Relationships

Weilan

Relationship with Weilan

MC - You

• She feels like a burden and don't want to hold you back
• She feels pathetic, but what you feel about her is up to the player, but certainly we didn't see her much between the time when we came back, got married, and the game start.
• While you still like her, you just have a new life and new responsibilities now, plus a desire to conquer the world and all that necromancy to discover, not really time to tumble around with servant girls eh.
• But still, you like her, and you owe it to her to be nice to her and through her, gain forgiveness for what you did to Roulan.
• Slow rekindling romance plot (if the player wants it)
• She desperately want validation, and to be told she did a good job on Roulan, the project she's invested all her heart into for the past 8 years.
• More flashbacks to formative whipping experiences
• Show how protecting you through punishment shaped her personality
• Explore her complicated feelings about your family
• Though you were different genders and of different stations and though she didn't envy your status, she still envied you. Not Yaling, you. You were the one who inspired her the most, gave her the most light and direction, and the one who she could never reach.
  • “She would have liked to be like him, near to everyone, anyone, but she could not. It saddened her.”

Relationship with Roulan

• Genuine friendship despite status difference
• Zhenzhen seeing Roulan as someone she saved through training
• Pride in transforming Roulan from broken to content
• Complex feelings about enabling your control of others

Social Role Uncertainty / Strangeness

• Doesn't quite fit with servants (too close to MC historically)
• Doesn't fit with MC's lovers (too servant-like now)
• Roulan becomes both project and friend partly because she's similarly "in-between"
• Creates elaborate justifications for her role that others don't quite buy
• Sometimes finds unexpected moments of belonging in this liminal space
• Other servants find her mix of authority/subservience unsettling
• Some younger servants actually admire her dedication
• Can't maintain regular friendships because everything connects back to MC
• Shows how her obsession affects daily interactions

Jiaolong Conflict

• After spy success, gets more involved in household management
• Conflict with Jiaolong over MC's schedule access
• Shows household politics from servant perspective
• Jiaolong saw her as annoying and a failure of a servant, an example of the "wrong path" for a servant wrapped around a master's aura
  • Not hateful or totally doesn't understand, just more doesn't want to understand and feel empathy, it would be too painful.
  • Prefers to just fob ZZ off rather than engage with her.

HILA COMMUNITY INTEGRATION:

1. Natural Connection Points

• Both she and Hila are devoted to serving solfrey
• Shared experience of physical "modification" (her spaying, their reproductive focus)
• Common ground in religious devotion
• Understanding of permanent secondary status
• Mutual acceptance of their station

2. Role with MC's Loyalist Children

• Becomes unofficial "auntie" figure
• Takes pride in caring for MC's bloodline
• Gets vicarious fulfillment through nurturing his children
• Children give her status within Hila community
• Bittersweet joy in seeing MC's traits in them
• Uses caring for them to feel closer to MC
• Way to serve him even in absence
• Children shouldn't feature extensively in the story to not distract from real family with people in the story
• They know MC is father but shouldn't make demands
• Not heirs, have their own separate lives
• Shouldn't obsess over MC/parents
• Can receive some privileges/acknowledgment but not full recognition
• Zhenzhen acts as discrete messenger between MC and Hila mothers
• Zhenzhen arranges small gifts/privileges without drawing attention
• She can use updates about them as excuse for MC meetings, uses role to feel useful while respecting boundaries
• The whole children thing need to be minimally present in main story to preserve MC/Yaling newlywed romance. This SHOULD HAVE VERY LITTLE DEVELOPMENT other than to show some loyalist upbringing systems.

3. Religious Development

• Hila Votaries teach her deeper theological understanding
• Learns formal prayers and rituals
• Participates in Hila ceremonies
• Finds comfort in religious community
• Develops mix of official doctrine and personal interpretation
• Religion gives framework for accepting limitations

4. Social Position Evolution

• Not quite Hila but accepted by them
• Bridges gap between regular servants and Hila
• Has unique insights from multiple perspectives
• Develops role as unofficial advisor to young Hila
• Helps guide new Votaries through system
• Gets recognized as spiritually advanced despite not being Hila

5. Emotional Processing

• Uses Hila community to cope with loneliness
• Shares feelings with those who understand devotion
• Finds purpose in mentoring others
• Develops support network
• Children provide emotional outlet
• Community validates her feelings

6. Status Complications

• Can't fully join Hila due to not being one
• Envies their clear role/purpose
• Sometimes resents being "almost but not quite"
• Struggles with being unofficial/informal
• Faces some resistance from Hila leadership
• Has to carefully navigate boundaries

Military Connections

• Raised by the Old Marshal as ward but still servant
  • Told her stories about her parents
  • Gave her some basic martial training
  • Complex father figure who both cared for and exploited her
  • This shaped her view of love/duty being mixed with service/pain
• Not good at fighting but tries to learn basics
• Develops relationships with household knights / guards who she occasionally practiced with
• Gives her different social circle than other servants