She Who Became the Sun

“What difference does it make to me? You’re my brother, whatever’s under your clothes.”

Xu Da’s acceptance of Zhu’s gender and circumstances are a boon to her quest for her fate, especially when juxtaposed with Prefect Fang’s negative reaction. Xu Da uses the word “brother” rather than “sister” (there is no gender-neutral term for sibling in Mandarin Chinese), implying that he respects her chosen gender on top of protecting her secret. He is also the first member of her found family, something that until now, she didn’t believe she would have.

“Will alone isn’t enough to guarantee survival.”

This is an important lesson from the Abbot, and it indicates a trait that separates Zhu from traditional monks (and men) like Prefect Fang. Though many people, including Prefect Fang and Zhu, have strong wills, will must be paired with strategy to achieve survival. The Abbot points out that Zhu observes the world beyond the monastery; this awareness of the bigger picture increases her chances of both survival and achieving greatness.

“As she stared at the eunuch standing there amidst his ghosts, she suddenly felt the half-forgotten twang of a string plucked deep within her. Like connecting to like. A searing awareness of her difference from the person she was supposed to be shot through her. But even as she recoiled in rejection of that connection, she felt understanding flowing through it. Like knows like.”

Zhu’s connection with Ouyang persists throughout the book. It represents their parallels and their differences—Zhu and Ouyang are both removed from the gender binary into the realm of “other.” Their lives are significantly impacted by this. This connection also adds layers to their interactions at each meeting, as they each consider the other to be the catalyst of their fates. The similarity of their trauma allows Zhu to understand Ouyang, though as foils, their paths ultimately diverge.

“Suddenly it made sense why the rebels had taken red as their color. Why they had named themselves for it. Zhu looked up at that glowing figure, and felt a tingle run through the top layer of her skin as if in response to the charged air before a storm. The Prince of Radiance heralded change. Her desire gripped her, as strong and hot as it had been when she was flung from the monastery. This is where it starts.”

The red of the Prince of Radiance’s Mandate of Heaven has multiple symbolisms: the Red Turbans style themselves after the Prince, due to their hope in his prophesied change; red in general is a lucky color in Chinese culture, and Zhu’s surname also means “red” (though it uses a different character in Chinese). The Prince is a harbinger of a new dynasty. If Zhu wants to seize her fate, she must ally with the rebels—the monastery was only the prologue.

“Desire is the cause of all suffering. The greater the desire, the greater the suffering, and now she desired greatness itself. With all her will, she directed the thought to Heaven and the watching statues: Whatever suffering it takes, I can bear it.”

“Desire is the cause of all suffering” is one of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism; as Zhu is a monk, she would be familiar with these teachings. As her desire for life and her fate is very strong, she reasons that she will suffer greatly to achieve her goals. As previous chapters attest, her determination and intelligence help her find solutions to the obstacles she has faced thus far.

“No amount of practice, no matter how much I try, is going to bring me up to your level, my dear perfect brother. In our father’s eyes, I’ll always be the failure. But, strangely, despite being a coward of a Manji, I still prefer failure on my own terms.”

Lord Wang faces constant prejudice and discrimination due to his mixed heritage. He has also cultivated his talents in administration, a trait that is favored among the Han and Nanren but not by the Mongols. His adoptive family is therefore very dismissive of his work. Despite—and perhaps because of—this, Wang knows his accomplishments and flaws and chooses to place himself where he is most useful, even if it means derision from his peers.

“Esen had never been betrayed or hurt or shamed for what he was—and that was why they loved him. He [Ouyang] and Lord Wang, both in their own different ways. They understood each other through that connection, two low and broken people looking up to someone they could never be or have: noble, perfect Esen.”

Esen is the ideal Mongol man—handsome, masculine, and talented in warfare, he is everything Ouyang and Lord Wang are not. He is also his father’s favorite, which shelters and blinds him to others’ suffering. At the same time, he is kind and well-intentioned to those he favors, drawing them in even as he remains beyond their grasp.

“It was a quality of jealousy that you could only feel it for people who were like you. Ouyang could no more be jealous of Esen than he could be of the sun. But Ouyang and Lord Wang were alike. For a moment, they stood there in bitter acknowledgment of it, feeling that likeness ringing through the space between them. The one reviled for not being a man, the other for not acting like one.”

While Ouyang and Lord Wang idolize and love Esen for different reasons, he is forever above them. Instead, they squabble with each other because they are disdainful of the other’s perceived flaws. Because they have no one else at whom to vent their frustrations with their circumstances, they turn on each other.

“To win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the pinnacle of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the pinnacle of skill.”

The quote Jiao Yu recites is from The Art of War by Sun Tzu. This quote applies to Left Minister Chen and Lord Wang; as they are also both master politicians and manipulators, they are (usually) able to work behind the scenes to achieve their goals without direct battles or bloodshed.

“The air around her was thick and sweet, like an orchard on the hottest day of spring. It was the smell of a woman’s inner sanctum, as alien to Zhu as a foreign country. Wide skirts swished around her legs, and the scarf over her head fluttered. Women’s clothes gave her new dimensions as if she were moving through space as someone else. The stolen disguise had done its job: nobody had looked at her twice as she passed through the compound and into the women’s quarters. But with every moment her feeling of suffocating wrongness mounted. A violent litany repeated inside her head: This isn’t me.”

Zhu uses the advantage of her female body and knowledge of women’s social roles to sneak into Lady Rui’s rooms as a maid; a strategy that a cisgender man like Xu Da or the original Zhu Chongba would never have imagined. However, Zhu’s efforts to perfect her male identity create gender dysphoria as she enters the women’s quarters, a realm in which she no longer feels she belongs.

“‘You are mad,’ she said, but Zhu caught a flicker of puzzlement. ‘Women can’t govern. The Son of Heaven rules the empire, as men govern cities, and fathers head the family. That’s the pattern of the world. Who dares break it by putting a substance in a place contrary to its nature? It’s in men’s nature to take risks and lead. Not women’s.’”

Lady Rui reminds Zhu of the patriarchal society in which they live. The structure referenced here is a combination of cultural traditions, Confucian teachings, and Daoist thought. Confucius sought to create order from the chaos of his time—his proposed social structure included women being subordinate to men. Daoist philosophers embrace the natural state of things; Zhu’s proposal is therefore perceived as quite radical, considering the historical background and current societal mores.

“Rebellions promise their followers everything we fail to give. So if your peasants are starving, your soldiers unpaid, don’t think they’d be loyal to you, or the Mongols, or the Great Yuan. They’d join without a second thought. The only reason they don’t is because I govern and tax and administer. I pay their salaries and rescue their families from disaster. I am the Yuan. I uphold it more than you can ever do with the brute force of your swords. But in your hearts, don’t you still think of me as worthless?”

Though the Mongols established a vast empire over much of the Eurasian continent, their society was traditionally nomadic, rather than sedentary. The Han (and Nanren), on the other hand, excelled in administration and bureaucracy. As Chaghan and Esen are traditional Mongols and rather short-sighted when it comes to running an estate, Lord Wang attempts to educate them, without much success.

“As he stood there looking down at the ruined body of the Prince of Henan, Ouyang realized he had always believed revenge would change something. It was only in having done it that he understood that what had been lost was still lost forever; that nothing he could do would ever erase the shame of his own existence. Looking ahead to the future, all he could see was grief.”

Ouyang has spent most of his life plotting vengeance for his family. Chaghan’s death is the first step to achieving that goal. However, over time, his revenge becomes less of a desire and more of a duty, complicated by his relationship with Esen and his insecurities and dysphoria about his gender and castration. Though Chaghan was the one who killed Ouyang’s family and castrated him, Chaghan’s death doesn’t reverse his past actions; instead, this murder will only further Ouyang’s unhappiness.

“I’m a woman, Ma had cried to Zhu in despair. Now, as she looked at the person standing before her in a body like her own, she saw someone who seemed neither male nor female, but another substance entirely: something wholly and powerfully of its own kind. The power of difference, made real.”

Ma’s relationship with Zhu leads her to question her role as a woman. The perceived hopelessness of escaping this role only leads Ma to despair of her newfound awareness. However, learning Zhu’s secret allows her to grasp Zhu more fully: not just her ambition and determination but also how she has rejected the gender binary—not a man, but not a woman, either. Paired with her other radical ideas, like women rulers, Zhu is a revolutionary.

“A shadow crossed Ouyang’s face. There was a peculiar distance in his voice as he said, ‘It’s a son’s role to honor his father and ancestors. Your father’s spirit needs only your devotions.’”

This is Ouyang’s driving force, but also an important principle in Chinese culture. Traditionally, descendants venerate and care for their ancestors and predecessors, and sons continue the family line. Zhu’s father favored his son and was ecstatic about his predicted fate, while Zhu was discarded. This is also why Ouyang, as the last of his family, is determined to exact his vengeance. While here he offers advice and condolences to a grieving Esen, at the same time, anyone who knows and remembers his past could glean his hidden motivations.

“‘Zhu Chongba,’ he said, from very far away. ‘Your men were loyal to you, before. Let’s see how loyal they are to you now, when all you can inspire in them is scorn and disgust. When you’re nothing but a grotesque thing to be shunned and feared. You’ll wish I’d killed you with honor.’ [...] He said, ‘Every time the world turns its face from you, know it was because of me.’”

Zhu and Ouyang are catalysts for their respective fates. As Ouyang doesn’t entirely desire his, he blames her for destroying the tenuous peace (with Esen) that he created. She also humiliated him at Yao River, injuring his pride. As Ouyang, who suffered because of his castration, now believes mutilation is a punishment worse than death, he uses the same strategy to inflict his revenge on her.

“Women’s quarters were a foreign land. The colors and scents and even the feel of the air itself were all so alien that Ouyang’s skin crawled. As he stalked down the corridor the female attendants startled at the sight of his armor, then relaxed as soon as they saw his face. Each time it happened his vicious feeling mounted. Women: twittering, perfumed, worthless things. He wished that his armor, with all its sharp edges and blood-metal smell, could actually hurt them. But instead they were hurting him with every one of their understanding looks intimating that he belonged here, in this female space. He burned with humiliation and anger and shame.”

While Zhu is not comfortable—and potentially dysphoric—in the female realm, for Ouyang, this sentiment is even more extreme. His castration emasculated him, which he tries to compensate for with his martial prowess. However, he is constantly rejected from the masculine world and forced into the feminine. This has led him to abhor women due to his insecurities and societally-rejected gender identity. As a man, he has fallen down the social ladder (contrasted with Zhu, who has risen).

“But as she stared at the rusty bandages, a thought wormed to the surface. However tired I am, however hard it is: I know I can keep going, because I’m alive. […] I survived—because I’m not Zhu Chongba.”

For Ouyang, mutilation is a punishment worse than death; this refers to the idealized “perfect man” that he once was but no longer is. Zhu, on the other hand, never had that social status, so an imperfection like the loss of a hand is only a temporary setback. She realizes that she doesn’t have to be Zhu Chongba to achieve her fate—she can be herself.

“After a moment, still breathing heavily, Jiao leaned forwards with obvious effort and took up his scale [...] He was too superior to bow, even in defeat. With his head down over his powders, he said in the manner of someone making a casual inquiry, ‘That isn’t the color of any dynastic Mandate of Heaven recorded in the Histories.’ Zhu closed her hand around the white flame. Afterimages danced in front of her eyes in the restored darkness. Her body thrummed with energy. ‘It’s not a color,’ she said, and felt the truth of it ringing out like a promise of the future. ‘It’s radiance.’”

Jiao Yu, a Confucian scholar loyal only to himself, follows the tenet that men are superior to women (or anyone who isn’t a man). Discovering Zhu’s secret means that he now doubts her capabilities as a leader, despite her past successes. Zhu must intimidate him into cooperating by revealing an inarguable symbol of power. As the white light (instead of a colored flame) of her Mandate of Heaven indicates, she is unlike any historical figure, which adds to her revolutionary qualities.

“Zhu thought of the original Zhu Chongba, motionless in bed with the quick of life gone out of him. He hadn’t wanted his fate, either. He had given it up. Her eyes slid over General Ouyang’s shoulder and met the stares of his ghosts. She had wondered, before, what bound them to him. But it was the opposite: he bound himself to them. That was his tragedy. Not being born to a terrible fate, but not being able to let it go.”

The crux of Zhu’s and Ouyang’s differences is that Zhu can adapt to achieve her fate, but Ouyang cannot. Zhu lets go of her brother’s identity to embrace herself as she is. Ouyang, on the other hand, is so tied to his duty that he can’t—or won’t—allow himself the happiness he desires.

“Esen said, puzzled, ‘That’s it?’ That seat of emperors, the symbol that the Red Turbans had so desperately sought, was nothing but a wooden chair scabbed with gold leaf like the fur of a mangy dog. Ouyang, watching Esen with an ache in his heart, realized afresh that Esen had never been able to understand the values that made other people’s worlds different from his own. He looked but couldn’t see.”

Esen is a shortsighted, privileged man. He struggles with running his estate because he only knows his own culture and never bothered to learn anyone else’s. This blinds him to Red Turban tactics, as well as Ouyang’s and Lord Wang’s suffering, in which Esen is complicit. He sees an old chair, an effeminate man, and a coward, instead of a seat of power, a masculine Mongol-adjacent general, and his intelligent, loyal brother. This obliviousness leads to his downfall.

“All Ouyang’s life he had believed he was suffering, but in that instant, he knew the truth that every past moment had been a candle flame compared to this blaze of pain. It was suffering that was lit around without shadow, the purest thing under Heaven. He was no longer a thinking being that could curse the universe, or imagine how it could have gone differently, but a single point of blind agony that would go on unending. He had done what he had to do, and in doing so he had destroyed the world.

Though tragic, this scene is also the most honest and intimate scene of Ouyang’s and Esen’s relationship. Esen finally understands Ouyang as a complicated, tortured person. Ouyang’s coup gives him the power to reverse their social roles. Esen’s acceptance of his death and his unacknowledged feelings for Ouyang lead him to submit to his execution. Ouyang, upon killing him, regains his masculinity. Esen’s death removes Ouyang’s inner conflict, which allows him to feel pure emotion, one of the traits he loved and envied about Esen, but which he lacked.

“His Mongol self was dead, but there was no other to take its place, only a hungry ghost containing the singular purpose of revenge, and the inevitability of his own death.”

Ouyang identifies more with Mongols than he does with the Nanren, leading to his exclusion from both groups. After Esen’s death, he loses his Mongol connection, but he has no true Nanren loyalty to replace it. Instead, Ouyang feels as if he is preemptively dead; with no reason to live, he is going through the motions to fulfill his duty before he, too, can die.