Fan Theory that Kublai Khan was in love with Marco Polo (Netflix)
Okay so I will admit I’m not well read enough to understand what coquetry means without looking it up. For those who like me, don’t know it means flirtatious behaviour. The reason I bring this up is because I was going through the Khan’s speech when he goes off on Marco about saving his father whilst Jingim’s kids are being born and every line of it just makes it seem more and more like he loved Marco or though Marco was in love with him. I know people always put Marco in as the Khan’s ‘son’ or ship him Jingim (which I also do) but just look at this speech and tell me he’s not head over heels in love with this Europe. N.B. This is only about the Netflix TV show, obviously not about real life.
The world gets bigger, so you open your arms wider. Is that not the Ghengis way?You let in the outsiders, with their sad eyes and wounded hearts, the orphaned son, the abandoned boy, you let them in your home, learn from them? Yes, but raise them and love them? Offer them all the magic the whole world has to offer? They fuck you. Oaths? Meaningless. Love in their eyes, worthless. Heart they promise you, will never be. Oh, they’ll stare, plead. Love mixed with awe mixed with coquetry mixed with an insatiable festering need. Need of a home, need of a father, need of a fucking place in the world. Give them all of this and more and what do they do, they scurry back to their dubious relations despite their meager characters that lack entirely of heart.
Like are you kidding me? The “orphaned son” must be his adopted son Ahmad but the “abandoned boy”? That’s defo Marco. “Raise them” is Ahmad (even though Polo is like 19 when he reaches Cambulac) but the “love them” is referring to both of them because he loves them both one as a son and one as something more perhaps?
“Offer them all the magic the whole world has to offer” What do you, a king, do for your lover if not show them all the wonders of the world. When he showed him Xanadu in S2 tell me that wasn’t some showing off to a crush like look at my magic city, look at me climb this mountain and watch me stare down a wolf, come on a nice romantic secluded hike with me.
“Love in their eyes” “Heart they promise you, will never be” I don’t even have to explain this one, like come on guys. Kublai clearly thought Marco loved him, like LOVED him, and he’s heartbroken and pissed off now that he thinks that not true.
And that brings us to where we started “Love mixed with awe mixed with coquetry mixed with an insatiable fucking need” Kublai probably liked the power imbalance, this young boy completely out of his depth with no friends, completely at his mercy and the mercy of his every whim. A pretty boy with flowery words who spends half his time playing chess with the Khan in his private quarters and whispering sweet nothings about his empire.
But here’s the clincher of my little reading-too-much-into-subtext theory. Marco actually DID love him. I was convinced after I finished the show that Marco had Stockholm Syndrome and there was an explanation/theory on AO3 which outlined all of the good reasons for this, the fact that he can never bring himself to leave the Khan even when he does horrible things, even when he kills little boys who just want a hug and when he sentences Marco to death or beats a man to death in front of him he still remains loyal to the Khan even when multiple people ask him to run away with them or tell him to leave and give him a means of escape he won’t do it and I thought that was textbook Stockholm and it definitely still is but there’s more to it. Marco is in love with Kublai Khan and that’s why he’s so invested in the Mongol Empire, why he constantly risks his own life to save him and why he will never leave.
Also note that this isn’t a healthy relationship I’m proposing between the two, Kublai has waaaaaaay to much power over him, he’s way older (his sons are the same age if not older than him) and Marco really is just too much in need of a home and a place in the world. I don’t even think the Khan is purposely taking advantage of him in a weird way, he’s just the most powerful guy in the area, of course he’s going to be used to having utter control over other people lives but with Marco he’s almost like a fun Latin novelty who he gets to induct into this new way of thinking where the Khan is his be all and end all and Marco is utterly devoted to him by the end. For a guy on a power trip I can only assume that would be fun and we saw with Mei Lin how easy it was for a royal concubine to worm their way into his good books and arguably into his heart (if not his bed). The only other person who I think gets that same level of devotion is Kokachin the fake blue princess who we have explicitly seen he loves and even she gets left on read when the Khan’s needs (and his father’s) take precedent.
Kublai loves Marco and that’s why Jingim hates him so much in S1 (amongst other reason like the fact that he never keeps his mouth shut), heck he might have even also been in love with Marco and jealous that his father would likley get first dibs.
My last and most compelling piece of evidence is simply put, how could anyone look at Marco Polo and not fall in love with him?
