#fmftbs lore

On other days I cry trying to make sense of fmftbs family tree

it’s beautiful

it's crazy that i don't have a family tree done for tcak yet, even though i really need it bc i always forget what emmy and mc are to each other 😔

i always skimp on descriptions, so here it is --

gyx and qls both have long black hair tied into topknots and dark brown eyes, and relatively clean-shaven.

qls is tall (~179cm) and slender, fair-skinned, and with willow-shaped eyes. very effortlessly elegant and noble, and classically handsome

gyx is very tall (~190cm), very muscular because all he does is swing his sword around. very tanned with faint scars all over, and his left eye has two pupils. more roguishly handsome

---

emmy is pretty tall (~185cm), toned, but still a bit lanky. short curly red-gold hair, hazel-gold eyes, fairly tanned with freckles across his nose. very pretty and boyish-looking

goscelin is tall (~181cm), slender, and has light brown skin. has shoulder-length wavy dark brown hair, a short well-groomed beard, both of which are starting to grey a bit, and dark brown eyes

Also how would gramps react if he knew/saw the shitshow mc’s life became because of that decision? How would her father react? (Basically them watching from beyond the grave or something)

it would bring song into the anti-yuan alliance, and bolsters their legitimacy because majority of the great clans would be against yuan. plus, it ensures that xia will be a compliant puppet emperor because xia has stronger ties to song than anyone else (chunyu di's mother is qls' half-sister, and the only reason gyx is able to act as regent is because he expedited gramps' plan and quickly married off his cousin to chunyu di, instead of them remaining betrothed)

tángmèi is your paternal cousin if she's younger than you and is the daughter of an uncle, not a name 😔

your táng cousins are basically your siblings and the ones you can't marry because you share the same surname

not having a secure line of succession is putting mc in a bad position

having two sons is safe, even if concubine-born. whenever mc has a son, or even a daughter, qls can shuffle them around. but if he dies before mc has a kid, syf's kids are seen as hers, which gives mc power as the empress dowager, and the ability to rule as a regent.

i wanted to ask what inspired the clan names of the various characters? there are a few familiar ones like shangguan and chunyu, but i was wondering if any of the others have a historical reference. is there a reason they're overwhelmingly compound surnames? i love them btw. i write a bit of historical china inspired fiction as well and one of the things i struggle with is making the names flow nicely and sound distinct. which gets harder when you worldbuild too much and have a whole chart of lore characters, most of whom are dead lmao.

as much as i simp for the song dynasty aesthetics, the absolute chaos from the late spring and autumn period to the three kingdoms period is my favourite. it's insane how much the middle kingdom yearns to tear itself apart and piece itself back together afterward 😭 chu-han contention is a favourite period of mine because of how batshit it was -- like the battles of pengcheng and jingxing? how many people died in those? my poor little meow meow manchild xiang yu? my sassy and lazy king han xin? sorry to rant about it, but it's just so entertaining and chaotic i love it

and yes, i did take all of the compound surnames from historical sources! i used a combination of zh.wiki and baidu to cross-reference names, and to double-check that they were han chinese surnames, instead of names like dugu, tuoba, yelu, etc. that are taken from xianbei, manchu, xiongnu, khitan, etc. sources.

i don't really have much of a reason aside from i think compound surnames are cool? plus, they were more common in ancient china, versus modern day after centuries of people simplifying/changing their surnames. i also think it helps differentiate between the regular nobles and the royal/imperial families who hold all the power.

the names are also pretty hard for me too, especially since i'm cantonese, and names in mandarin are less natural to me. i genuinely do recommend pulling up like google translate or something and letting the text-to-voice read out the names to help with the flow of them. keeping the diacritics also helps keep the names distinct, even if it is a pain to go back and edit everything.

Was she punished for the hairpin?

since i don't think this will be addressed in the actual story, yes 😔 it was the only act of kindness she could think of (though idk if she thought mc would stab her son vs using it to threaten him with offing herself)