#ray ofts

Jin Guangyao: born the illegitimate son of a Sect Leader (like a wizard prince) and a prostitute. He and his mum were bullied in the brothel where he grew up because his mum was an educated woman. He witnesses his mum being horribly abused and is unable to protect her. When he’s 14 she dies, after having convinced him to go to his father for protection and telling him that his father will take him in and give him a place as his son.

He goes to his father on his birthday and his father utterly refuses to even see him. Instead he is thrown off the top of his father’s palace’s marble staircase. The attempt to be recognized makes him a laughingstock and figure of public ridicule and gossip throughout society, and he is treated as though he has some kind of communicable disease just for being the son of a whore.

His life of crime begins when he murders a man for bullying him and insulting his mother, and is thrown out of his sect as a result. He then goes and becomes a double agent with the big bad of the first half of the story, doing terrible things to earn the man’s trust. (Torture and killing of various good guys’ henchmen.) He then stabs the baddy in the back and wins the war for the good guys.

Legitimised by his father for winning the war, he soon discovers that his father is not a good man either, and does some terrible things to keep his father’s favour (while being physically and emotionally abused by his father and step mother.)

Finally he does terrible things to cover up the terrible things he has already done, and becomes the big bad of the second half of the story, but it’s very easy to imagine that if he had not been consistently treated like shit by everyone (not you, Xichen, you’re a delight) he would have preferred to be firmly on the side of the heroes.