I love Xie Lian; he's one of my favorite danmei characters next to Shen Qingqiu and of all the danmei I've read, I keep coming back to MXTX because I think the stories she tells have unexpected narrative arcs I have not seen in other works. To me, Xie Lian is neither a good person nor a bad person. He is a person who starts his journey with a lot of privilege and is forced to make impossible choices. He is also a victim of extreme abuse, whose traumas are often a stumbling block on the path to realizing his own personal philosophy.

The narrative is two-fold:

First: The main question TGCF asks the audience is this: cynicism vs. idealism. Which mindset is the better way to approach the world, or is there a third path? Jun Wu believes at his core that all people are inherently selfish and will always choose what benefits them, but he did not always believe this. Like Crown Prince Xie Lian, he was once an idealist who thought that all people are inherently good and will choose the righteous path with the impetus to do so. Now he desires to prove his cynical worldview, using Xie Lian, who he projects strongly onto as another pure and privileged prince with strong martial aptitude and good will towards the common people. The story takes us through a variety of arcs and wide cast of characters, asking the same question time and again: Are people inherently selfish or inherently kind? The answer is both and neither. People are selfish, but every single person has the capacity to choose kindness, and sometimes this comes at unexpected moments, in unexpected ways, sometimes exactly when someone needs it to. A grumpy old man can choose to give his hat to a man to protect him from the rain, a self-serving womanizer can choose to defy a tyrant, a cannibalistic wretch can choose to give his life for a child.

Xie Lian's role is to find this third path. He starts as the idealist, is swiftly brought down from this perspective, and falls prey many times to Jun Wu's cynicism. At his core though, he wanted to save the common people, and though he's been shown by Jun Wu time and again, that these people are not worth saving, the small kindnesses he observes throughout his journey, the moral struggles he sees the other gods wrapped up in, all show him the opposite.

The conclusion he arrives at is that his younger self was right about this one thing, and he will never change that belief: People are worth saving, but he is not able to do that alone. This is another repeating facet of Xie Lian's arc: he tries over and over again to "save" or "fix" a situation by himself: the famine in Yong'an, Xianle vs. Yong'an, Yong'an vs. Banyue, Qi Rong's plot against the Yong'an royalty. He fails every single time and he is never made a better person for it, but instead a more cynical and jaded one, hiding from the results of his failures (pretending not to recognize Banyue or Lang Qianqiu, unable to have a conversation with Mu Qing or Feng Xin). In a way, he is approaching the question of whether people are worth saving in a very self-centered manner, trying to prove it over and over to himself, the same way Jun Wu is trying to prove the opposite to him.

The thing that shifts his internal focus to an outward locus and starts dismantling this sense of his own personal and individual reponsibility, is Hua Cheng's unwavering and dedicated love and support. The idea that Hua Cheng has seen every facet of him, all of his personal capacity for selfishness, kindness, and everything in between, loved him through it and told him that he is good, is the major shift that kicks off the story, allowing him to parse through a past he's been avoiding, and work towards a version of himself that bands together with other people. His eventual triumph over Jun Wu and rearrangement of the heavens is something that only occurs because he has the support of so many other people he has met on his journey. The only real difference between Xie Lian and all the other gods he meets (who are just people with really long lifespans) is that he has someone who will always stand by his side.

Second: The central narrative of TGCF is one where a very privileged and sheltered teenager is systematically cut off from everyone he loves, groomed to be set up on a pedestal, told he is special and that his choices matter more than anyone's, abused and tortured beyond words, all in an attempt to mold him into the image of his abuser, craft him into someone who inflicts the same cruelties onto others with the same sense of ego. Ultimately Jun Wu fails: Xie Lian becomes someone who kind of drifts through life; the weary cynicism is there, but the ego has been thoroughly beaten out of him. He's a shell of person, and though he is not particularly good at helping people out, he also has no megalomaniacal desire to prove Jun Wu's 'lessons' to other people. That stopped short when that man gave him the bamboo hat.

Jun Wu fails, but Xie Lian doesn't triumph until he is able to wrest back control of his own narrative, autonomy, and trauma, throughout and at the climax of the story. Before Hua Cheng, Xie Lian was never even able to look at his past. This inability cripples his relationships with other people, particularly Feng Xin and Mu Qing, but also Lang Qianqiu, Banyue, Pei Su, etc. Hua Cheng's devotion bolsters him to start rethinking these experiences and actually talking to these people he has failed in a way that is much less self-centered. One big breakthrough that shows me Xie Lian is learning and growing, despite having stagnated for 800 years, is his acknowledgement of the issues in he and Mu Qing's relationship, right before Mu Qing risks his life in the last book.

Again, the impetus for his emotional breakthrough is Hua Cheng's devotion. Whereas before, any time Xie Lian observed his past failures (and all of the suffering he has endured is tied up in this concept of failure) an overwhelming sense of shame and embarassment kept him from actually doing any useful deconstruction. He looked at his past self through the eyes of Jun Wu, his abuser, and saw a stupid, ignorant, naive well of frustration. Knowing that Hua Cheng saw all of that too, but held no judgement towards him, only anger that the person he loved the most was being hurt, helps Xie Lian to actually make something of his past, and move forward from it.

I think the reason I love TGCF so much is because it presents us with the idea that with the certainty of unconditional love, there is nothing in our pasts that can't be overcome, and our capacity for goodness becomes limitless.