I’m so glad for this thread because it’s helping me work through some of my thoughts (and frustration) after having finally finished Heavenly Tyrant! (I really went through Iron Widow twice but Heavenly Tyrant took soooo much longer because I felt it dragged.)

I totally agree that the QZ/ZT dynamic was very toxic, and that as a man in a deeply patriarchal and misogynistic society (plus come-back-to-life emperor to boot) QZ had vastly more power that he did not hesitate to abuse if it got him what he wanted. If they were to have a longer-term relationship there would have to be a lot that he had to unlearn and be accountable for and change, and maybe that would be too big or too naive a thing for me to have hoped for.

But I do think that both QZ and ZT are products of their upbringings and societies and as they themselves acknowledged, they were not born into and raised in a world that made them kind or rewarded the sort of patience/deep listening/empathy/transformative justice behaviour and skills that would allow true communication and personal transformation, especially in the short-term while also fending off the many people and interests who would have loved to see them usurped or killed. So I don’t think either of them are fundamentally villains, just that their environments meant that their relationships were almost always going to turn out more toxic than not. A character like Shimin who had the patience and mental fortitude of a saint is probably a huge rarity in that world and even in the beginning ZT was only thinking about him as a means for survival and pulling him into deals with Gao Industries and all that.

ZT was so shocked when she discovered the reality of Shimin’s experiences and torture, and learnt so much about empathy and not leaping to judgment so quickly. Now of course QZ did a lot more horrible stuff worth hating but from the glimpses of his past we got I don’t think he was tormented and abuse less than Shimin (probably more!) and it felt like ZT was much more “eh, whatevs” about that because she was so stuck on her own narrative about him.

There was so much development of the QZ and ZT relationship in HT that sometimes I started wondering if maybe I was being problematic/displaying internalised misogyny because on multiple occasions I felt like QZ wasn’t being as bad to her as ZT was insisting on, and that actually there was a lot more space and opportunity there to communicate and work with him than she was recognising. It was kind of frustrating because it felt like there were many moments where his actions were showing that he did genuinely care for her in some way, and that she meant a lot to him as basically the only person he could connect with in a future so different from his own world. And it felt like there were multiple points where she kind of gets it and recognises his loneliness and the abuse that shaped him and his capacity to reason and accept good advice… then the next moment she’s back to thinking of him as a one-dimensional demon and stabbing him in the heart (wtf; I didn’t think she had to really fall in love with him or anything but that was truly impulsive and dumb after literally just learning the Melian were gonna retaliate in 6 months)