Relationships

With MC

• She's not just your solace, yours her solace too.
• First meeting with your wife. She knows you are a playboy and when you tell her how many girls you've been with she accuses you of being a slut, used goods. "Knowing that it's a joke, a man can not seriously be shamed for having a lot of sex with the current mores, her protests and declamations seem more like fascination."
  • She wanted you, specifically because having so many girls is attractive and because you are the enemy, being able to tame you, rein in the enemy, would be an exciting pursuit. But as she got to know you she realized that you were smart and kind as well.
  • You were always a bad boy in her eyes.
  • You represent freedom, your grandfather broke free from her father, she both wants to share in that freedom but also be the one to "get you back". Sort of.
• The first time she had sex with you it was in a threesome with her best friend and two slaves who didn't count as people. She saw the things you did with them and thought i would never be able to provide him with certain experiences.
  • Certain experiences being drinking pee and crazy insertions things like that that she witnessed you do with other girls.

You have a self assurance about you that's attractive, she does too. Both of you really know who you are. It's likes attract. But you define yourself as her enemy, and she had to convince you that you belong together.

The freedom is also in another sense. You are irreligious, heretical in the eyes of the Cult of Yan. You've got unwavering self-direction, ignoring or bending tradition as suits you. Some find this annoying, she finds it charismatic, helping lead her into building her own independent identity, not just that of her family.

• She reflects, before she became "MC's wife", which has become a main identity, she was the "Duke's daughter". But MC helped her build an identity that was just Yaling, just Yaling. It was important that he did that, otherwise I might've felt that our growing interdependency was a bad thing, that it was something that just happened to me. But no, it was something I definitely, excitedly chose...

Relationship Arc

Unlike a lot of other characters who have serious conflicts, yearning and angst, Yaling starts out the story victorious. She's already won and gotten accomplished her life goal and major story goal of being with you, being chosen, having a blissful romance. Her theme and purpose in the story is one of stability, solace, a calming home to return to, to make all the fighting worth it.

Therefore we're excluding and dismissing all the options that don't align with this goal, as this is her unique place in the character roster.

Her storyline is defensive, where she adapts and preserves her stability, her exalted place in your life as your wife, fends off threats and rivals, and builds for the future.

There are routes where Yaling is knocked off her perch, experiences drama, heartbreak, meltdowns, etc, but those routes are considered OTHER PEOPLE's routes where she loses. Her routes are intended to be positive for her without intense ups and downs, more focused on just steadily climbing up or saying level.

Yaling is also not just a plot device, and we'll build her with some normal human insecurities, challenges, etc, including issues with her family. But those are considered subplots rather than major themes and won't interfere with your relationship. Her good storyline is basically a perfect romance between the two of you.

Her normal and good storyline has 2 big themes.

Enjoy the Relationship

The relationship is fun, you guys love each other, enjoy one another's company, and it builds into greater and greater intimacy. Yaling's goal, her agency, is oriented towards creating, preserving a blissful married life. Her conscious efforts at creating happiness, constantly thinking of you, makes being around her a joy.

Progression

To avoid things being stale where Yaling's just a perfect passive wife sitting at home, doting on you, waiting for you, your relationship is going to develop over the course of the game that doesn't interfere with any of our character or relationship goals.

Yaling is all about prying you open. You have layers, and Yaling thought that she knew you, and she wasn't wrong. Who you are is not a fundamentally different person, but you just have layers upon layers and the rabbit hole goes deeper than she initially realized. She wants to dig deep and really get at the core of your character.

As she uncovers your hidden depths, your bile spills out and influences her, bringing her into your world of conspiracy, victimization, and desire for revolution.

The relationship is also progressing in intimacy, you're getting closer. The level of devotion/interdependency/romance are all increasing despite starting from an already strong point.

Honeymoon

The world doesn't have a concept of a honeymoon, so the word will never be used. All occurrences of "honeymoon"

With MC Cheating

Our goal is to have Yaling be a romantic, pure character. Quoting from the overview: "Theme is peace, romance, happiness, and family." Since this is our goal, we want to avoid too much conflict and drama where she has to constantly fight for her position against every single one of your girls. Her distinctive aspect is her "effortless privilege", inspired by Daisy from the Great Gatsby, where she would prevail over her rivals without even trying. However, to have a strong, realistic, interesting character, she also cannot be a doormat and just accept your cheating, or just accept to be "just one of your girls" in a deeply power-imbalanced 1-dick-rule poly marriage.

So it's quite a bit of a bunch of conflicting goals that we're going to attempt to reconcile. Hopefully it works and ends up with a realistic, relatable, and still strong and interesting character.

The multi-route nature of it allows us to split our goals and problems and allow partial credit on some routes. For example she's an overall source of solace but doesn't have to be on peizhi etc routes. She's also not effortless on Peizhi routes. Effortless doesn't mean invulnerable, she would be vulnerable to infidelity and experience jealousy on "minor character routes" like Shuqin and Winny. So her full range of character is covered over the different routes. More solace on the pure routes and the cheating routes. A little bit of vulnerability and drama on the minor character routes with more "effortless victory" and relationship negotiation, and then finally major vulnerability, emotional blowups, screaming and crying on the full drama route.

Not every route needs to achieve everything, the framework allows for the overall impression of solace and so on, and that's enough. It's traded off for depth and complexity in other routes and that's good.

As a visual novel, it's not intended for the player to play only 1 route and then that's it, it's an unfolding layer of mysteries that can only be experienced with multiple playthroughs, and players are expected to play all the routes in a logical order.

What we don't want

• Naggy, jealous wife trope guilt tripping and pressuring
• Unrealistic wish-fulfillment fetish plot device
• Conniving self interested ambitious wife trope
• Scared, weak person along for the ride
• Submissive, devoted, strong wife (too much overlap with other characters)
• Power-couple girlboss

We're trying to strike a delicate balance in between all of these tropes, where she is only occasionally jealous, self interested only after she loses trust in you to take care of her, scared only if you hurt her, submissive only if you break her. As all of these are undesired, we keep them limited, not allowing them at all though would be unrealistic.

Her desired state is to be trusting, confident, sweet, and understanding. Those attributes will be highly tested by all the bullshit the MC does, and it would be unrealistic if she can preserve it all entirely without damage.

Five methods we're using to think about MC's cheating

1. Open toy-relationships with commoners that "don't count". Commoner women, slaves, etc are like masturbation, property. They don't count.
2. Minimize side relationships with inferior minor characters that don't lead anywhere.
3. Deceptive, hidden, cheating to minimize drama and confrontation, so multiple relationships with others are secret.
4. Open fighting and serious drama with some serious rivals.
5. A mix of multiple.

Deprecated Method

We used to have an option to have Yaling fully accept and endorse your side/less important relationships where she would enjoy the dynamic, but ultimately I think this is not realistic to most women, and would change the character substantially from an arrogant aristocrat to someone much more submissive to her partner's desires. If we do that from the beginning it would change her unique place in the character roster and make her too similar to many other characters. That version of her is now added as an ending, "ending 7" for those with that sort of fetish.

Outcomes (Ending Number as per the Endings List)

Only a pure romance with Yaling, ie one where you do not spend excessive time with other Solfrey women, can lead to her best end. In this end her feelings are protected, and the love grows without distraction to intense heights. She can't imagine living without you. (Ending 1)

If you're having dalliances and affairs with other characters, there is potential for negative repercussions.

Obviously, if you have low REL with Yaling while doing so, this leads to her getting disillusioned with you and the love fraying. (Ending 4)

If you fully finish her route and ply her with love while seeing other women at the same time, this can end up feeling like "lovebombing" where you're visibly intensely into her but then also paying attention to other people, leaving her wondering, what's going on, am i not enough, how is it that i'm so obsessed with him but his obsession is off and on, etc. Regardless she's addicted and obsessed with you, but it has a darker tone.

If your other interests are inferior to her, then you're given the option to give her intense reassurances of her primacy and superiority, that your connection is far beyond anything you have with anyone else, that those others are just for "use" and not a real relationship like you have with her. This gives her a lot of confidence and lets her see the affairs as a continuation of your pre-marriage harem, where she would win of course, as she always did. (Ending 2)

If your other interests are also heavily invested, where you're visibly having an emotional relationship with them, then her "effortless confidence" breaks down. She's no longer able to stay above it all and will demand that you show her superiority hurting the other women or breaking up with them.

This has 3 sub-outcomes.

1. You do as she wishes and she regains control, gratified that she wins again. But long term she is resentful that she has to continue winning, and insecure over your wandering eye. (Ending 3)
2. You break her and make her submit to your desires, you let her know that your wishes are primary, and for her to be happy she has to learn that your happiness is the most important. This essentially makes her a good girl on par with the other submitted characters and erases her unique role in the roster. (Ending 7)
3. You don't do as she wishes and tell her to get used to being in a harem, you have enough love for all of them. She has to cope with the insecurity and the loss of your full attention, and to protect her heart she withdraws a little, accepting your love where it's given and making do when it's not. Her love for you dulls into a "partnership", and her primary concern changes to her children instead of your relationship. (Ending 4)

methods Explanations

1. Doesn't need elaboration. Weilan, Zhenzhen, Jiaolong, etc. This is the premise of the world.
2. A multitude of minor characters like Winny and Shuqin and the early treatment of Cinean could belong in this category. Whether this continues depends on if you end up making a lot of time for these characters and if you keep on giving Yaling reassurances and showing her primacy. We would ply Yaling with reassurances to her superiority and show scenes of her permitting and participating in these dalliances. Or, she can just ignore some of these indiscretions as beneath her notice if she still has full confidence.
3. Genibel and Dou Rong and Deng Yu would belong here. These are serious high status noble solfrey that MC puts a lot of emotional investment into. I think they make sense as "secrets" because these relationships have political / necromantic aspects to them, letting MC hide them with that excuse without feeling like a betrayal of the romance. Since it's a long term secret affair, once it comes out into the open it's a shock and both endings 1 and 2 are closed off. However the advantage of this is that during the majority of the play experience there is no drama.
4. Peizhi's route is a drastic change and Yaling's normal romance cannot continue, everything is warped by Peizhi relatively early in the game.
5. Cinean starts off in either deception or acceptance (choice), once your feelings for her get more serious in her romance route, it would trigger a drama situation as serious as the Peizhi fight.

I think by splitting the handling methods, we can avoid making Yaling too much of a one-note jealous wife trope. The majority of the time she would be able to fulfill her role as a sweet solace.

Yaling Character Framework Enables Her to Not Go Full Drama on Every Affair

TBH this section was written for a scenario of Yaling's acceptance of the infidelity without any damage to the romance. This is no longer the case, any infidelity now damages the romance, but she may still keep the peace despite internal hurt. Now this section is more about why she keeps the peace and suppresses the hurt rather than flips out.

Core Character & Position

• Born to immense privilege as a duke's daughter, with deep-seated confidence from being raised at society's apex
• Defied family to marry MC, showing both independence and determination
• Views world through clear aristocratic hierarchy that informs all reactions and relationships
• Their relationship began amid noble excess and group encounters, establishing early patterns
• Successfully outmaneuvered multiple noble women during courtship period
• Her marriage wasn't just a victory but a vindication - she knew exactly what she was worth
• Maintains dignity and control through active management rather than passive acceptance

Sexual/Romantic Framework

• Early relationship included group encounters and multiple partners
• Participated in and enjoyed these dynamics from the start
• Clear separation established between physical pleasure and deeper bond
• Her elevation from participant to wife reinforced rather than undermined their connection
• Witnessed MC with others and still emerged as his chosen partner
• Has seen firsthand how MC treats serious rivals versus casual dalliances
• This history helps her view certain relationships as continuation of established patterns

Hierarchy of Acceptance

• Commoners (Weilan/Zhenzhen): Essentially property/toys, not rivals
• Lower Solfrey (Cinean/Shuqin): Useful companions but fundamentally beneath her
• Equal/Higher Solfrey (Peizhi/initially Deng Yu): True threats to be opposed
• This hierarchy isn't mere snobbery but her genuine worldview shaped by upbringing
• Experience lets her accurately assess which women are real threats

Active Romance Elements

• Regular public displays of their unique bond
• Private moments of genuine emotional intimacy
• Special treatment others never receive
• Time specifically reserved just for her
• Shared secrets and vulnerabilities
• Partnership in building their domain
• Planning their future together
• Pattern of MC consistently choosing her over potentially "better" matches

Position Maintenance

• Maintains dignity through absolute confidence in hierarchy
• Only fights real threats to her position
• Incorporates subordinates into household without losing status
• Uses social skills to maintain control
• Already proven she can win against other noble women in direct competition

What Makes It Work

• Romance stays strong through active maintenance
• Seen evidence of MC choosing her over others repeatedly
• Their bond transcended casual pleasure she witnessed
• Confidence born from winning him despite competition
• Other relationships reinforce rather than challenge narrative of her victory
• Not hoping she's special - she's proven it repeatedly
• Years of experience distinguishing between MC's casual interest versus serious attachment

This framework creates a character who can maintain both dignity and her "solace" theme while handling multiple relationships. Her confidence comes from proven success rather than wishful thinking, making her acceptance of certain relationships feel earned and consistent with her character.

Cinean

Relationship with Cinean

Weilan

Relationship with Weilan

Chun Family and Friends

Relationship with Chun Family and Friends

With Jiaolong

Relationship with Jiaolong