"Let's be together for the rest of our lives"

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It’s not really apparent at first glance that he’s wrong, because it seems like Li Tai is right. We spend lots of Li Tai’s route selling him out to save our own skin. We don’t even really have the option of being brave enough to own up to it and telling him  – even though Yuanzhao is certain he loves her (possibly enough to forgive her) and they both know it – because that would be Yuanzhao putting her life in Li Tai’s hands. And Yuanzhao in Li Tai’s eyes would never put her fate in other people’s hands; she fights for it herself..

But Wu Yuanzhao is capable of love. We literally start this route with an act of kindness by saving Consort Wei’s daughter. And Li Tai isn’t privy to this, but the whole of Li Zhi’s route we see over and over Yuanzhao’s love for others and the subsequent grief – Rui Er, Xi Xin (ordering Xi Xin to never sacrifice her life to save Yuanzhao), her aunt, Anning and Li Hong. Yuanzhao also is affected by and clearly cares about her vassals Ji Huaizhong and Li Yifu.Yuanzhao is capable of love.

The thing is that Li Tai has to know this. He witnessed Yuanzhao put her life on the line to protect Bianji for Gaoyang.

Why, then, does Li Tai keep saying that she isn’t capable of love?

Because if Wu Yuanzhao was someone incapable of loving, then there was no need to hope that perhaps she’d return his feelings. Because then his keeping quiet about his imminent death was noble because there was no way that she would love him enough to want to stay back, to “waste” years of her life spending time with him instead of all the great deeds she was capable of. Because objectively Wu Yuanzhao was someone capable of feeling and forming attachments to others, Li Tai had seen it with Gaoyang and he is not stupid enough to miss it. But if Yuanzhao was capable of seeing him as someone precious, but not someone precious enough to be in love with, then she would’ve had to grapple with the difficult choice of achieving her aspirations or staying with her friend. And Li Tai doesn’t want to get rejected, doesn’t want to ask her if the last few years of his life is important enough for her to leave, because what if it isn’t?

Because if he already anticipates that there’s no hope, then there’s only disappointment and resignation, not the possibility of soaring hope and the subsequent crash.

Li Tai knows Wu Yuanzhao better than she knows herself. There is no need to ask. She would leave.

The extremely tragic part is that Li Tai understands Yuanzhao extremely well. But he twists that understanding at the last minute and only with respect to his own self. With Gaoyang/Bianji, Yuanzhao told him that “There is always someone in this world that deserves [my putting my life on the line for them]”. We got an Affinity +9 for that scene, man. (In an amazing case of parallelism, Yuanzhao says it in response to Li Tai saying, “someone like you would risk your life for someone else?” Clearly the crux in Li Tai’s route in RTE2 was always going to be about this line.) But he just couldn’t or wasn’t willing to believe that a person capable of such love was also capable of loving him.

I’m a big fan of Li Tai’s silent devotion even when he believes it’s hopeless. But to be frank, Li Tai does both himself and Yuanzhao a great disservice by reducing her to someone capable of love. We see in both RTE 1 & 2 that Yuanzhao is capable of great love. Li Tai witnessed her love for Gaoyang in RTE 1, and in RTE 2 Li Zhi’s route we see her love for Rui Er, Xi Xin (ordering Xi Xin to never sacrifice her life to save Yuanzhao), her aunt, Anning and Li Hong. Yuanzhao also canonically does kind deeds on whims. She’s not the heartless monster that Li Tai sets her out to be. But in repeating that narrative to himself, he sealed off both of their roads together.

You can make a real attempt to drink what you believe might be poisoned wine on his behalf, and he still won’t believe that you might love him more than life itself, or at least enough to postpone your ambitions for a few years. 

Nothing you do can save him, because Li Tai has resigned himself to a fate of unrequited love without daring to imagine that the love could be returned. In Li Zhi’s route you are able to reach a somewhat “good” end by becoming an empress, because even though there was always a consort, an empress, the chancellors, and then the emperor and even the people themselves blocking your way, you could always rely on yourself to find your own path. In Li Tai’s route the real obstacle was Li Tai himself, and Yuanzhao didn’t devote herself to dismantling that obstacle the same way she did everything else. If there is to be a route that can save Li Tai, it has to be about Yuanzhao inspiring Li Tai not to resign himself to the “fate” of unrequited love and quiet, sacrificial devotion. Yuanzhao has inspired lots of characters to stand up for themselves – Gaoyang, Ji Huaizhong, Li YiFu, Yue’er, Shanguang Wan’er, and finally even herself. It would be thematically in line for Yuanzhao to inspire Li Tai, too.

On to my speculation about what Li Tai’s original ‘good’ end would have looked like.

Li Tai’s two lines, “I know you better than you know yourself” and “I find it hard to believe that someone like you could love someone” are the equivalent of Li Zhi route’s “Yuanzhao, will you stay with me to the end?” and “Do you trust me?” Where Li Zhi’s route was about constantly juggling choices that would increase or decrease Li Zhi’s ability to trust you, Li Tai’s route would be about convincing him that you did indeed love him at least as much as your own self. That him sacrificing himself would cause you pain in turn.

Li Tai’s route was, quite frankly, shockingly devoid of options for Yuanzhao to show her devotion to Li Tai. When Li Zhi asked if you would stay with him, or if you would trust him, you could respond. In Li Tai’s route, he just says his piece and Yuanzhao lets him. 

It’s already established when they first reunited that everyone knows Li Tai loves Yuanzhao. Li Tai’s henchman literally exposes it in front of both of them and the whole camp. It literally would have been so easy for Yuanzhao to confirm that the feeling is requited, and if anything it would actually work in her favour. But any option to that effect in Li Tai’s route has Yuanzhao using her “I’m just a mere submissive girl” baby voice instead of her lower one when she’s talking business. Li Tai knows Yuanzhao, and that’s the voice Yuanzhao uses when she’s putting on a front with others. If anything, picking those options just signals to Li Tai that “hey I’m under duress and you probably shouldn’t trust me,” but also that you don’t trust him enough to tell him exactly what kind of duress you’re under. It’s rather odd that Yuanzhao constantly uses that fake voice in Li Tai’s route. She doesn’t even use that when she’s having one-on-one’s with Li Zhi in his route. It would be so easy for Yuanzhao to put in more real effort to convince Li Tai of her love, and that same lack of effort was its loudest message that Li Tai easily read. It’s really no wonder that Li Tai thinks Yuanzhao doesn’t give that much of a shit about him.

If there really was an original script with a happy end for Li Tai, there probably would have been a lot more options in the period before Yuanzhao’s antidote was up, especially ones where she is more frank with Li Tai. The focus would have been how to convey to your love that the love is there, even though you’re selling out all his men and causing them to die. Maybe you even get to write letters to the battlefield that would serve the effect of convincing him that you would still be there waiting for him to return, so there is no need for him to postpone medical treatment to give you the hairpin. (Seriously, Li Tai’s fear that Yuanzhao wouldn’t be there when he returns home even though she was there supporting from the backline the whole time was kind of sad?!??) Gaoyang would probably have been pivotal to helping the both of you and maybe Li Zhi govern the country together.