely on Drake and the Beaumonts, with even Liam managing to get a date scene before the Bash. Hana, in the meantime, has to make do with a truth-or-dare scene that she shares with Drake and Maxwell.

So while Liam becomes more and more confident in his eventual choice of Queen, and while Drake's feelings for the MC are given more importance than the fact that a man entered her room when she was half dressed and her lock was tampered with…Hana is relegated to the background.

The narrative nudges her, somewhat reluctantly, to the foreground in the final chapters of Book 1...but by then it's more a matter of tying up loose ends before the catastrophic finale. She has two beautiful diamond scenes (the confession scene in her room, and the 'bucket list' scenes with Drake, Maxwell and the MC - including the epic takedown of Olivia I'd mentioned in the previous essay), but even in those scenes the dynamic Hana and the MC share is written differently from either Liam or Drake's...and not in an entirely good way (more on this in a later essay).

To sum up, Hana gets some amount of  exposure as an LI in the first few chapters,  a short burst of attention mid-book and then is pushed to the background for the rest of it. Her space and scenes in Book 1 seem better only because from here on out, it just gets worse. But it's clear that the roots of the treatment she currently gets, emerged from this book.

Book Two

In this book, each LI faces two conflicts - personal ones involving family, and romantic ones involving the MC. Since Hana's individual arc was always centered around her family and upbringing, giving ample time and space to that dynamic should have been a priority. Exploring Hana in the place she grew up should have been far easier to integrate, at least more than explaining why Savannah chose Paris of all places to have her child.

Having said that, let's look into how the narrative spaces out Hana's scenes and story in this book:

Cordonia

This portion begins decently enough on the Hana front - her conflicts with her parents which evolves into a need for self exploration, her love for the MC (if we're romancing her, that is), her reluctant interactions with her suitors and the treatment meted out to her by Madeleine. The last plot thread, though the most egregious, doesn't last more than two chapters, and is never directly referenced for the rest of the book.

Hana has one diamond scene in Fydelia, another in Applewood. In between, we are introduced, through free scenes, to the some of the arcs I'd just mentioned, but most notably the Madeleine bullying arc and the one with the suitors. While the Hot Chocolate scene in Fydelia is sweet and a fitting reunion, it's overshadowed by Drake's Marshmallow scene. Why? Because the flashback in that scene had information that was Hana's and Liam's to tell, yet it was incorporated into Drake's scene!

The Applewood conservatory scene, while skill based, spends quite a bit of time on her love for flowers and her research on what they could all mean. It may have been a welcome return to the Lythikos/Regatta format had the writing actually focused more on her story.

In terms of free scenes, Hana assists in the investigation by distracting guests, manages to charm two men who bore her to tears, and becomes a target for Madeleine's abuse.

Italy

This is the point where Hana recedes to the background...and looking back I can see exactly why that happened. It was because the Italy section marked Olivia's re-entry.

The first dinner at Capri was a political dinner with an Italian statesman that Hana had taught us to charm. Yet Hana features nowhere in this scene, nor does she  participate in the investigation. Olivia takes her place here, even though she has no interest in engaging in diplomacy, and spends half her time comparing everything she sees to things in Lythikos. Hana disappears the moment the entourage enters the room...and we do not see her until a chapter later - and even then, that was only for a single scene involving Kiara and Penelope.

The final chapter in Italy does prominently feature her...but as a victim of a bullying attack. The subsequent group scene claims to be about comforting her, but you will notice it focuses on all the other characters (Olivia, Drake and Maxwell - but especially Olivia!) while a hurt and terrified Hana hovers in the background.

Hana barely shows up in this section, except to be victimized by the woman preparing to be Queen. Immediately following this sequence we discover both Penelope's betrayal, and then her condition, so what happened to Hana is almost immediately brushed aside to make room for Penelope. After the MC chooses* to call out Madeleine on this in Paris, this incident will never be spoken about until the epilogue of the series, thirty-three whole chapters later.

Paris

This section is a mixed bag. Two of Book 2's best Hana diamond scenes (Patisserie Scene and Library Scene) feature here...but so does the worst Hana scene. And while Hana takes over the investigation from this point on, and helps the MC through a mixture of stealth and resourcefulness, she is hardly credited for the success of this mission as she deserves to be. 

Hana gets to (optionally) explore futures that don't fit into her parents' plans, with the MC's encouragement, and we are allowed a window into her cloistered childhood and her boundless creativity that grows inspite of it...but Paris also happens to be the place where the MC choses to stay silent about Madeleine's plans to bully Hana further, where a scene that centers Penelope is sold to us with Hana's face plastered over it, where Hana's doubts regarding her suitors are relegated to a small portion of a diamond scene even though it's the literal buildup to her conflict with her father Xinghai. 

Meanwhile, Drake discovers his sister is living safely in Paris, on Beaumont money, and all hell breaks loose. 

That said, the two diamond scenes from this section capture at least a sliver of the empowerment and independence of the Lythikos/Regatta scenes in the first book. The Patisserie scene uses pastries creatively to symbolize the many avenues open for her future. The Library scene gives us an amazing glimpse into her childhood, allowing us to see slightly more rebellious Hana. 

On a level of exploring her confusion and her struggle to break away from her parents, this section does well...but it doesn't quite hit the mark. After all, we only barely hear about Neville's attempts to get closer to Hana, and we don't get much buildup to the events that will explode into a public argument with her father a few chapters later.

However, this is only a taste of what is to come from Hana's home city, Shanghai.

Shanghai

Shanghai is the only place in this entire book that is home to a main character. And to understand exactly how poorly done this section was, you need to look at just how many chapters were dedicated to each international stop on the tour. 

Italy had 3 chapters. Paris had 4 - two dedicated to the Savannah reveal and two more to unmask Constantine as the mastermind behind the conspiracy. New York had 3. 

Shanghai...had 2. The real-life home of one of the main character of this series...had just 2 chapters.

Now, it's possible that in the hands of a very good team, even 2 chapters can contain more than enough space for everyone. Especially considering that Hana grew up here, it would be essential for us to see her home as she knew it. Perhaps that was what happened in this case?

Let's look at what happens over the course of these two chapters:

1. A Panda Reserve Visit

2. Liam confronts his father after a health scare at a dinner

3. Drake and Maxwell make up after a completely pointless fight (btw, they marketed this scene by slapping Hana's face on it) 

4. Hana and her father fight.

What we have here is two hastily-done arc resolutions, one fight that should have been resolved chapters ago...and pandas. To add insult to injury, the narrative chooses Shanghai to start drumming up more sympathy for Madeleine, via her mother Adeleide. 

When Drake found his sister in Paris, and then discovered that his friend's brother fathered her child, the narrative gave the MC at least two opportunities to support him. One - immediately after the scene in question, and two - the night after, post the failed investigation at Liam's bachelor party, where the MC could comfort him if she chose the diamond scene.

In Shanghai, Hana goes through an immensely harrowing and stressful fight with her father over whether she wants to get married at all. Towards the end of the fight, she pushes back when her father implies the MC is a bad influence, (optionally) comes out to her father, potentially loses her home, and is so distraught she asks to spend the night at the hotel where the entourage stays. This continues into the next day, when she doesn't attend the UN meet in NY.

What does the MC do? Her sleepover scene allows her to distract Hana, but its main purpose is to praise NY and get the champagne that would help forge an alliance with Adeleide. The next day, neither the MC nor anyone else notices that Hana hasn't shown up the whole day - in fact, the MC herself doesn't even think about her. She has the time to gift-shop with Drake, (optionally) stargaze with Maxwell, and (optionally) date Liam...but she has no time to visit her friend/girlfriend after the poor woman has lost her home.

The rest of the book deals with the Tariq reveal, the aftermath of Liam's proposal, and the Homecoming Ball that culminates in an assassination attempt. But the meat of the story lay in the events of the world tour, and it's obvious that the visit to Hana's home was never meant to focus much on Hana.

Most of Hana's scenes in this book, including the sleepover where she's distraught over the fallout with her father, either predominantly or fully show her teaching the MC a skill, or helping her in this investigation. As with the first book, her strongest scenes are at the midpoint, and they are strong because they focus more on her than on her skills. But for most of the book, she is defined more in terms of how useful she is for the MC, with very little of that energy given back to her. And while this book and Book 3 often label her as "Perfect Hana" (which was also adopted by fandom to mock her), it doesn't place much emphasis on her contributions, her dedication, and what she has done for the court in the way an Olivia's or even a Madeleine's are. The narrative doesn't constantly remind us of her work or position it as patriotism, or stealth, or court-savvy - which is why very few people question the logic of not giving Hana her own duchy while giving a far-less-qualified MC one. She is viewed as a basket of skills, rather than a person capable of responsibly wielding power.

Hana starts out in TRR2 with a couple of things happening to her, and not all of them end in ways that benefit her. Her main conflict leaves her practically estranged from her parents, and briefly without a home or a set future. She manages to push back at a suitor she didn't like, but only because he was rude to her friend Drake (you'll find that this is a pattern with Hana - pushback is only allowed in service of other people, never for oneself, and very little of that energy is expended by the same people towards her).

One of her plot threads is resolved just by having her bully minimize it as a 'hazing process', after which it's largely forgotten by everyone, including the MC who knew the whole truth. Her strongest scenes explore her personal history, but a majority of them are more about her being useful. Once her utility is over, the MC often forgets about her, and sometimes won't even enquire about her health. 

In short, TRR2 focuses a lot on how we can use Hana, but barely enough on how we can support her.

Book 3

It's hard to evaluate Book 3 on the level of the other two books, mainly because the playthroughs diverge from the end of Book 2 onwards. Since this book focuses on the MC's wedding, things change in the story based on her choice of LI. Each LI now has two distinct playthroughs - one where they're the MC's friend, and another where the MC is marrying them. The writing for them, too, makes those distinctions.

Each of the LIs is given some sort of a crisis in Book 3. Liam's rule as King is threatened by terrorist groups who plan to assassinate him and wipe out his family, Drake needs to prove himself in court after years of rejecting nobility, Maxwell needs to take on responsibilities for his House, and Hana needs to settle in to a new, more independent life in Cordonia. The LI is meant to identify a crisis, become confused in trying to fix it, before settling into a resolution that both solves the problem and gives them closure. 

And yet, only one LI gets a complete version of this arc. Drake's crisis begins with his desire to fit in at court, but not knowing how. He spends a lot of time learning its mores through trail and error, confused and sometimes humiliated, before finally winning public approval through his duel with Neville. Liam and Maxwell don't have set arcs, even though their individual crises are hinted at and brought up a few times. 

Hana, on the other hand, has a crisis that's only hinted at (dealing with her upbringing-related issues, and the lack of closure with her parents) and a resolution (again, this is fulfilled by proving to them she can be useful even without being married to a nobleman) - but it spends little to no time building up her conflicts with her parents.

It's important to note that both Hana and Maxwell, in particular, had scenes in Book 3 highlighting conflicts that looked like they would be touched upon later in the book, but those plotlines were clearly scrapped by the time the Unity Tour began. Maxwell was expected to step up more for House responsibilities, but very little came out of this - ending with the narrative hastily pushing forward a book deal for him in the epilogue.

The first two chapters show Hana struggling to understand what healthy levels of control were, agonizing over the possibility that she was stifling the MC by planning things for their wedding without her input. This never gets touched on beyond those two chapters. In fact, the wedding itself is so tailored to the MC's desires - and her desires alone - that in their reception Hana is treated more like a bridesmaid than a bride. So much for 200 PinStop boards. 

The second chapter also hints at her making an attempt to reach out to her parents in her LI playthrough, by asking for a copy of the article on the couple to be sent to them. Between this chapter and Chapter 14, where we meet her parents, there is no buildup to this confrontation.  Hana mentions her Chinese grandmother when Lorelai takes her traditional outfit away, but we never hear about this relative either before or after this scene.

Book 3 initially had a format of using LI scenes just for romance, while exploring character development in individual scenes. The original three LIs all got a total of three individual scenes, scattered across the books. Hana got one scene in Portavira (Polo Practice), one in Lythikos (Snow Angel), and a last one in Valtoria (Cheongsam). The first is a purely skill-based scene, with a romantic moment attached at the end in her playthrough. The second is a fun scene about playing in the snow, but nonetheless has very little to do with her overall arc. The third was meant to be a culmination to her arc, but it suffered both because of no buildup, and because the writers wanted her to quickly forgive her parents and move on. Even a confrontation with her controlling parents didn't warrant any real effort or sensitivity from this team. 

The LI scenes post hiatus do a slightly better, more consistent job of her story: at the Costume Gala she gets to show the MC an ancient Cordonian ritual, and in Valtoria she tells her fiancee about her desire to become a mother. As the story moves forward, the LI scenes slowly replace the individual ones, and Hana's scenes from Chapter 9 onwards give us a fair idea of where she is at, mentally and emotionally. This does, however, pose a problem.

If Hana is marrying us, we have LI scenes that will give us a decent idea of her history, or her mindset, and in a few rare cases her growth. She may become a Duchess, even if the narrative doesn't actually seem to remember this half the time. But what about the playthroughs where she is our friend? Where does she live? What is her future like? What interests does she pursue? 

The narrative doesn't seem interested in answering these questions for us. And maybe this would have been a little understandable if majority of that focus was on her romantic playthrough. But that's not the case. Hana and the MC are often not written as if they're a couple, and there is a lack of clarity for Hana's story in her single playthrough too. This leaves us in an awkward position, where she has to deal with half-measures on both sides, all while another LI gets an extra wedding and a visit from his mother, all while one secondary female character (Olivia) gets the focus that should be hers, another (Penelope) gets the sympathy that should have been hers, and a third (Madeleine) almost got the sexuality arc that Hana was never really given.

To sum up, Book 3 doesn't even bother with the "burst of attention" that you see in the other two books. It establishes a crisis then wishes it away 15 chapters later, all while pretending ever other conflict she faces does not exist.

Conclusion

As I've said before, we often assume that Hana got great attention from the beginning, which probably was reduced in latter books when she wasn't bringing in as much money. From this analysis, however, it is obvious that these problems began as far back as Applewood in Book 1, where she had very few interactions with us beyond lessons on dressage and baking assistance.

The other two books take this a couple steps further, often using her face for scenes that benefited other characters, and abruptly ending storylines harmful to her without real closure, just so that other characters could get away with their behaviour. In both books 2 and 3, the conflicts with her parents weren't given the buildup required, and the conclusion for this arc focused, again, on her usefulness. Book 3 makes lackluster efforts for both her own playthroughs, and the ones where she was single - to the point where she was treated like a bridesmaid in the former and almost paired up with her bully in the latter. All in all, the narrative spent more time on her as a narrative device for understanding court, than as a person...and it was only going to get worse from here on.

Next: A Book by Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part Two

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale

[lizzybeth1986]

Power Dynamics Pt 2 - The Ladies of the Court

(Click here to read the rest of Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure!)

Previous: Power Dynamics, Part 1 - The MC

"White feminism swears it will unlock the door to equality and let us all in if we will just hoist her through this window

on our backs

and ain’t that just like white feminism, always getting up on someone else’s back." - Rachel Wiley, "The Dozens".

--

From the beginning of the series, the Ladies of the Court - Madeleine, Olivia, Kiara and Penelope - have represented "the court". All four were born and brought up in Cordonia, all are noblewomen from prominent estates. Of them, two already possess titles (Duchess Olivia and Countess Madeleine) and two are heirs to the estate, whose parents run the Duchies. The MC joins the ranks of these women in TRR3, when Liam gifts her the province of Valtoria.

Hana, however, does not. Even though she is part of the court, and one of their most versatile courtiers, she is the only woman who gets neither titles nor lands of her own in canon.

Why? This is an important question, and is in fact the whole point of this section - but before I get down to answering that, I think we need to look into how the narrative situates the other women, and empowers them (or not).

I will be looking at the kind of treatment these women get, on two counts:

1. Political Power: What status and titles do they hold within the heirarchy of Cordonia, how do people interact with them both when they're in power and when they're out of it. If they cause harm while in power, how often do they face the consequences? Does the narrative try to mitigate these?

2. Narrative Agency: How does the narrative handle their personal issues? When they're in a moment of crisis, what opportunities does the narrative offer to help them? If you have a choice to not take up those opportunities, do you face consequences?

And most of all - what does the narrative allow them that they rarely ever allow Hana? How does this affect Hana's story?

Penelope

I start this essay with Penelope, because while she doesn't have much political standing, the narrative has figured out how to frame her positively while still retaining her in a "follower" sort of role, which otherwise would be seen as a liability. This wasn't a framing they had planned, or had worked towards from the beginning. For instance if you look at TRR1, Penelope starts out like most of the courtiers - gossipy, classist (in response to one dialogue option, she even calls the MC a "commoner wench"), laughing if the MC fails.

She changes into the "ditzy", poodle-loving courtier in the second half of the book, completely shedding her "I'm-not-nice", classist outlook by the finale so that the only thing we remember about her is her love for poodles. But even then, there is zero indication of her eventual role in the plot against the MC - none of her scenes in TRR1 show any signs of discomfort or guilt. It is entirely possible that she was included in the list of people involved long after the end of Book 1.

Interestingly, by the time we find out she was guilty both of sending Tariq to our room and paying the photographer, we're also given hints that she suffers from social anxiety. I've written before about the great lengths the narrative has us take to make her comfortable, so I will not elaborate on those here. But it is important to note how things change immediately after we question her:

1. After TRR2 Ch. 10, Penelope's involvement in the plot against us is never mentioned again. The narrative treats it as if it had never happened

2. Madeleine treated Penelope like a servant during the engagement tour, and constantly berated her. The narrative reminds us of this during our first visit to Portavira, and during our own bachelorette party, if we simply point out that she hasn't followed the dress code.

3. Multiple options are given to the MC, to make Penelope feel comfortable in TRH. Whether it is helping her dance at a Texan bar, or helping her decide what question to ask during truth or dare. In TRH3 we wind up so involved in her wedding that we become both her bridesmaid and her officiant, our child becomes her flower girl, we can give her a bachelorette party if we spend diamonds, and we even help her pick out lingerie (this is not even to talk about how we can encourage her to handle the situation with her ex-husband). All so her father will not vote to have our child snatched from us.

A lot of her storyline after the TRR2 reveal revolves both around her deciding whether she wants to be part of court or not, and her relationship with Kiara's brother Ezekiel, which culminates into marriage in TRH3. In both of these arcs, her comfort is tantamount. In the latter case, one can even say that Ezekiel himself - despite being Kiara's elder brother - exists solely to be Penelope's love interest.

Penelope doesn't have a lot of political power - but a lot of that is out of choice. Her parents run the estate that will one day pass on to her. She has no prominent positions in the royal council, and is generally seen more often at balls, functions and parties. TRR1 and 2 have her (reluctantly) be part of the court, and in both cases one could say that the narrative has someone more powerful prey on her. In TRR1 (though I'm pretty sure it wasn't planned when they were writing it), it was Constantine and Bastien...in TRR2 it was undoubtedly Madeleine. But once we find out about her social anxiety and how deeply uncomfortable she feels in public settings, the MC can provide solutions (such as bringing her poodles along) and keep her safely away from court. She eventually turns her talent for sewing pet fashion into a profession, and spends very little time on the politics of the country. Her father, instead, becomes Portavira's representative to the Royal Council and we later find out her mother has joined the Via Imperii.

Penelope is clearly not the type of character that leads others, or takes a lot of initiative. Unlike Madeleine or Olivia she doesn't have a lot of strong opinions, and when mistreated she struggles to push back. Despite this, the narrative makes sure she has agency within the text. Until TRH3 with Madeleine, Penelope was the only courtier the narrative made script-diversions for, depending on the MC's behaviour and words. She could refuse to engage with us (despite being guilty of betrayal) if we weren't nice to her in Paris, she could reject our offer to join the Unity Tour if she couldn't trust us to protect her. Interestingly, even if the MC is not interested in being nice to Penelope, other people in the core group step up to that role. In the investigation it is Hana, and from Book 3 onwards, it is Drake who becomes protective of her, and angry when someone tries to harm her (he tells a worried Penelope that they won't let Madeleine do anything to her at the Unity Tour. At Penelope's wedding he seems bizarrely invested in the whole Guy-Penelope-Zeke drama. Yes, the same trauma-minimizing Drake Walker). The narrative ensures that she has protection, both in the group and with her parents, and she is allowed to reject things she feels uncomfortable doing. The MC is often expected to accommodate her, and the general consensus seems to be that she's "been through a lot" and deserves the world.

You know who else has been through a lot and deserves the world? Hana.

Hana and Penelope may be very different people, and both clearly have very different moral compasses. But we can often see parallels between their stories in canon. Some of this is unconscious - but in at least one case the narrative makes an obvious connect.

The parallels come up most in two instances - one, about Madeleine's bullying during her engagement tour, and two, when Penelope's ex tries to blackmail her. Both Penelope and Hana were at the receiving end of Madeleine's bullying, and both Penelope and Hana had a broken engagement/marriage. The MC comforts Penelope, but ignores the magnitude of what Hana went through - even to the point of normalizing Olivia's mockery of it.

The difference between the two is that Penelope is allowed to voice her grievances, and everyone else has to readjust their expectations to accommodate her. In Hana's case the narrative either engages in complete erasure, or in using her to highlight someone else's plight. When it came to Madeleine's bullying, Hana was forced not only to pretend that she was okay with her, but to outright lie about the events of Madeleine's bachelorette in a dialogue option.

The narrative gives Penelope the space to react negatively to people who harm her, while never needing to take full responsibility for how she harmed an innocent person. The same narrative robs Hana of this space, both for the comfort of the characters at fault, and for the MC's benefit. Penelope can expect kindness and support, Hana is expected to only give it. There is a pattern of giving Hana as much pain as possible that then goes unresolved, because working on that would be inconvenient to whatever the group's goals are at the time. So when they use Hana's broken engagement only to drum up sympathy for Penelope, while subjecting Hana herself to scorn and mockery for the same...what else can such a narrative be called, but heartless?

Madeleine

Madeleine is perhaps the only recurring peer-age character who comes from TRR's parent series, Rules of Engagement. In both series' one writer, Jeffrey, was assigned her scenes. This is what he had to say about her in an interview before TRR2 dropped:

It's fun to write someone who's constantly trying to spin a situation to their benefit, and making power plays along the way. I've actually been writing for Madeleine since her appearance in Rules of Engagement: Book 2, so we're practically besties.

And this sentiment was obvious from the way Madeleine was written. She may be just a Countess, but whenever she makes an appearance, the writing places her in a position of power and authority among peers no matter the title the other person holds. She is a clear frontrunner from the moment she enters, and commands absolute respect and obedience from the courtiers as Queen-to-be (especially in the face of her taunts and insults). It is worth noting that in TRR3, when she is the MC's employee, she is allowed to order her around, insult her intelligence, and blame her for "not learning" without any exploration into her own poor work ethic (eg. the 100-or-so notecards she expects us to learn in 10 minutes). She is never really required to treat the MC - Queen or Duchess - with the same respect she'd once demanded of other courtiers. It is no wonder then, that in TRH we have to "tiptoe around her fragile feelings" to gain her "loyalty", and that the narrative blames us for her betrayal. Yet this principle was never once applied to Madeleine when she held power - not when she treated a lady from a Great House like a servant, not when she enjoyed breaking the spirit of one of her courtiers. In fact, her behaviour as Queen-to-be gets to be described by the MC as "not lying or cheating to get her way, just playing smart"(!)

From the moment she enters the social season, she is viewed by the others with a mixture of intimidation and awe. Even Olivia, who hates her the moment she realizes Madeleine is a rival, insists at first that we call her by her title (Countess Madeleine of Fydelia). Olivia and the MC become frontrunners as a result of their personal equations with Liam, but Madeleine gets ahead through her connections with his parents. If the MC doesn't gain anyone's alliance, Madeleine is deemed the only real choice (Olivia, too, is viewed as unfit for the role). She is so confident of her win, in fact, that she doesn't even bother to communicate with Liam until it's clear he prefers the MC, after which she makes an offer pre-coronation to allow his relationship with the MC to continue, under the condition that he marries her and makes her Queen. And it is Constantine's machinations that turn this imaginary scenario into a reality.

Madeleine's engagement to Liam changes court dynamics: the arrival of a new Queen-to-be brings with it a structured court, with ladies-in-waiting who must pledge their loyalty to her to survive. At the beginning of TRR2, both Kiara and Penelope approach the MC nervously to inform her that they can no longer be seen talking to her. Kiara can even admit that they could "get into trouble for talking with you this long" if the MC is understanding enough. And while being a LIW is a position of honour, Madeleine doesn't hesitate to treat them like servants instead, and compares women like the MC and Hana to dogs.

Her power becomes most prominent when it comes to Penelope and Hana, who are viewed as the "sweeter" ladies in the court. She constantly berates Penelope for her mistakes and labels her a disappointment, suggests Kiara exoticize herself to two suitors, and finds the idea of "breaking Hana"…fun.

She does this knowing she isn't Queen yet, knowing that her entourage includes women from the Great Houses. Her depiction in TRR2 is that of a power-hungry, sadistic woman, whose duplicity and self-interest towers over any sense of duty, and who doesn't seem to care that her actions may have consequences for herself and the Royal Family. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that had she and Liam stayed engaged by the Homecoming Ball, recruiting the other duchies into an alliance would have been an impossible task given the bridges she'd burned.

Yet, by TRR3, the same narrative tries to convince us that she is a patriot, a capable politician and brilliant when it comes to identifying what would be good for optics. How did the writers manage this?

I wish I could say it was just plain retconning, but that would be too simplistic and imply that the writers merely forgot. To understand how we got here, we need to see her appearances from the beginning of TRR2 to the early chapters of TRR3.

The narrative begins with the MC determined to clear her name and free Liam from his engagement with Madeleine (whether she loves him or not). In the first chapter itself, Bertrand tells us that the only way Liam can break this engagement is by presenting evidence that doing so would be in Cordonia's best interests. Which means that his current choice has to be proven guilty of something, not his past one proven innocent. This builds up some expectation that Madeleine may be involved in the plot.

Now, whether or not they originally intended that, is a mystery...but all the writing before Ch. 7 points to Liam getting out of the match through a discovery that Madeleine or her family was involved in something shady. The sharp pivot to Penelope doesn't even get build-up until Ch. 6, just one chapter prior. Whether this has to do with Madeleine being a particular writer's favourite, is anyone's guess, but the truth is that if Madeleine was really just meant to be a red herring, they wouldn't have waited till Ch. 6 to provide buildup for Penelope's betrayal.

Scattered throughout the first half of TRR2, are comparisons between the MC and Madeleine - much of it related to power, diplomacy and crisis-management. The MC is still the underdog at this point, but she is asked about - or placed in - situations where she can choose to act differently from the current Queen-to-be, or claim an equal level of competence. Her charm and friendliness is an alternative to Madeleine's power-mongering coldness. Madeleine's bachelorette is the tipping point of this dynamic, where her behaviour crosses over from merely calculating to downright sadistic. Her craven pleasure in hurting Hana achieves nothing but momentary self-gratification, and her response to the MC's (optional) accusation about it being "a low blow for a queen" proves that she has no real respect for the role bequeathed to her.

However, once this scene is over with and the focus shifts to Penelope, Bastien and the royals themselves, Madeleine recedes to the background. From the tea party in Paris to her disastrous wedding shower in New York, we see very little of her, and none of her past actions come up in the story. Instead, we hear about her from her mother Adeleide, who conveniently leaves us sympathetic hints about the stress she is under, and the finale shows us a Madeleine devastated by her failure, giving us warnings. By the time we got to the TRR2 finale, the constitutional clause that seemed to hint at implicating her was forgotten, and by TRR3 she magically became a Patriot with Daddy Issues. I was playing this series as it was coming out, and by the time we met her again in Fydelia, memories of the "chocolate incident" seemed vague (a chunk of fandom constantly downplaying the incident didn't help either).

The structure of the narrative facilitated this: when the incident itself was still fresh in our memories, we were being bombarded with other incidents (Penelope's betrayal, discovering Savannah), and the "resolutions" given for Hana in comparison were rushed and half-baked. Once we got some distance from the events of that bachelorette, the narrative could then subtly rewrite the entire episode, both in Madeleine's dialogue and that of others, so that Madeleine's own words, own actions, could be erased.

And yet...Penelope - Madeleine's other victim - is never forced to sugarcoat what Madeleine did to her, nor does the group forget/minimize it. Penelope doesn't go into lurid detail about it - she doesn't need to. The narrative makes it clear to us that Madeleine's behaviour affected her. The entire point of gaining her alliance in TRR3 is to prove to her that we aren't Madeleine. Even though Madeleine herself never has to personally bear the consequences of what she did to Penelope, it is clear that the latter will be protected if she chooses to come with us.

Hana's case couldn't be any more different, and part of that has to do with the narrative not permitting her to have a voice in this. At the beginning of TRR2 itself, Hana is made beholden to Madeleine, because Madeleine "brought her back" and therefore has the power to send her home in disgrace anytime. But we find out that very night that this is, at best, a half-truth. Not from Hana, not from Liam who made that deal with Madeleine. The person who got to tell us this was Drake and it is never discussed outside of his scene.

Hana is never allowed to tell us herself the full truth of her return. The narrative never lets her acknowledge this to anyone, instead making her play along with Madeleine's half-truth rather than use that knowledge as leverage. Within that time, she does whatever Madeleine tells her, expresses gratitude, and doesn't push back in the face of multiple threats. Nor do her friends bother to protect her. Had the flashback scene with the three LIs gone to Hana instead, and it had been openly acknowledged by the MC in conversation with Hana: all of the above would have sounded very, very bizarre. The narrative itself seemed to want Hana in a position of servitude, and therefore grants her absolutely no agency in the face of her suffering. Even the MC's choice to call Madeleine out, results in a situation where only half the truth comes out, and the MC makes no further efforts to set the record straight. This leaves Hana in a potentially dangerous situation that even she is never aware of. In the next book, the MC minimizes what Madeleine did to just "mean things" (and this is only by option), Madeleine claims that Hana would be willing to "let bygones be bygones", and Hana herself is made to (optionally) lie about the events of that night (and throw Kiara under the bus as well).

It isn't surprising that this erasure occurs around the same time as Madeleine's (optional) admission of her own feelings to Hana in Vegas. This is, after all, a romance that centers Madeleine - that views Hana as a prize for her dedication to Cordonia, her years of pain thanks to her father, and her alliance with the MC. Most of the hints for this romance are about Madeleine's feelings, Madeleine's journey, and - when a lot of us protested - Madeleine's guilt. In the few scenes that promote this romance, Hana is mostly relegated to looking shocked at Madeleine's admissions, or not even there (for instance, Madeleine can imply she wants Hana to the MC in both her scene at the Costume Gala, Ch. 9, or before the MC's reception [if the MC has married Hana]. Hana is absent in both scenes). Hana only gets a chance to say something in their finale scene, which clearly was added in the last minute due to fandom backlash and (from Madeleine's end) is riddled with weak excuses and retcons. Eventually in TRH, the only time Hana gets to even criticize Madeleine is when the latter complains about wearing a country outfit for Savannah's bachelorette, or if Madeleine badgers Hana's wife about getting pregnant (See? Even her criticism of her former bully's entitled behaviour has to benefit someone else, not herself).

Madeleine herself is never subjected to such a lack of care - the MC is rewarded for understanding Madeleine's pain and standing up for her to her parents, and TRH punishes her with betrayal if she doesn't coddle Madeleine for two books straight. And while (if you treat her nicely) Madeleine expresses a recognition that she's getting more kindness from the MC than deserved, such a recognition is purely conditional. In a playthrough where the MC is rude to her, she never needs to introspect or find fault with her own behaviour. Her own betrayal only results in her loss of a job - she is not stripped of her lands and estate, she still stays the Countess of Fydelia. Some may claim this to be a redemption arc, but I don't see what growth or "redemption" is actually feasible, in a narrative that keeps the perpetrator of the abuse safely away from the harsh judgement she should get for the same. The work for her so-called "redemption" comes mostly from us.

The MC is often viewed as a counterpoint to Madeleine, whether there is a romance or not. Both the women are titled ladies, both have some measure of power (in the MC's case, at least by the end of Book 2). Hana is considered socially less powerful than both of them. But the MC is Hana's friend: she is benevolent, she is earthy and relatable, and she has actual people skills, and at least on the surface can behave like her newfound role doesn't change who she is. The narrative uses Hana as yet another indicator that the MC, in a position of power, would be a far better option. But it never actually considers Hana's own journey in the middle of all this, or whether she'd truly be comfortable in the presence of one who found pleasure in harming her. Or whether she can ever trust a friend who kept that information from her. This is just one more source of pain that Hana is meant to bear mostly alone, and when it disappears Hana is expected to be grateful. 

Because there is such a lack of thought in the way Hana is written, a pattern exists of the MC showing a lack of concern as well. This is especially obvious in the way she treats the whole Hana and Madeleine episode. Her speaking about it is itself an option, she is allowed to withhold the most damning part of Madeleine's admissions, she doesn't think twice before including Hana in a conversation with Madeleine in Fydelia (TRR3 Ch.3), and she even forgets that Madeleine was fully intending to torment Hana until she broke in the finale. She can be a little insensitive to Madeleine too in TRH, sure, but the narrative punishes her for that. The narrative never punishes her for either hiding the truth, or telling a half-truth to Hana. Hana is expected to make do with whatever little is given to her.

While Madeleine and the MC are viewed as poles apart by canon, and while nothing the MC does can ever measure to the cruelty of Madeleine's behaviour, it is clear that both equations suffer from a gross power imbalance.

Olivia

Olivia starts out in the first book as a catty, classist, and impulsive Duchess - not too different from the original depiction of her ancestor and lookalike from TCaTF, Zenobia. But even then, the narrative is very, very eager for us to see her from the get-go as special.

How do we know this? The use of relationship points. We're introduced to the concept through the love interest, but the only person who is coded consistently for three books straight with relationship points is Olivia. We get multiple opportunities, from the encounter in the dressing room before the Derby, to the famous TRR3 scene where we scream her House Motto back to her, to gain her favour and get her to trust us. Gaining her trust is a slow, gradual process, made all the more attractive by the diamond scenes, the little moments where she can acknowledge she likes being our friend, and the background information on her family and her estate Lythikos. She has the added benefit of having one of the story leads involved in her writing, who happens to like the exact character type that she is. Here is what Kara Loo, who has been involved in writing her, said long before TRR was even born (here, she was talking about Val Greaves, but the description fits Olivia perfectly):

I love writing for characters that are a little meaner and will really just say what they’re thinking, even if it isn’t exactly tactful.

Before I get into the Olivia-MC and Olivia-Hana dynamic in particular, it is essential to note what it means when a writer/team leans more towards a particular ideology/political outlook than another, in the course of their worldbuilding. Besides being not-very-diplomatic, both Val and Olivia are written as coming from societies that value physical/military strength - Val is a mercenary (the strong lead, the weak bleed) and Olivia is from Lythikos (if you can breathe you can stand, if you can stand you can fight). A lack of patience for tact and diplomacy, and a tough exterior, tends to be an inherent part of the their worldview (Val however is more open with her emotions, as one can see from her relationships with the other mercenaries, Kenna and Raydan, and eventually her bond with Bubbles). TRR shows us a militaristic way of doing politics through Olivia, and a more diplomatic way through Liam, Hana and Kiara. But it is clear, from the focus given to each and how seriously the writers frame what these characters say, which one the narrative seems to favour more.

Olivia's glorification of violence and toughness is seen as part of her appeal, and while the narrative doesn't outright say so - there seems to be less respect for diplomacy and more peaceful pursuits (eg. How Kiara's family is framed vs Olivia's estate and traditions. Compare the Therons' "Flower Festival" to the tournament Olivia fights in, in TRH3. Which one is framed as vapid and ridiculous? Which one is depicted as a show of strength, and in a more dramatic way?). The books spend far more time and resources in giving Lythikos unqiue Christmas traditions, but hardly has the patience to show traditions that focus on peace, prosperity or art in other places. It is pretty obvious that Olivia's background is viewed as better, and is allowed more space, even though her way of doing things has serious, serious drawbacks. And the excessive pandering to her way of doing things, unfortunately, affects the way Hana is written as well.

From the beginning, the narrative shows a lot of the kind of thrust-and-parry that can occur between a character like Olivia, and a new person like the MC. Unfortunately, the first person to be caught between a confrontation with them is Hana. At the Masquerade, Olivia rakes up the scandal of Hana's broken engagement and calls her "damaged goods", leading to the MC standing up for Hana by default. This is a breakthrough moment in Hana's story with the MC, whether the latter follows her to her room or not. She begins actively offering help whenever possible from this point on. Given her lack of friends, how much the scandal affected her and how much it meant to her to see the MC push back against Olivia, it isn't surprising that her closeness with the MC occurs pretty quickly.

Olivia, on the other hand, needs to face rejection and potential humiliation before getting to such a point with the MC. She overplays her hand while hosting the ball at Lythikos - mistreating the MC and her friends, forcing a kiss on Liam to send a message to the other courtiers - which leads to Kiara immediately (if the MC convinces her) switching over to the MC's side and to her becoming significantly less popular by Applewood (this is only obvious in the failplay version of Book 1, though).

At Applewood, she seems more open to the possibility of confronting less, communicating more with the MC. Whether it is bitching about Madeleine, calling the MC out on not noticing Hana's feelings for her, or the finale where she can break down in the MC's arms after withdrawing (when Constantine sends her documented evidence of her parents' treachery), Olivia leaves open the doors to friendship by the end of the book. And a lot of this happens in tandem with her loss of social clout. She starts out as the most obvious choice, is threatened by a new woman that Liam seems to prefer more, and her downfall begins at the point when she is the most openly hostile to the MC. She forges a tentative new bond with the MC before she leaves (if the MC so chooses). What doesn't necessarily change is her attitude towards Hana.

Hana, too, is made to sit at the back of the ballroom at Lythikos along with Drake and the MC, consuming the same cold food and subjected to the same poor service. Olivia doesn't fail to insult Hana when she gets the chance - telling the MC at one point that she isn't "as mangy as Hana". The MC has the opportunity early on - if she pays for the scene - to tell Hana to hit back at Olivia the next time she says something rude to her, but Hana maintains even in that state that that isn't the way she does things. And what is commendable about Hana is that she sticks to her way of setting people straight when they assume her to be weak and sheep-like, as one can clearly see in her final diamond scene at Liam's Coronation. She doesn't resort to name-calling, she doesn't try to act tough but instead is honest about the fact that those words hurt her, and she closes by telling Olivia that her words no longer have power over Hana. The only downside to it is that it isn't for free - and given how they allow Olivia to speak of Hana later on in the series - it should have been.

Sidenote: This is a pretty accurate take on Olivia (besides the "pampered brat" bit, considering her childhood), and I wish the narrative had addressed this instead of taking the route they did with the Olivia/Hana dynamic. Because it is important to acknowledge that Olivia has tons of privilege. It is important to call her out on her sense of entitlement, not once but several times. Hana shouldn't have had just this one opportunity to call Olivia out on her shitty behaviour, because Olivia never really learned from it, and both the narrative and the MC like her too much to actually bother correcting her.

In TRR2, Olivia occupies the position of the Outsider, alongside the MC. In the eyes of the court, Olivia mysteriously withdrew from the social season and the MC was disgraced - therefore they're not part of the new social structure that has formed around the future Queen. Both are not beholden to Madeleine, and Olivia herself has the freedom to come and go from the events as she pleases. Whether or not the MC liked Olivia before, their positions bring about some measure of solidarity. This - along with her friendship with Liam - leads her to becoming part of the core group.

Maxwell and Drake both express wariness when Olivia is first included in the group, but not so for Hana. The narrative instead has Hana constantly reach out to include Olivia in the group's activities; in fact in the chocolate party diamond scene, Hana is the first to invite Olivia to stay. This is a pattern consistently repeated both in this series and in TRH (for instance, Hana can convince Olivia to join her at a dance during Savannah's reception). The dynamics, too, tend to lean more towards benefitting Olivia. The MC and Olivia have to work to gain each other's respect (though honestly even without the relationship points Olivia winds up supporting you in the end), but Olivia never has to put in that amount of work for the rest of the group. They're all made to accept her into the fold without her changing her stance towards them (though Drake initially puts up a bit of a fight).

The subsequent books involve Olivia as a central character, with several important scenes. She is confronted with the truth of her parents' and Lucretia's plans (the childhood betrothal with Anton Severus), and is given a redemption arc that ensures that the final battle scene between the LIs and Anton is largely focused on her (eg. the watershed moment in that scene is when the MC can scream back the Nevrakis House Motto to encourage her), and has the Queen Mother herself confirm that she truly embodies Nevrakis spirit as a force for good. To make Olivia's image as a warrior-like figure even stronger, the narrative even retcons her ancestor Zenobia. The woman who gave up her kingdom over the fear that her hair would be chopped off, who was more comfortable watching bloodshed in the form of entertainment rather than in serious battle, whose most important moment in the war was to throw objects at soldiers who invaded her room...is suddenly hailed as a fierce warrior who hid daggers in her Winter Festival outfit.

At the end of TRR3, Olivia tells us she will read up to see if there are any "hidden deals or laws that will come and bite us later". She rarely follows through with this unless a crisis actually blows up, but TRH uses this as a springboard to involve her in various "spy missions" so as to give her more individual scenes. (To give you an idea of how invested the narrative was in giving her this space - Olivia had 2 individual "spy" scenes and a childhood scene in TRH1, and three "spy" scenes and a childhood scene in TRH2. Hana only got one childhood scene, in TRH2. Which means...that for all of TRH1 she got no solo scenes, and no solo childhood scenes).

Very few of these "spy" missions thus far culminated in much useful action (eg. Olivia finds out about Operation Swan in TRH1, sits on that information, and the next time we hear about it, it has already been enacted and Olivia's contact with the Queen of Rivala occurs only after the Auvernese have all but taken over Cordonia). Like Drake's own diamond scenes - Olivia's scenes are often pretty self contained. They're really more about the knife jokes, seeing her be "badass" in a leather jacket, and comparing herself to other spies like Jin and Amalas. The information she could gain is often secondary to this.

The dynamics of the group with Olivia from TRR3 onwards shows her more comfortably settled into the group, but the "spy missions" allow her to have storylines independent of them too. Her equation with the MC herself, while warm and friendly (Bestieeeeeee!!), seems to have a few similarities to the equation with Madeleine - the narrative allows her to assume superiority over the MC, and often the preferred dialogue options involve the MC herself deferring to her superior talents (eg. The book reading at Lythikos). This remains even though the MC can be her Queen. This could be due to the thrust-and-parry nature of their relationship, but it does tell us how invested the team (and the fandom, who easily lap up these scenes) are in centering her in the equation with the MC.

The writers were in fact so enamoured of Olivia and Lythikos that they gave her an entire mini-book, The Royal Holiday, where the entire core group visit the duchy to comfort/support their desolate friend after most of the Great Houses seem to have abandoned her (in the wake of the information about Anton Severus and the Nevrakis plans for a coup). It extols the wintertime traditions of Lythikos and has all of them keep her company and lift her spirits. This is indeed ironic, given her own attempts to mock someone else whose reputation was dragged through the mud.

Hana's equation with Olivia begins with the latter looking down on her, and effectively ends with the same. Only Hana's attitude is expected to change.

She implies Hana didn't show a backbone until the public fight with her father. She issues backhanded compliments about Hana's diplomacy. She calls Hana a failure in front of her mother for the broken engagement/not being chosen by Liam, even when Hana is on the verge of becoming a Duchess. She looks down on Hana's "delicate nature'' and seems skeptical of her capabilities. There is an extra level of vitriol in the way Olivia speaks of Hana, that doesn't match either the way Hana is, or the way she's allowed to talk to Olivia. Not only this - Olivia seems to relish speaking of Hana with disrespect and scorn. And the MC, who is supposed to be her friend/spouse, doesn't so much as bat an eyelid in most of these scenes.

Hana gets one solitary chance to push back against Olivia, in a 30-diamond scene at the end of TRR1, and is never given any more opportunities to do so from that point on. What is even more egregious about this is that this scene itself is never acknowledged thereafter. Or else why would Olivia, in my playthrough where Hana did the verbal equivalent of ripping out her spine, quip about Hana "discovering a backbone" after the confrontation with Hana's father in Shanghai?? One may claim that this has something to do with the previous scene being paywalled, but it wasn't impossible to have a similar free one. The team has done that before for other scenes. Hana is also made to acknowledge Olivia's talents, credit her for the good things she does (eg. She credits Liam for finding the loophole and Olivia for voting 'no' at the Coventus Nobilis), and to even include her in the group's activities. All without getting much in return from Olivia herself.

This isn't helped by the dichotomy the narrative creates between the two women. Olivia is the tough warrior, Hana is the generous negotiator. If done well, a dynamic like this one would position the two as equally worthy of respect in their own right.

A good example of this would be this dialogue from Hana's playthrough during her child's Anointing Ceremony. Hana doesn't insult or undermine Olivia's interests, but emphasizes that hers are just as important (a pity there is no equivalent of this in her Single playthrough). Another good example (and a rare one from Olivia's end) is Olivia's response to Hana's outburst at Neville in the Beer Garden (TRR2 Ch. 17), where she tells Hana she should be proud of herself for facing him "with courage". Unlike their discussion at the Costume Gala, she does this without needing to attach insults. But the narrative very very rarely allows Hana to benefit from this kind of solidarity. And the most she is allowed when Olivia rakes up a scandal that Hana had no control over in front of her mother, gleefully aware that Hana is listening - is to glare at Olivia as the MC downplays the insult ("Well. At least Olivia got the job done". Interestingly, the MC can hit back at Isabella when she says literally the same thing, but the narrative has Olivia act angry about it as if she never said that!).

What the narrative does instead, is to position - without actually saying the words - Hana's emotions, Hana's diplomacy, Hana's silent way of working through these issues, as weakness. What it does is attempt to make Olivia sound like she is better, and this is achieved by ensuring that Olivia gets away with this behaviour, and that Hana continues to accomodate for Olivia in a way that the latter will never do for her.

But perhaps the worst thing about this dynamic is how the narrative tries to erase and rewrite Hana herself, to make Olivia better in comparison. The Hana who is a master at researching other cultures, is suddenly made to look small and scared if she and the MC visit Auvernal without Olivia's help, whereas Olivia is made to appear knowledgeable. The Hana who carried a large part of the TRR2 investigation on her back, bears no resemblance to the silly woman who talks about "romping" and adventure, and quips about "only killing when necessary" in the middle of a stealth mission, just so Olivia can look like she's the one leading the group ("Stealth! Right!"). We must remember that in the previous series, esp TRR3, Olivia showed an inability to read the room in tense situations (eg. Her calling the Ebrims "cowards" when they decline the invitation for the wedding due to an environmental crisis in their estate. The group has to scramble to cover up for her, and even then she fails to take a hint). While she has good deduction skills, she tends to be rash and impulsive. To make way for Spy!Olivia, and to ensure Hana couldn't steal her thunder, they practically retcon Hana's own skills, and give Olivia qualities she didn't exactly possess earlier - and this is never more obvious than in the TRH2 Olivia-MC-Hana spy scene, where Hana's behaviour borders on bizarre and OOC. I mean, there are ways to incorporate flaws into a seemingly "perfect" character, but this way of doing it sounds more like it was meant to benefit Olivia than Hana herself.

One should not ignore the role class and race (which I will speak of in another essay) play in these dynamics as well. As I've mentioned both in this essay and the last, that Hana starts out as a Lady, and (unless the MC chooses to marry her) stays that way all through the end of the series. Despite her lengthy list of qualifications, she has no lands of her own, no real home in Cordonia, and no title of her own either. And in a lot of ways I think it was written that way on purpose.

In Hana, the writers had managed to create a woman who would be smart enough and versatile enough to be of use to the MC...but always kept at a position of lesser power, always in a position of doing things for other people who were not as qualified as her. To achieve this, they ensured that she started out having no friends, with no clear rubric for what a normal friendship would look like. This resulted in her showing gratitude for the smallest kindnesses we tossed her way, while never acknowledging the times we failed to support her, while never having the opportunities to push back against more powerful women like others did. As much as the narrative would like us to pretend that the MC doesn't change from the "normal", sassy commoner of TRR1, the fact remains that with her aquisition of power her relationships and her priorities do change, and Hana is often at the bottom of her list. What this results in is a scenario where a Lady Hana cannot push back against a Countess or a Duchess, and her Duchess friend/wife likes said Countess or Duchess (or doesn't care) too much to actually call them out on their bullshit.

Conclusion

If I were to put this entire essay in brief, it would be to say this - whether you're a main character or a side, one thing is for certain. The more the MC likes you, the less she cares about how you treat her friend and staunchest ally. The MC's view of their treatment of Hana is dependent upon her relationship with them - if the narrative wants her to pander to them, it will downplay, retcon or erase how they treated Hana. And this wouldn't be as big of a problem if Hana herself was given the space to push back, but often she is forced to place the MC/group's comfort first. It is a never ending, vicious cycle that affects Hana's story and her characterization, while lifting up other characters.

You will notice I left out one courtier - Kiara. And that is because she is the exception to all these narrative rules, in every possible way. She is from a noble family, she "doesn't immediately agree with everything the MC says" (a claim that many Madeleine stans repeatedly use to explain away the general dislike for this character, as well as their love for her), she is experienced, she is talented. By all rights we should be seeing similar patterns in her story, but we don't. Like Penelope she comes from a Great House, yet her trauma and her struggles are ignored and minimized. Like Olivia she has her own perception of strength, yet the narrative prefers to oversimplify by framing it as "mean". And a lot of the compliments paid to Madeleine about "playing smart" and "being efficient" would be more appropriate when describing Kiara, yet she only gets these compliments when the MC and group need to use her. All three of these white women exhibit classism in some way or form, but it is Kiara (Drake-loving, Savannah-tutoring Kiara) who is labelled a snob. Despite their own cruelties towards us, the narrative expects us to coddle, pamper and praise them. But when Kiara doubts us even a little, on the (flawed) evidence she has, we have the chance to suspect her of evil and then never forgive her. Drake Walker gets to voice suspicions of her, again and again and again, book after book, while rising valiantly in Penelope's defence. The patterns are overwhelming, and the end result is always rather bleak.

Characters like Olivia and Madeleine (especially) tend to be popular among many wlw, and straight white women - and the TRR team writes them with characteristics and tropes often found attractive in white female characters (the Alpha Bitch, the Girlboss, the Strong Female Character). The WOC in the same book are treated with far less care in the books, and are set up to far higher standards in the fandom.

So it shouldn't surprise us that when the noblewoman is black, we're allowed to treat her with disrespect. And when the white noblewomen insult, abuse, scorn the lone brown woman, it is the duty of the brown woman to put the MC's needs before her own. To grin, bear it, and move on. And then act like it never happened.

(To see more of my thoughts on Kiara's treatment in TRR/H, read these:

To Be Not Heard: Kiara, Penelope and the Question of Validation

Though on Kiara in TRH2's Finale Scene)

Next: Power Dynamics, Part 3 - Lorelai and Xinghai

#long post #hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #anti penelope ebrim #anti madeleine amaranth #anti olivia nevrakis

[lizzybeth1986]

A Book By Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part Two.

(Read the entire Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure series here!)

Previous: A Book by Book Breakdown of Hana Lee - Part One

It's a lot harder to discuss narrative structure with TRH, mostly because as a story it's a lot less coherent, full of retcons, and often disregards even recent canon at the drop of a hat. Even by TRR standards, the level of inconsistencies shocked regular readers. 

In this series we have a man raised from the dead (Bartie Sr), a TRM-related subplot that TRM itself refutes (House Vescovi), a House that claims a man who died childless as an ancestor (the Beaumonts, from Leon Sterling) and Liam's older brother, who is often written out of childhood flashbacks despite being the actual Heir in that timeline and the entire reason we even have TRR in the first place. It's pretty safe to say that TRH  was a mess from the get-go.

So naturally, whenever I bring up the way Hana was treated in this book, I'm often told that, well, that's the case of every character in this story. That every character in this story has gotten bad writing or (at least TRH2 onwards) has lost out on a proper story and don't feel like themselves anymore.

To some extent...sure. That's inevitable when a team churns out piss poor quality at higher prices. But that's why it's even more important to highlight how in Hana's case, this has been an ongoing issue. She's been treated like this since TRR1, and the only reason people don't think she's suffered was a lack of acknowledgement, and often a tendency to blame Hana's mistreatment on her (more on that when I speak about fandom, coz hoo boy, don't I have a bone to pick with some of y'all).

It's hard to pin down an actual structure for this series, so I'll just go by a general overview.

Book One

This book was meant to focus on the MC's pregnancy, but the irony is that that focal point itself only appeared by Chapter 14, depicted mostly through a series of montages, and lasted only 6 chapters. The Walker Ranch portion, on the other hand, lasted for 9.

If you married her, Hana's troubles in this one begin early...and "end" early, because really that's all the space her conflicts are allowed. To establish why the MC must be the one to carry the child, the narrative saddles Hana with a condition that makes it difficult for her to conceive...and never actually gives much hope that she can in the future. Hana is not allowed to have any lasting responses to this, other than to quickly redirect focus on the MC instead. The narrative weight given to this news is obvious from the way Hana's wife responds - by not really caring. Even the one time she could ask (on the way to Texas, two chapters later) is optional - not by default - and both times this comes up Hana tells her that the MC and their future child, is more important. Later on, the MC is (optionally) allowed to complain nonstop about not getting pregnant fast enough, and Hana is expected to comfort her.

Hana tends to be given the least space on two levels: as an LI in certain LI-centered scenes (though to be fair, the only LI "centered" that way at this point is Drake) and as a lady of the court. In terms of the latter, the stories of the three white women in court often overtake and overshadow the two default WOC. An example I can point to would be Savannah's bachelorette. It's a chapter that revolves around the women of the court, yet Hana gets the least attention and isn't even prominent in the Truth or Dare scene!

Hana doesn't have a specific plot besides the pregnancy one, and while one can claim this is the case with everyone - it clearly isn't: Drake gets the lion's share of whatever story is left, as Walker Ranch is written specifically to cater to him, and to that MC. Maxwell, too, gets hints at a future arc and gets to promote his book. Liam is an interesting case, in that the backstory about Queen Eleanor's death exists only thanks to him, yet the childhood scenes themselves redirect focus to other characters like Drake and Olivia, and he is never really given the space to react to these new facts about his mother's final days.

Hana, on the other hand, wasn't even given a full childhood scene (besides the lone image of her, playing with inanimate objects after being denied toys and waiting for her mother). Hell, she actually never got a single individual scene in this book, and the few scenes where she got good dialogue and a little space, were really quick moments tacked on to the end of other people's scenes. As a married woman she gets a few more scraps than she does when she is single, such as stronger acknowledgements from her parents of the damage their parenting has caused.

This book also had some very strange patterns when it came to writing Hana. For instance, the dialogue would feature a comparison to a particular skill, over and over, even in contexts where it did not fit. During the first few Walker Ranch chapters, they had her mention embroidery at a bar and while sorting tack for the horses. When it was pointed out that the writing team seemed to forget that Hana had horseriding experience, they then began replacing the embroidery mentions with equestrian ones. When it came to Hana, the writing strategy seemed to be "throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks" in lieu of actual effort.

There is one area where (very barely) the team could be given credit - and that was providing a grand total of three scenes (yes THREE!) where the MC could actually care about Hana's wellbeing. One was in Chapter 9 when Isabella mocks Hana for her "failed engagements" - in very much the same way Olivia got away with mocking her a book earlier - and the MC's criticism of the same was made a default. Another was in the first pregnancy photoshoot, where the MC could tell Hana to never consider herself secondary to her. The third was during the baby shower if she was married, where the MC could insist she rest rather than make the arrangements (which she is in charge of of she is single). But it's important to remember, again, that these were scraps, and scraps hardly constitute better treatment. I mean, Kiara got a brief burst of good treatment at the finale of this book, and look at how she was  treated in the subsequent books! As soon as they felt they'd done "a good job", the writing team slipped back into the same harmful patterns they'd always kept for these two WOC.

Not a lot happens for a single Hana, except the usual story beats. A married Hana gets a few extra scenes that establish her life as being marginally better, but besides that, she is relegated far, far into the background and only given scraps.

The Royal Holiday

Special mention to this mini-book, because it revolves around comforting a disgraced noblewoman who didn't (and actually still doesn't) hesitate to mock and undermine Hana. It's five whole chapters of showering attention, love and validation on Olivia, meanwhile in her single playthrough, the MC briefly remembers she has a friend called Hana so she can buy a music composition book (as far as I recall, she stopped performing in public. I don't think that means she would have forgotten how to compose pieces!). Do you recall what the MC's reaction was when Olivia mocked Hana in front of her mother? "Well, at least [Olivia] got the job done".

It's truly wild to me how much difference being a white woman makes in this series.

Books Two and Three

I'm clubbing these two together, since Book 2 falls further short in terms of characterization, and Book 3 doesn't even try. This is especially true if you're not married to Hana - she's just a part of the group at this point, with not much attention paid to her outside of it. Unlike Maxwell, who dominates these two books in terms of story and is coddled by the MC and the group throughout Book 3, and Drake in previous books, there is no real or consistent attempt to connect her to either the past or to what is currently happening (unless she is the Heir's mother).

Book 2 not only continues the trend of tossing occasional scraps Hana's way, but also continues to favour Olivia over Hana in very obvious ways - whether it is in giving Olivia more individual scenes, or in the way their interactions are framed (a good example of this would be the investigation scene at Auvernal, where Hana is made to sound frivolous compared to both Olivia and the MC). Besides this, a truly dangerous trend begins especially if Hana is married - many important facets of her characterization (where she came from, her parents' treatment of her) are either erased, minimised or retconned. While this has happened before in TRR, it hasn't exactly happened on the scale that it does this book (I will probably expand on this in some of the latter essays).

One notable moment from Book 2 is Hana's childhood scene. The writing for this scene is great: even though Lorelai seems more affectionate than she is in the present, or in Hana's previous childhood scene (where she is absent), it's quite clear that child!Hana responds to her mother with equal amounts of love and fear, "risking hugs" and feeling anxious even when her mother displays affection. You can tell Lorelai has secrets to hide from her daughter. You can tell how much of a toll Lorelai's and Xinghai's parenting has taken on Hana, even at that tender age. 

The downside to this scene, however, is that the narrative uses it as a springboard to soften Lorelai as a parent. Even though Hana gets to call her mother out on her hypocrisy (Lorelai wishes for the Heir to not be pushed into alliances, forgetting that that was what she put Hana through for most of her life), she expresses solidarity with, and a deepened understanding of, her mother in a couple of scenes. The narrative also takes great pains to not explore Hana's roots - neither Chinese, nor Cordonian (one exception is the library scene in the TRH2 finale, where she mentions reading manhuas as a child).

As a spouse, Book 2 does give us a small window into how she's progressed in some scenes, such as the heir-anointing photoshoot where she can speak about how she now feels a sense of belongingness to Cordonia, the scene in the hedge maze where she quotes The Language of Flowers (a book she last referenced in TRR2), or the observatory scene where she talks about her relationship with the media. The narrative also reminds us on a few occasions of her small secret rebellions, such as telling her parents that her favourite science fiction novels were actually astronomy books, or (in both playthroughs) the goth phase mentioned in Hana's dossier. But this comes with an serious downside - in the playthroughs where she isn't a spouse, we know very little about whether her story has progressed at all. 

Book 3 establishes Barthelemy as the Big Bad, so it isn't altogether surprising that Maxwell gets a lot of attention and sympathy within the narrative. Liam finds out the other person who killed his mother, but continues to have very little space to process. Drake gets to give the other men a lecture on "toxic masculinity" and Olivia yet again gets to cosplay at being a spy, this time putting herself in the real danger of being captured. In Hana's case, however, very little happens in terms of story - married or not. As a parent, she is given similar story beats as the other LIs, and when Bartie is shown to be involved in Queen Eleanor's murder, she is positioned as a distant observer to this heavy revelation (Hana seems more worried about Bartie putting the Heir through the same experience she got from her own parents). Which is fine, given the way the flashbacks had been written so far, but I'm sure the writing team could have involved Lorelai more in palace intrigue if they really wanted to.

Narratively, Hana's own story is at a standstill. And the only true marker of progress, regardless of her marital status - that she gets at all - is that she becomes a music teacher in the five years since the Heir was born. While it's a nice tie-back to The Royal Holiday, the fact that the team never bothered to build this up, is truly shameful.

It's true that every LI gets bad writing in this series. They get retcons, they get cringeworthy dialogues, they sound like clones of each other. Fair enough. But it hits a lot harder when one of those LIs gets this kind of treatment from the beginning. When Hana gives the MC an elaborate gift for their wedding anniversary and the MC hasn't even prepared a love letter, I'm reminded of how the same MC made her wife run errands in Savannah's diamond scene at their reception. When I see the MC compare Hana's broken engagement to Penelope's situation with her ex-husband, I remember how she (optionally) allowed her "Bestieeeeeee" Olivia to call her a failure. At least with a Drake, or a Maxwell, or an Olivia, there has been a history of the MC repeatedly seeking them out to offer comfort. There is very little of that for Hana, so the MC's dynamic with her, and the current bad treatment of her from the narrative, takes on an entirely different meaning.

The original TRR series set the foundation for Hana Lee as a character, and then allowed other characters to eat into her space. And while the narrative establishes that she is a skilled, dedicated person, it also neglects to place any lasting emphasis on her value, while praising other characters for either the same or lesser levels of dedication. TRH takes this in a more insidious direction. Because the previous series did not give Hana enough of her due, this series is able to successfully downplay several aspects of her entirely.

The next few sections will trace several components of her characterization in detail, from the first book to the latest (ie. before TRF), and explore exactly how a neglectful narrative failed her.

Next: LI!Hana and Friend!Hana

#hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale