Okay, so back in November I mentioned a strange love triangle I had added to the ridiculously massive fanfic I'm working on, and how I wasn't sure if it would ever be mentioned again, right? And at the time I honestly didn't think it would be.
It has been.
Like, a lot.
About a week or so ago, this passage happened:
He wasn’t halfway to yimu’s side before he heard loud laughter from his other three cousins. Wincing, he tried to calm his worries before he reached his destination, but he failed to do so, and thus his first words after greeting yimu were “Just what kind of flirting are those three doing with Chifeng-zun?”
Yimu looked at him with only the mildest surprise and disappointment. “I suggested they should invite him to our private hunting grounds. There’s ample prey there even for someone as skilled as Chifeng-zun. And it would give them an ideal opportunity to show him their own skills. I’m sure he won’t want a bride unless she’s more skilled than the majority of his disciples.”
That seemed likely to be Nie Mingjue’s position on the subject, Jiang Cheng had to admit. “That’s probably a good idea. But…ah…Zongying is…”
With a weary sigh, yimu shook her head. “That girl is too strong-willed for her own good. Just like your mother. When she fixes on something, she just won’t let go. It’s easier not to fight with her on it, so I’m not.”
“Oh, you…you knew about her…um…”
“Really, Wanyin, you think I could fail to notice my youngest daughter mooning about like that? Do you think your aunt is an idiot?”
Jiang Cheng winced. “Of course not, yimu.”
“Nie Huaisang is considerably less worthy than his brother, but a blood tie is a blood tie, and if he makes my little one happy, then that’s all that matters.”
“But you would approve of having two of your daughters married to two brothers?”
“Ideally I’d prefer all five of them to bring in different alliances, but I won’t surrender Chifeng-zun to a woman from another clan. He’s too fine a catch to be wasted on lesser women,” yimu insisted.
Something about that sentiment left Jiang Cheng very unsettled, but he tried to tamp down that feeling and ignore it. “You should seek out his brother’s aid, then.”
Yimu scowled. “I’d rather keep him ignorant until it’s too late to intervene. That’s the other reason I decided to let Zongying have her way. How better to distract the interfering little brat than to have him caught up in his own whirlwind of romance?”
Jiang Cheng definitely had not seen any whirlwind. Or romance, for that matter. He had seen a willfully ignorant man actively pretending he couldn’t see the girl salivating at the sight of him. “Interfering brat?” he repeated, laughing.
(Uh, I should clarify that Jiang Wanyin is the courtesy name of Jiang Cheng, and that Chifeng-zun is the sobriquet of Nie Mingjue. This setting is very complicated; most characters have at least two names (birth name and courtesy name) and many also have a sobriquet. It's not actually that much to keep track of, in the grand scheme of things, but it makes it hard to quickly explain an excerpt to those unfamiliar with the canon material. Also, "yimu" is the polite form of address for a maternal aunt older than one's mother, so the "yimu" in the passage is Jiang Cheng's aunt, Yu Jiayi, who is admittedly an original character for this fic...though at least canon did establish that Jiang Cheng's mother had two elder sisters.) {I should also admit that the passage above is just the first draft and that I can already see a lot of things that need fixing about it, but if I get bogged down too much with editing now, I'll never finish the draft...}
Anyway, that passage leads into Yu Jiayi describing what happened when an unworthy woman came courting Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang chased her off by discovering all her most sordid secrets and threatening her with them. 🤣 That just seemed so very him to me.
Technically, what I most wanted to share here was the "willfully ignorant man actively pretending he couldn't see the girl salivating at the sight of him" part, of course. 😋 I especially liked that part. But I also liked describing Nie Mingjue as "too fine a catch to be wasted on lesser women," too.
Reminder, this is what the Nie brothers look like:
Anyway, it turns out this just keeps coming up. Which, I mean, really, makes sense; the fic is entering into another period of interclan warfare, so it of course it's about to become important to have a marital alliance with the powerful Nie Clan and its super-powerful warrior leader.
