First Impressions Review: Clear and Muddy Loss of Love (JWQS), by 请君莫笑
Recommended for those whose favorite parts of ‘Game of Thrones’ was the political intrigue, but who wished it had more lesbians and bi girls1! This Chinese web novel isn’t perfect – some bits could have been tightened up if it wasn't released in serialized format, while the lack of an official translation probably contributed to the English prose feeling a bit clunky in places. However, the central story about the princess of a nomadic tribe (posing as a man), going undercover to seek revenge for her people only to fall in love with her enemy’s daughter had me on the edge of my seat the whole way through, and the political and economic worldbuilding that largely creates that tension was really good.
1. There’s 2 main F/F pairs, and several minor Sapphic side-plots. I did have a moment where I thought: “Wait, does EVERY daughter in both these families like women?” – but that’s not actually as statistically improbable as some might think (there is some measurable heritability to it, after all), so I can roll with it!
The Wei Kingdom is the Ancient China equivalent - they speak Mandarin, have complicated literary exams and court protocol, etc. In fact, it is probably a Tang dynasty analog specifically, given that the court ladies ride horses in masculine costume and don’t have bound feet – and the only female emperor of China, Wu Zetian, ruled during that time period (that's her in the re-enactment at the top right). The grass plains appear to be “not-Mongolia”. Qiyan Agula is the daughter of the Chengli tribe’s Khagan and his Wei Kingdom wife. Because the other tribes-folk are suspicious of this foreign queen, they’ve raised Agula as a boy to secure her mother’s position. The Khagan isn’t too fussed about this, because in the grass plains women do a lot of the same things men do anyway, but her mother worries. Growing up, Agula is mostly close to her Anda (“sworn brother”) Bayin and her little sister Xiao-De. Just when it seems like the Khatun might finally birth a real son, the Wei kingdom attacks with the aid of a rival tribe. As a result, the grass plains are conquered and its people enslaved, and “prince” Agula’s parents are killed, she is separated from her sister, and she nearly drowns. She is found by a mysterious masked woman – a princess of the last dynasty - who heals her, renames her Qi Yan, and trains her in Wei kingdom customs and knowledge so that she can pass the imperial exam and start taking vengeance from within. Nangong Jingnu is the only legitimate child of the emperor, though she has two half-sisters and nine half-brothers. Her father favors her to an unusual degree but, when a power-play by an old ally forces his hand, he ends up arranging her marriage to the prize-winning scholar with the unusual amber eyes! Qi Yan/Agula is understandably anxious, as her cover is surely about to be blown – not only is she a woman, but she has a huge barbarian tattoo on her chest! But as soon as they are alone the young Jingnu proposes that they make an “agreement of gentlemen” to just play along with this marriage for a while but not consummate it, so they can divorce and do their own thing later. Qi Yan of course agrees, but as they spend more time together the two realize they actually like each other a lot. But surely Nangong Jingnu could never forgive Agula’s deceptions or acts of revenge…right?
The two main characters are what really make this story. Agula/Qi Yan is very clever – there’s always multiple layers to her plans – and her conflicted feelings toward the Nangong family versus the princess specifically make for great drama throughout. Nangong Jingnu starts out as a naïve young girl, but she always has a lot of spirit and soon develops into a very competent leader. She’s pure-hearted enough to believe that a sovereign’s true role is to take care of the common people, and Agula soon finds she can’t really blame the Wei people for the faults of their emperor – so even early on ends up giving Nangong Jingnu good advice in that area! Given the setup, they of course end up hurting each other repeatedly, but since I understood where each of them is coming from and how deeply they care about each other, I still wanted them to have a happy ending. The ending could have been fleshed out a bit more to tie up loose ends,2 but the basic way it comes about makes sense – it is the setting and their roles that creates conflict between the leads, so the only way they can be happy together is by finding some way to get away from that.
There are some good side-character dynamics here too. I like the close relationships both of the leads have with their sisters, and the way tension builds among Nangong Jingnu and her brothers as the conflict for the throne intensifies. Qi Yan, despite her initial “I live only for revenge!” claim, is good enough at acting kind (because it turns out she can’t actually erase that part of herself entirely!) that she makes a number of really good friends who come into play throughout the story: The masked woman’s apprentice doctor Ding You, fellow exam-taker Gongyang Huai, a disgraced scholar who becomes the head of Qi Yan’s secret bank, and others.
2. The author had been having health and financial issues, so they probably got a bit tired after 300 chapters!
That’s actually one reason I wasn’t 100% satisfied with the ending. Yes, it was probably necessary for it to go that way, but even if Nangong Jingnu and Agula get to be happy, it would make a lot of people sad…and we don’t get to see that. The plot threads of Bayin’s quest for revenge, and the fate of Qi Yan’s nephew, the masked princess, and also-politically-savvy-but-in-a-femme-fatale-way grass plains princess Jiya all kind of get dropped too. Yes, as the author notes mention, those would be the next emperor’s mess to deal with…but I still want to know what happened with them, because they were interesting characters! However, the serial format of this made it impossible for the author to remove any plotlines that they decided weren’t that important; That could be addressed if it ever got an adaptation of some sort.
One in particular that I might have altered because it was just confusing has to do with Agula’s boobs – or lack thereof. In the book, Wei kingdom medicine is far more effective than the real thing, and the masked woman seems to have access to a sort of ancient puberty blocker drug that keeps Agula/Qi Yan’s chest flat and prevents her from having periods. This at first seems like overkill, but turns out to be useful when she has to marry the princess and keep her secret in a situation with more chances for discovery! Then later Ding You gives her an “antidote” to this drug. However, since she just keeps living as a man anyway, I’m unsure what the point of that was; Now she just has the inconvenience of binding her chest to deal with! It is implied that the drug was bad for her health in some way – so maybe, given that she was semi-dying at the time, it was important to neutralize it- but that isn’t fully explained.
That would also raise the question for many readers of what Qi Yan’s “true” gender identity is. She does seem to think of herself as “really a woman” – there is a cute exchange where she and Nangong Jingnu discuss which is the wife and they conclude they both are3 - but since being trans or NB isn’t an option she would be culturally aware of, and she was never socialized as a girl in the first place and never presents as a woman, it isn’t 100% clear what being a woman means to her, other than the physical - The bits that weren’t changed, mind you! She doesn’t seem to have dysphoria regarding her lack of breasts, though she does speculate about what they would be like when she gets a chance to contemplate Nangong Jingnu’s. Unfortunately, we don’t get to see how she feels about actually getting them; I know I’d probably feel weird about growing breasts 15-20 years later than everyone else, when my self-image was already fairly set!
There is a lot of discussion of the unnecessary restrictions put on women in Wei society. Qi Yan’s freedom to act comes from her always being perceived as a man. Nangong Jingnu didn’t initially feel the restrictions because she was in such a privileged position as the emperor’s favorite child – she was educated and allowed to be more exuberant in her way of expressing herself than was usual for girls – but, as soon as she begins to wield power for herself, she gets immediate resistance, despite the fact that she is clearly more competent than her brothers! Her sister, Nangong Shunu, felt those restrictions more as a lower-ranked daughter of a concubine who was more naturally gentle and feminine…making her choice to defy convention even braver.
I should also note that, while there are a lot of different WLW in this book, which was great, I did feel a little weird about the fact that the only gay/male bi character was Nangong Jingnu’s pervy brother. Qi Yan’s choice of how to take him out also bothered me a lot more than some of her other dark moral choices. Yes, a bit of murder and other questionable acts are generally required on the path to being an absolute ruler, and by doing these things she spares Nangong Jingnu from them. But couldn’t she have just poisoned this brother’s wine directly? Why did she have to drag a person who’d come to her for protection from this creep into the mess? At least the other more-or-less innocent people she killed to keep her secrets – a lower number than one might expect, actually - died without suffering anything awful first!
3. Not just because they are both physically female, but because Nangong Jingnu is officially and publicly the wife, but Qi Yan is the consort to the ruler (a role of lesser political power traditionally held by a woman).
There are a couple of different translations floating around. The first I found (https://www.mtlnovel.com/clear-and-muddy-loss-of-love/ ) kind of put me off immediately – the same adjectives kept being repeated within a paragraph! The one I read and would recommend is this one (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/clear-and-muddy-loss-of-love/ ), stored in a google drive. The separate Chapter 271 and 279.5 are the NSFW versions of the chapters that originally had to be published on a separate platform from the rest of the novel. Note that the amount of spicy material or cute-couple-stuff in this very long book is relatively low and extremely slow burn (though the later in particular is quite fun). So maybe don’t read it for that – read it for the “cake” of scheming, political and military strategy, policy-making, and “OMG, how can relationship possibly ever work?” and treat the actually romantic bits as the frosting!
