Spoilers for Ep 14-15 of The Glory/Gui Nv
Gotta give it up for The Glory for successfully switching my feelings about an extreme character from one polar end to the other. Doesn't happen everyday. Wow.
So I wasn't even a big fan of the show. Atop the repetitive assembly line tropes, its pacing was rushed and logic uneven but I liked the lighting, women's costumes, the main leads AND THE GIRLFRIEND WAAH so I kept kinda binging it with sporadic attention.
Show had the most toxic and unhinged mother ever whom I did NOT think was possible to be justified no matter how hard they tried, because while it's valid to send away and estrange your child because she was being schemed upon by the second wife, there was no need to let the child suffer so much. But when they finally revealed what truly happened..... SPOILERS
It wasn't as simple as Mother's natal family was destroyed by Father so she's out for an unreasonable revenge massacre.
It wasn't as simple as "she was trying to keep the daughter away for her own safety and going to unreasonable extremes for it because she's nuts" just because of a jealous concubine set to ruin a baby girl's future (who thought it'd be a boy, if the doctor assumed it'd be a girl she likely wouldn't have gone down with such a plan, she's still an evil woman yes but she's not that insidious, her motives are pretty transparent); it's the FATHER who was a hella insane psychopath! Under his meek and kind exterior he's a hypocrite and a heartless scumbag who made me feel like even Emperor Qianlong was more humane!
This is NOT a justification for her actions. Being a victim doesn't absolve you of your crimes, she IS terrible for the abuse she inflicted/allowed to happen on her child and not caring if dozens of victims would die in the course of her bloodlust. BUT
Finally, I'm seeing her for what she is. She's no longer really a human with sound, functional brain. She's a severely traumatized caged animal who's been on feral and delusional survival mode for YEARS. Imagine:
You are torn from your lover, your family is ruined, you are forced to marry and sleep with the person who presumably caused all of it, you are already getting through every day with revenge and bitterness in mind, but a targeted, "healthier" version of it.
Throughout your pregnancy, your unborn child is labelled as a curse.
You give birth after hours of agony, with no one but maids by your side because they are all too busy frantically prioritizing superstition over her.
You are told your newborn baby will be beaten to exorcise the supposed demon in her. Your husband says; "It's okay, we can always have another baby."
You run to every family member's door and beg for their mercy and help and they pretend to be deaf and blind (Remember, you are still freshly postpartum).
Wild with desperation and rage, you pretend like the demon is yourself, and demand that YOU be beaten instead. And your husband agrees and gives his order.
You are (STILL FRESH OUT OF LABOR) beaten until your legs are so mangled you become a cripple!
You get isolated in a lonely back garden with just your maids, with IMMENSE physical and emotional agony, you lose all contact with outside world, no one to offer a single kind and comforting word to you except your maid and zero way to heal your mind and get back your focus. You gradually lose your touch with reality and to be indelicate, there's no way for you to "touch grass" even if you wanted to because HAH. You are confined inside that house's walls and wheelchair!
Only hatred and toxicity are your companions, and it only keeps growing, you are no longer planning for a "reasonable revenge", it's full-on war now. And in a war, everyone will die, regardless their innocence.
When you are at the height of your plans, your daughter suddenly returns home. In the very tiny gap in your heart that you've left for your child, there's fear, there's grief that your child suffered horribly while she was away, but after the years you had, you do not know how to express your love and concern in any sort of "healthy" way. Every fiber of your body can only scream at your daughter "GET OUT. GET OUT!!!" and you resort to any means to have your daughter RUN the hell away from this horrific place, and from you, the "failed, incompetent excuse of a mother who couldn't save her child" before it's too late. Yes, the child hadn't had any better life outside but, in your head, she has, she will, because remember, that's what you choose to believe, that was the belief that kept you going, in your years of re-living your trauma and gradually losing touch with reality and reason.
You are no longer a person but a husk of one, so of course your behavior is not going to be reasonable. You are merely acting by your deeply ingrained instincts: which is to KEEP AWAY THE CHILD and I WILL KILL EVERYONE ELSE AND THEN MYSELF SO I'M FINALLY FREE.
After seeing ep 14-15 my verdict is that mother's actions were COMPLETELY understandable, and I can't fault her no matter what crime she commits because I probably would've done the same in her place.
Her daughter, Hanyan, is by NO means obligated to love or "try to understand" her mother and mother doesn't ask her to either, but Hanyan -bless her- chooses to, first out of her own delusional belief and hope that kept her going; that "My mother must still love me, just because", and then after learning of the full extent of the things that happened. She is the first person to approach her mother and teaches her the words "letting go" and "it's not worth losing yourself to toxicity and self-loathing over a man."
And dear reader, this scene.
I fucking cried, okay? Only I know how deeply this scene resonated with me.
You are free to interpret their individual characters and their dynamic whatever way you want, I hope you don't come after me for mine. That's all.
