ok so jin ling is. not a well-adjusted child at all and is incredibly spoiled.
Which means that Jiang Cheng and Jin Guangyao didn’t do a very good job on the parenting their nephew front. We see enough of Jiang Cheng’s approach, and Jin Ling tells us flat out that Jiang Cheng yells at and threatens him all the time, but then gives him whatever he wants. So he’s combining his parents’ parenting styles in a really fun and bad way.
The only thing we see of Jin Guangyao is him urging Jiang Cheng to go easy on Jin Ling and not be too harsh with him, and the general consensus is that Jin Guangyao is overly permissive and coddles Jin Ling. There’s a theory that this is so he can stay in power longer, and while he wouldn’t complain about that, I don’t think I buy it, and I do buy that he expects Jin Ling to be the next leader of the Jin sect. Otherwise, Jin Guangyao would have to produce an heir, which either means a) accidental incest baby 2! or, b) kill Qin Su and remarry. And since he hasn’t gotten around to that in the 10 or so years they’ve been married, I think it’s because he doesn’t want to, and so has decided to be ok with not having dynastic ambitions.
But! Back to Jin Guangyao’s parenting! I don’t think it’s because he wants Jin Ling to be weak and easily lead. Jin Guangyao didn’t get a real childhood. He was put to work young, and was exposed to the worst parts of the adult world from day one. He probably doesn’t remember a time when he didn’t know what sex was, he’s probably very confused to learn about children who didn’t have a list of chores as long as their arm at age 5. He learned his addition and multiplication tables by helping his mom calculate how many customers she’d have to take to pay for his school or pay off her debt or keep him from being sold. The concept of being a kid is probably something he is desperately jealous he never got to have. And when he gets to Qinghe, he’s given a very adult job as a teen. He and Huaisang are very close in age. Huaisang is a child. Meng Yao is not.
So I think his permissiveness reads more similar to when my mom got. Way. Too. Into. me going to prom (i didn’t really care. i was just there for the chocolate fountain) because she didn’t get to go to hers. Jin Guangyao gets to vicariously have the childhood he believes he would have gotten if his dad had just paid his mom’s contract and brought them to live at Koi Tower like he should have through Jin Ling. So of course he showers him with expensive gifts and wonder-dogs, cultivation training, free time, opportunities to go night-hunting. Of course he lets him play and have an extended childhood instead of enforcing discipline and giving him the sort of duties and responsibilities of a sect heir. On top of that, Jiang Cheng likes to yell and threaten to break Jin Ling’s legs, tell him to not bother coming home if he fucks up, etc, even though he doesn’t mean it. Jin Guangyao has been raised and trained to be a peacemaker, to talk down very angry men in positions of power, and to mediate between them and weaker others. This is the role he fulfilled between Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang (”Please don’t make your brother angry. I won’t be able to protect you anymore.”). So I don’t think he’s undermining Jiang Cheng, at least not consciously. He’s falling back into a role he’s been put into again and again and again. Is this good? No. Is it nefarious? Also no.
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