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#and lxc was seen as the perfect woman i.e. beautiful and accomplished
stiltonbasket · 2 years
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In Flowers in the Palace, how are Nie Mingjue and Lan Xichen viewed by the country as a whole?
Nie Mingjue publicly overthrew (aka murdered) Wen Ruohan with no warning whatsoever, so he has a reputation as a pretty bloodthirsty emperor. However, things began to change when he started making reparations to WRH's various victims and married Lan Xichen, since taking a respected scholar for his Empress was viewed as an act of sympathy for the common people. But at the same time, he outlawed political executions and acts of physical discipline towards servants, so most wealthier households either love or hate him, while the middle/laboring classes think favorably of him. However, the military/trade aspects of the country are all going strong, so none of his opponents have been brave and/or foolish enough to complain about him.
Similarly, LXC is a mixed bag with opinions about her differing between genders instead of between social classes. Virtually all of her male subjects have issues with a woman being so deeply involved with the government, and after she passed her first set of new laws about girls’ education and legal marriage ages for teens, there were no remaining political factions that didn’t have a problem with her. But unlike with NMJ, Lan Xichen is also widely feared. Lan Xichen has her own network of spies that report directly to her, and the entire country knows that these spies exist, though no one knows who they are--and furthermore, getting on her bad side is worse than directly aggravating the Emperor, so there have been multiple assassination attempts during her reign as Empress, though no one has tried to kill NMJ. 
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