the thing is that wu meiniang knows she's bisexual but can't think about it too much because she has a job to do. she knows that her relationships with men will be treated more seriously and that they are her primary avenue to power in a lot of situations so that's what she prioritizes, even if her heart isnt always in it. I don't think she thinks about women that much unprompted but is very open minded and would go with it if propositioned by a woman.
liu xi on the other hand is deeply in the closet because the alternative is admitting that the twelve years she spent in the palace centring her life around one woman has never been purely motivated by revenge and is in fact also a bid to be closer to said woman and if that realization hit her i i think it would completely break her worldview. sure she's been in the palace for twelve years and has expressed outright disgust at the prospect of meeting the emperor, has never once looked at the princes, and has an all-consuming obsession with her estranged friend that has permanently altered the course of her life but really who's to say what that means? Who's to say indeed...
its's crazy. shes crazy. im obsessed with her
