Episode 4 – Raven of the Interior Palace

I think any one who asks another person if their carving is of “a extra fat lizard” is aware what the reply is. That would not cease Emperor Gaojun, of course, but supplied that Shouxue is preventing him tooth and nail in his attempts to get to know her much better (and extremely probably to romance her his pointed concerns to the priest about the Raven Consort this 7 days show that he’s pretty intrigued in her), it really is hard to blame him. It feels as if he is willing to resort to nearly anything if it’ll get him a response. But most likely he is finding as a result of to her, at minimum a minimal, since when she’s uncertain why Jiu-Jiu is so mad at her for making an attempt to give her a reward, it is Gaojun that she asks for tips. Granted, she will not know a lot of other men and women she could inquire, but it truly is nonetheless a marker of her bit by bit making trust for him, and that ought to make him content.

Not that the conversation is without its issues, since she clearly tells him that the present she tried to give Jiu-Jiu was the hair sticks he himself gifted to her. Gaojun, like Shouxue, tends to keep his emotions firmly in examine, but his response to this little bit of data lets us know that he is not the most delighted with this. In fact, he tends to make a level of telling her not to give absent the amber fish he gave her, and what is additional vital in this article is that he also tells her why: the fish was built for him by Ding Lan, a man he cared deeply about…a person the Empress Dowager had killed.

The further we go into this story, the tighter the Empress Dowager’s grasp on the court is uncovered to be. The spirit Shouxue is tasked with preserving this 7 days is that of a skylark, a tiny songbird who once belonged to a younger lady known as the Skylark Princess. Except I am misunderstanding something, I feel she was Gaojun’s 50 %-sister, the daughter of the former emperor and a concubine, and for this horrific sin, she was forced to dwell in a tiny, remote setting up, and the Empress Dowager held her from acquiring the drugs that her sickly structure warranted. This led to the princess escalating her very own medicinal herbs, which in convert led to her demise: though striving to harvest a certain plant, she fell into the cold waters of a lake. We’re not certain if she drowned or died of problems from her dunking – I believe it was the former, but the way it can be talked about afterwards in the episode would make me dilemma that – but possibly way, knowing that she experienced to procure her possess medications simply because of the Empress Dowager’s hatefulness did lead to the princess’ loss of life. That, if you are trying to keep count, helps make at least 4 fatalities on the woman’s tally sheet, and incredibly very likely a lot more will be added.

It can be probable that Shouxue’s skill to assist the dead to move on is element of why Gaojun is so drawn to her. Like all people else who has been touched by the Empress Dowager’s shadow, he’s lived with her poison, and as the submit-credits scene displays us this week, he’s now being haunted by two of her victims in a incredibly literal way. No matter whether this is based mostly on the text she mouthed just before her execution or not isn’t really nevertheless recognised, but either way, Shouxue is plainly the Dowager’s opposite, bringing peace and rest to other individuals somewhat than strife and ache. Even if he hasn’t seized on the strategy of asking her to aid the ghosts who pay a visit to him at night time, Gaojun must obtain Shouxue’s willingness to assistance other people a hanging, and potentially calming, contrast. In her environment, death is basically a different phase on the journey, and that has to be comforting to him.

The bittersweetness of this week’s episode mirrors individuals that arrived in advance of. Shouxue can not resolve what the Empress Dowager did, but she can, like that very last fairy in Sleeping Elegance, rework her curse. Perhaps which is why there are so lots of bird names in this series – birds exist in the liminal area between heaven and earth, capable to go among them. Shouxue is the backlink that can in some cases enable to join the two, and that makes her highly effective in a silent way.

Rating:

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