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baihe_mediaAs I mentioned in this post about the audio drama adaptation, I was quite looking forward to diving into this novel, because I'm famously weak for historical romcoms featuring a princess/cross-dressing prince consort as the main couple. The main plot of Traitors' End can be summarised thus: modern-day woman Gu Qingtang travels back in time, becomes the adopted son and right-hand man of corrupt, ambitious Grand Commandant Nian, and schemes to marry Princess Yin Ning, Emperor Yin Chang'an's youngest sister, for Reasons. Yin Ning, for her part, is Not Amused by this, and attempts to stab Gu Qingtang on their wedding night.
The first third of this novel was a wholly enjoyable, riotous romcom, focused on Gu Qingtang (the teasing, doting one) and Yin Ning's (the tsundere one) developing relationship. There were promising hints of past secrets and an over-arching political plot. We learn, fairly early on, that Gu Qingtang is devoted to Yin Ning because she believes the latter gave her food when she first arrived hungry and penniless in the past (she tries several times to remind Yin Ning of this, though Yin Ning appears to have forgotten completely). Yin Ning, for her part, is initially deeply suspicious of Gu Qingtang because of Gu Qingtang's ties to Grand Commandant Nian, though in the best tradition of this kind of story, she also keeps marvelling at how handsome Gu Qingtang is and how affectionately Gu Qingtang treats her.
As the novel progressed, however, I began to feel that it was actually telling two very tonally different stories: a screwball-style romcom on the one hand, and a very dark, deeply sinister political plot on the other — one that involved a Squid Games-style death camp for training secret agents, plus one royal sibling scheming to murder another one, making a third one paraplegic, and making a fourth one infertile to prevent the birth of inconvenient challengers to the throne. The political plot culminates in the fairly violent death of almost everyone who might have a claim to the throne. There's a very affecting bit in the denouement — essentially, Gu Qingtang, having publicly painted herself as a traitor, arranges to have Yin Ning 'kill' her very publicly so that the latter can, in the absence of any rival claimants, either take the throne herself or act as regent for her very young nephew, the sole survivor of the attempted coup — but that felt unearned given the state of the leads' relationship. In her comments, the author notes that she had this scene in mind when she first began writing the novel. Which is in itself fine; you can in principle go from a screwball comedy to a high melodramatic quasi-tragedy provided you've done enough to build it up and modulate it. Unfortunately, however, this was not done here, with the result that the novel whiplashes between the romcom stylings of the main couple to the 'everyone suffers and dies horribly' of the political plot. This may have been due to a lack of experience on the author's part in handling a tonally lighter piece; all her previous novels had been fairly serious works with a high dose of angst/tragedy (indeed, the change in style was noted by readers in their comments on the novel).
(Just to clarify here that the novel does have a happy ending. Gu Qingtang's death is faked, and Yin Ning subsequently fakes her own death to get out of marrying a political ally (see below), and the two of them end up living together in a big found family together with their closest servants, Gu Qingtang's friends, and their dog.)
One of the things that might have helped with this modulation from comedy to angst would have been to develop the lead couple's dynamic beyond their initial 'slap slap kiss' routine (in at least a couple of scenes, quite literally). This did not really happen. While Yin Ning does grow to trust Gu Qingtang more over time, their romantic dynamic doesn't really change very much, nor does Yin Ning experience a great deal of personal development on-page. There were two things I'd really been looking out for as I read. The first was a shift in their romantic dynamic away from the initial 'Gu Qingtang teases affectionately/Yin Ning calls her a pest while secretly enjoying it'. There is a promising bit midway through the novel where Yin Ning thinks to herself: hey, why do I let her take advantage of me all the time? I can also take advantage of her. I was cheering Yin Ning on when this thought occurred to her — but rather sadly it didn't really go anywhere. The second was Yin Ning being finally brought into Gu Qingtang's full confidence, growing to become a competent political player on her own, and learning to protect her spouse rather than being protected by Gu Qingtang all the time — but again, this doesn't happen. In fact, Yin Ning doesn't fully realise how messed up and scheming (most of) her siblings are until the very end of the novel. The author also makes the incomprehensible decision to reveal that it was in fact not Yin Ning who had given Gu Qingtang food when the latter first arrived in the past, but rather another woman — knocking away the whole psychological foundation of Gu Qingtang's devotion to Yin Ning. The implications of this were left virtually unexplored, which begs the question of why the author chose to do this at all (beyond a misplaced horror of cliche).
There's also the fact that Yin Ning doesn't find out that Gu Qingtang is a woman until over the halfway point in the novel. In a cross-dressing novel, I much prefer it when the gender of the cross-dressing party is clear to their love interest quite early on, otherwise it starts to feel Fraught (and then I inevitably start wondering whether the novel can still be justifiably classified as a sapphic love story). In the case of Traitors' End, things felt doubly Fraught because we learn that Yin Ning had previously received a confession of love from another woman, her childhood friend Nian Wanniang (who's also the daughter of Gu Qingtang's adopted father), and had been so horrified by it that she never spoke to Nian Wanniang again.
There was also a pervasive threat of sexual violence from the male characters to a degree I've not so far seen in a baihe novel. As I noted in a group chat, 'I cannot understand how this author has written more "pervasive threat of sexual assault" into her comedy historical than her literal historical novel about a Han princess being married off to a Central Asian king' (the latter being the author's earlier work Snow on Her Pillow (枕上雪, pinyin: zhen shang xue)). In one scene, Yin Ning and Nian Wanniang are both almost raped by a Central Asian prince, a plot point which also leaned heavily into the racist trope of 'look at these barbaric Central Asian men lusting over our delicate Han women' which the author had previously managed to avoid in Snow On Her Pillow. Emperor Yin Chang'an, Yin Ning's brother, learns at one point that Gu Qingtang is a woman, after which he proceeds to creep on her at every possible opportunity, including forcing a kiss on her, practically ordering her to sleep with him, and proposing that she become one of his imperial consorts 'after all this is over'. Gu Qingtang manages to evade all this with a combination of feminine wiles and political savvy, but I hated, absolutely hated, that she had to do it.
The space given to various secondary characters was also uneven. Given Nian Wanniang's role in the denouement of the political plot — she takes up her father's mantle as a military general, and promises to lead her troops against the empire's external enemies (who seek to take advantage of the empire's extreme political instability) in exchange for Yin Ning's hand in marriage — she should have been given a much bigger antagonistic role in the novel. Similarly, Mingyue and Liu Yun'er, an f/f couple who are both trained spies as well as Gu Qingtang's allies and confidants, should have been given a much bigger role in the political plot, instead of the virtually non-existent one they ended up playing. In addition, very little use was made of Gu Qingtang's time-traveller origins, beyond a couple of 'back in my hometown...' and 'kabedon' jokes.
I hasten to add that I still really enjoyed this book! Gu Qingtang and Yin Ning's relationship dynamics are a lot of fun, especially in the early part of the book, and Gu Qingtang's many food/boob jokes (readers will not be able to look at peaches or baozi the same way again for a long time) and misuse of classical poetry for innuendo purposes were a delight. Liu Yuan Chang Ning's writing is never short of competent, even if structurally there are things that could be improved on. I am also still looking forward to finishing the audio drama, especially because the author has indicated that she made a number of adaptational changes (and also, once again, because Yi Zhi Zi's 'prince consort voice' is chef's kiss).
I read the Chinese original of the novel on JJWXC here.
The first third of this novel was a wholly enjoyable, riotous romcom, focused on Gu Qingtang (the teasing, doting one) and Yin Ning's (the tsundere one) developing relationship. There were promising hints of past secrets and an over-arching political plot. We learn, fairly early on, that Gu Qingtang is devoted to Yin Ning because she believes the latter gave her food when she first arrived hungry and penniless in the past (she tries several times to remind Yin Ning of this, though Yin Ning appears to have forgotten completely). Yin Ning, for her part, is initially deeply suspicious of Gu Qingtang because of Gu Qingtang's ties to Grand Commandant Nian, though in the best tradition of this kind of story, she also keeps marvelling at how handsome Gu Qingtang is and how affectionately Gu Qingtang treats her.
As the novel progressed, however, I began to feel that it was actually telling two very tonally different stories: a screwball-style romcom on the one hand, and a very dark, deeply sinister political plot on the other — one that involved a Squid Games-style death camp for training secret agents, plus one royal sibling scheming to murder another one, making a third one paraplegic, and making a fourth one infertile to prevent the birth of inconvenient challengers to the throne. The political plot culminates in the fairly violent death of almost everyone who might have a claim to the throne. There's a very affecting bit in the denouement — essentially, Gu Qingtang, having publicly painted herself as a traitor, arranges to have Yin Ning 'kill' her very publicly so that the latter can, in the absence of any rival claimants, either take the throne herself or act as regent for her very young nephew, the sole survivor of the attempted coup — but that felt unearned given the state of the leads' relationship. In her comments, the author notes that she had this scene in mind when she first began writing the novel. Which is in itself fine; you can in principle go from a screwball comedy to a high melodramatic quasi-tragedy provided you've done enough to build it up and modulate it. Unfortunately, however, this was not done here, with the result that the novel whiplashes between the romcom stylings of the main couple to the 'everyone suffers and dies horribly' of the political plot. This may have been due to a lack of experience on the author's part in handling a tonally lighter piece; all her previous novels had been fairly serious works with a high dose of angst/tragedy (indeed, the change in style was noted by readers in their comments on the novel).
(Just to clarify here that the novel does have a happy ending. Gu Qingtang's death is faked, and Yin Ning subsequently fakes her own death to get out of marrying a political ally (see below), and the two of them end up living together in a big found family together with their closest servants, Gu Qingtang's friends, and their dog.)
One of the things that might have helped with this modulation from comedy to angst would have been to develop the lead couple's dynamic beyond their initial 'slap slap kiss' routine (in at least a couple of scenes, quite literally). This did not really happen. While Yin Ning does grow to trust Gu Qingtang more over time, their romantic dynamic doesn't really change very much, nor does Yin Ning experience a great deal of personal development on-page. There were two things I'd really been looking out for as I read. The first was a shift in their romantic dynamic away from the initial 'Gu Qingtang teases affectionately/Yin Ning calls her a pest while secretly enjoying it'. There is a promising bit midway through the novel where Yin Ning thinks to herself: hey, why do I let her take advantage of me all the time? I can also take advantage of her. I was cheering Yin Ning on when this thought occurred to her — but rather sadly it didn't really go anywhere. The second was Yin Ning being finally brought into Gu Qingtang's full confidence, growing to become a competent political player on her own, and learning to protect her spouse rather than being protected by Gu Qingtang all the time — but again, this doesn't happen. In fact, Yin Ning doesn't fully realise how messed up and scheming (most of) her siblings are until the very end of the novel. The author also makes the incomprehensible decision to reveal that it was in fact not Yin Ning who had given Gu Qingtang food when the latter first arrived in the past, but rather another woman — knocking away the whole psychological foundation of Gu Qingtang's devotion to Yin Ning. The implications of this were left virtually unexplored, which begs the question of why the author chose to do this at all (beyond a misplaced horror of cliche).
There's also the fact that Yin Ning doesn't find out that Gu Qingtang is a woman until over the halfway point in the novel. In a cross-dressing novel, I much prefer it when the gender of the cross-dressing party is clear to their love interest quite early on, otherwise it starts to feel Fraught (and then I inevitably start wondering whether the novel can still be justifiably classified as a sapphic love story). In the case of Traitors' End, things felt doubly Fraught because we learn that Yin Ning had previously received a confession of love from another woman, her childhood friend Nian Wanniang (who's also the daughter of Gu Qingtang's adopted father), and had been so horrified by it that she never spoke to Nian Wanniang again.
There was also a pervasive threat of sexual violence from the male characters to a degree I've not so far seen in a baihe novel. As I noted in a group chat, 'I cannot understand how this author has written more "pervasive threat of sexual assault" into her comedy historical than her literal historical novel about a Han princess being married off to a Central Asian king' (the latter being the author's earlier work Snow on Her Pillow (枕上雪, pinyin: zhen shang xue)). In one scene, Yin Ning and Nian Wanniang are both almost raped by a Central Asian prince, a plot point which also leaned heavily into the racist trope of 'look at these barbaric Central Asian men lusting over our delicate Han women' which the author had previously managed to avoid in Snow On Her Pillow. Emperor Yin Chang'an, Yin Ning's brother, learns at one point that Gu Qingtang is a woman, after which he proceeds to creep on her at every possible opportunity, including forcing a kiss on her, practically ordering her to sleep with him, and proposing that she become one of his imperial consorts 'after all this is over'. Gu Qingtang manages to evade all this with a combination of feminine wiles and political savvy, but I hated, absolutely hated, that she had to do it.
The space given to various secondary characters was also uneven. Given Nian Wanniang's role in the denouement of the political plot — she takes up her father's mantle as a military general, and promises to lead her troops against the empire's external enemies (who seek to take advantage of the empire's extreme political instability) in exchange for Yin Ning's hand in marriage — she should have been given a much bigger antagonistic role in the novel. Similarly, Mingyue and Liu Yun'er, an f/f couple who are both trained spies as well as Gu Qingtang's allies and confidants, should have been given a much bigger role in the political plot, instead of the virtually non-existent one they ended up playing. In addition, very little use was made of Gu Qingtang's time-traveller origins, beyond a couple of 'back in my hometown...' and 'kabedon' jokes.
I hasten to add that I still really enjoyed this book! Gu Qingtang and Yin Ning's relationship dynamics are a lot of fun, especially in the early part of the book, and Gu Qingtang's many food/boob jokes (readers will not be able to look at peaches or baozi the same way again for a long time) and misuse of classical poetry for innuendo purposes were a delight. Liu Yuan Chang Ning's writing is never short of competent, even if structurally there are things that could be improved on. I am also still looking forward to finishing the audio drama, especially because the author has indicated that she made a number of adaptational changes (and also, once again, because Yi Zhi Zi's 'prince consort voice' is chef's kiss).
I read the Chinese original of the novel on JJWXC here.
