Routes

As an important but not main ending character (that's only Peizhi and Yaling), her ending is tacked onto one of either Peizhi or Yaling's ending.

The three routes have to be played in order, with route 1 unlocking route 2 and route 2 unlocking route 3. The 3 routes are distinct and exclusive paths the game can take. Don't confuse them.

Cinean schemes to get one up over Yaling, but your wife is so above her that she's just nice to Cinean and doesn't even notice her scheming. One time Yaling even invites her to a threesome with you, she's so confused. When she actually sees the two of you having sex she's sickened, your wife isn't remotely threatened by her at all, and a large part of it is because she's not an aristocrat. Even though she thought she had secured your love the threesome made it clear that you cared way more about your wife. She doesn't even come on her radar as someone threatening. The wife explains that the first time she had sex with you it was in a threesome too, so she's rather used to it.

Route 3 is different and is about Cinean's victory over Yaling.

Route 1/2 - Shared Start

In these routes, she does not become your wife. Yaling learns of her love for you and reassures her that it's okay. Yaling knows a lot of women are in love with you and supports her sharing her feelings. Yaling cucks her by having sex with you while she watches.

As you see her still trying to approach you and take you from Yaling, you have to decide what to do.

Route 1 - Fallen

If your MC is darker and more villainous, this is a great route.

In this route, you decide that Cinean undermining your wife is dangerous and you're going to stay loyal to Yaling.

After Yaling cucks her, she's full of despair that she can't rise above her station.

You see that Yaling still really likes her and sees her as a friend, and you're not going to ruin that. You just start treating her lowly sexually, making her confused. You try to teach her her proper place, that being below that of nobles.

During sex you get her to admit that she's a social climbing whore and that she doesn't deserve anything.

We're going for a fun, "Secretary (2002 movie)" vibe at least for the first 2/3 of the route. We're slowly training her through consensual games, teaching her to go against her beliefs. She writes an (unpublished) essay about how Hila are social climbing sluts and should be turned into slaves as punishment. That slavery is what they actually want. While it's a beautiful essay it's not really meant to be published, it's just to show you the depths of depravity she's willing to walk into for you.

Eventually you bring in Zhenzhen to train her. Zhenzhen obviously lost all her admiration for her and trained her to please you sexually as consensual bdsm.

It's very humiliating for a solfrey who was trying to free slaves to act as a slave. You force her to admit that she is more free if she learns her place instead of trying to improve upon it.

Show her how happy and obedient Roulan is, how dumb her anti-slavery ideals are.

Eventually you force her to submit to your wife, and she's full of despair she can't rise above her station.

Once she is broken down totally she gives up information on the Lishu orphanage, and you can do as you will with the information including passing it onto Yao Hong.

Her ending here is just utter despair and hopelessness, inability to find the strength to change anything, just preferring to be lying underneath you as your plaything.

There's some satisfaction in that she's just as pathetic as you want her to be, that she's finally fulfilling a worthwhile role thusly.

Unlike Deng Yu whose descent seems gender based and strength based, and Dou Rong whose submission is stockholm, and Zhenzhen who's religious, and Weilan who is just doing the best with what she's got, Cinean is able to intellectualize and systemize her fall and servitude.

She's can really

Notes:

The concept here is to resolve her storyline by having her conflict with the wife be entirely one sided, and she's more of a tragic character who loses the war against a woman who doesn't even realize she's in a war. The wife's just so much more powerful she crushes the companion unintentionally, gets everything she ever wants.

In this scenario she realizes that her conflict is not really with the wife. They have different social stations, it is what it is, there is no point struggling against it. She realizes her value is as determined by the people above her, she learns her place and looks to you to give her validation. She breaks down the validation and self worth gotten from her past, her education, her morals, etc and places it in you. If you like her, then her life has meaning, something like that. Her being better than the wife is just a proxy for your validation.

Route 2 - Radical Reformer

In your lively conversations with her she falls deeper and deeper in love with you, but there's a strong class barrier that she can't break. Yaling is just a noblewoman and you're never going to marry her. Cinean gets ever more resentful.

She rapidly grows more radical under your encouragement and seeks big changes. She becomes known for her radical publications and ideas.

When you conquer Piyse, she presents you with some agenda including stripping all the nobility of all their titles. She gets a lot of pleasure especially out of doing so to Yaling.

You put her on the political reform council.

You run interference with Yaling saying that as your wife she's going to be Queen of Piyse, and that's better than any duchess title. Her parents are hopping mad and see this as a betrayal after they decided to support you.

There's an assassination attempt against her, and in the aftermath her popularity caused a mass uprising of her supporters to march on Yaling's parents and kill them. Lishu and others played a pivotal role here.

She is injured for a while. After she recovers she throws herself into political work and becomes a politician. Though she's achieving a lot politically and career-wise she never gets the thing that she really wishes for, that you know about from her other routes (your love).

Route 3 - Victorious Conservative Tradwife - True Ending

After playing 1 and 2, this route unlocks, showing the final culmination of her real desires, this is what she really wants, which is to replace your wife in your affections. This route gives the full "pickme" appeal.

After successfully seducing you and getting your love, she is given a noble title, probably a Countess of some kind, possibly a wife title.

As your wife she experiences the status of being a noblewoman for the first time. You make her dreams come true. She ditches all her political reform ideas and becomes a submissive conservative wife, having realized her deepest dreams and aspirations.

Route 3 Shared Start

You start off by just playing along with her and letting her feel like you're being seduced. You play along with her and bad mouth your wife together and reassure her that she's better. But at some point you realize it's for real, you're actually falling for her.

Experiencing the romance with which you provide her, she's willing to admit to herself that she doesn't want to rock the boat anymore. She wants you to love her and not see her as a disruptive element in your life. She admits to herself her hypocrisy, and criticizes her own previous stances as insincere virtual signaling, and starts seeing other people with those views through the same lense. Because she's able to taint her own past beliefs with such negativity, it makes it easier to snap back in a reactionary reversal.

As part of her transformation to conservative and abandoning her past ideals:

She volunteers to tell you about the Lishu Orphanage. See Lishu Orphanage storyline.

Seduction

TBD Seduction, we'll cover the elements in the its own storylines.

Discovery And Trust

She discovers the secret of your necromancy on her own, and helps you, keeping it secret. There are a few dramatic scenes with the discovery, fear and worry and wondering if Yaling knows, deciding that she doesn't, deluding herself that the revolution and change brought about by the Necromancer can result in a better dualist world.

She's trying to figure out how to communicate to you that she knows without coming under suspicion and endangering herself. Feeling mad and guilty that the discovery caused her to feel even more attracted to you. Feeling guilt over her excitement and wetness over the thought of you possessing her and raping her.

She spies on Yaling to ascertain her loyalty to you, and if Yaling shows sympathy to her family who are against you, she immediately snitches on them.

Regardless of what happens with Yaling, you grow to trust her strongly once you realize exactly what's going on.

Minor Snide Comparisons

Also note that she's not conspiring against Yaling or ever lying to you or misleading you in any way. She is never unattractively manipulative, just loyal and loving.

All of these incidents goes to show how Cinean is looking at Yaling competitively and enviously, and behaving and dressing for your attention. It serves to feed the MC's ego, but it actually doesn't fundamentally change the relationship between you and Yaling, as the two of you understand each other far more than these incredibly minor issues.

It doesn't even fundamentally change how much you like Cinean really. The seduction itself takes care of the attraction factor much more, these snide comparisons only demonstrates how much Cinean emotionally relies on your validation, which indirectly makes you like her more.

The Family Loyalty Crisis

• Exposes Yaling as being more loyal to her family than to you.

The Noble Pride ???

• Reports situation where Yaling's ingrained noble pride leads her to dismiss/underestimate key allies MC needs
• Makes her noble upbringing look like liability
• Shows contrast between Yaling's natural privilege vs Cinean's careful cultivation of relationships
• Another possibility is to show Yaling's lack of ruthlessness or inflective kindness as a problem.
  • Cinean might be more willing to ally with the Yinxin or similar "evil" group to achieve goals.

The Traditional Values Pressure

• Uses traditional expectations about producing heirs
• Points out Yaling's seeming lack of urgency
• Offers herself as a perfect tradwife
• Makes Yaling look self-indulgent/neglectful of duties

There are 2 endings, one which is a mixed.

Ending 3A - True Route [Canon Ending]

Let's be clear that all endings are canon-ish unless deliberately marked non-canon.

• Yaling is never threatened and preserves her "effortless victory" concept.
• Cinean learns to avoid conflict with Yaling and contain and control her jealousy, evolving her frenemy relationship back to a real friendship
• Secret fake wedding ceremony
• Delusional Victory

The win is that she’s accepted as a member of his harem and she experiences the pleasures that goes along with that. She gets the sliver of attention and in her mind it becomes magnified to be a huge victory, compared to her starting position she’s joined the aristocracy and become the emperors woman. This is objectively monumental and it’s possible to convince yourself you beat all the other women (simply by virtue of making it in, cause obviously an aristocrat would’ve been trying to gatekeep right). She’s beaten the world and yaling simply by ascending. She has imposter syndrome of being an aristocrat and did not expect to be given a title. She just acted out of love.

• The Objective Victory: Going from a non-noble companion to a titled Countess and the Emperor's lover is a monumental, objective victory.
• The Subjective Delusion (Her Cope): The delusion is her internal narrative that this victory means she "beat" Yaling, that she holds the MC's true heart, that she won a competition Yaling was barely aware she was in. She magnifies her sliver of his attention into the entire pie. Her imposter syndrome, her shock at actually succeeding ("I just acted out of love"), is what makes this delusion stick. She can't believe she pulled it off, so it must be because her bond with the MC is extremely special.

Ending 3B - Ultimate Victory Route [Non-Canon OOC Ending]

• The MC acts out of character as established by the story. The ending is marked as totally OOC. The MC is the manipulator, actively working for this outcome.
• Cinean replaces Yaling as the first wife.
• Catfight with screaming tears and drama from both Yaling and Cinean.
• Yaling tries to get Cinean fired.
• Maybe a divorce, not sure yet.

Deprecated? Conspiracies

We're not sure if we want to embark her on a dark path, of conspiring directly against Yaling and then making you fall for them. This is highly unromantic as you don't make a willing choice in that case. Even for the non-canon path this may be a step too far for the Cinean fantasy.

However it may be appealing in other ways, if Cinean is so obsessed with you as to go so far as to be a gender traitor and mastermind. Still considering.

• Optionally, she can encourage Yaling to write a letter to her family discussing her concerns about you, if you're having a "dark turn". She can help you discover the letter.