#shaoyu

They are having a brat-off and Xiaobao is winning!!!!

He's hilarious.

Honey, you're like 16 or shit, and you can be crown prince all you want, you still don't have the littlest claim on Su Yin.

Also, this is exactly how many an Empress got deposed. Attacking the Emperor's favorite because she's getting more attention is a very dangerous game.

Like, the totality of the interactions between Shaoyu and Xiaobao could have been taken directly from a harem drama.

From “what do you mean someone else is staying in MY wing of the palace”

to “as long as my quarters are close to yours”

to “if i can't kill you i'll give you money to move to a palace far away”

to “did you know your parents got kidnapped and Su Yin didn't even tell you"

He has been put in an awful position: save Xiaobao by having Huai’en killed, or watch Xiaobao continue to deteriorate by leaving Huai’en alone. He knows Shaoyu hates Xiaobao, so there is no way he’d give up that dahlia if Su Yin tried to negotiate; not even Su Yin’s reminder of potential backlash from the emperor swayed him. It wasn’t until he set up the ambush that Shaoyu handed over the dahlia.

All that on top of just being super protective of Xiaobao after everything that’s happened, as well as probably blaming himself to an extent for leaving Huai’en with the Jin family in the first place. That much is clear in his misdirections and lies of omission—and how hesitant and guilty he looks every time he does it.

It doesn’t seem malicious, though—it just seems like someone tiptoeing around an incendiary topic out of fear that it will hurt someone he cares about who’s already enduring the unendurable. If it were truly malice or jealousy, he could have run Huai’en through and gotten the dahlia right then and there, but the sword was in Xiaobao’s hand—even if he thinks Xiaobao should hate Huai’en, he didn’t take that decision away from him. It shows Su Yin to be a flawed person trying his best for the people he loves, just like Xiaobao and Huai’en.