#mxtx treats him like a punching bag for jokes 90% of the time but he is at his core a very tragic character imo

[voidfragments]

ok but i actually have sm to say about qi rong's relationship with anger. i could honestly just link a fic i wrote about it here bc i think i worded it better there than i ever can again but my ao3 links to my main twt and i prefer to keep rp stuff separate from my personal stuff for reasons sooooo lemme try to write it differently

cw for mentions of domestic violence bc holy shit like 99% of his character traces back to that in some way

the key thing is, of course, that anger is a trauma response for qi rong. he has every reason to be fucking pissed at like, all times, but fundamentally, his anger is not rational. rage and violence are all he knows! his earliest childhood memories are of being abused and seeing his mother be abused! even when he got out of that, he and his mother were bullied and ostracized, and his mother was eventually murdered. violence and cruelty shape his early childhood and in turn shape who he is today (enabled in large part by the queen's reluctance to properly discipline him when he began exhibiting cruel behavior himself).

in many cases, it's about revenge--getting "even", though he usually takes it much farther than the original offense. his father was abusive? he'll delight in warring against people from the same town as him. the yong'an rebellion tore away the one good thing he had in his life--his royal status? he'll crush their entire royal & noble classes in a single night. xie lian fell off the pedestal he held him on, "failed" and "abandoned" him? unforgivable.

very often, it's simply lashing out. the world has been cruel to him, so he'll be cruel too.

mostly, though, his anger just keeps him going. if he doesn't have his anger, then what does he have? sadness, loneliness, despair, heartbreak, misery.

being a ghost adds another angle to it, too--he can't let go of his anger, even if he wants to. well, he could, but then he'd disappear, and he doesn't want that. not yet. it's his source of life. it's also his source of power! and it's easy to forget with how often the rest of the cast and the narrative itself dunks on him, but he has a lot of power. #4 in the entire ghost realm! a near-supreme, one successful furnace trip away from becoming a full-fledged ghost king!

just--imagine, for a moment, being him. an abused kid--powerless--who suddenly learns that he's actually a prince--powerful!--and then, before even reaching adulthood, his kingdom crumbles, and he eventually dies just as powerless as he started. and then all that resentment causes him to come back even more powerful than before. it's no wonder he leans into it.

idk this is getting long-winded but i guess what i'm trying to say is--his anger is both justified and overblown, it is both understandable and irrational, it is something he needs to hold onto no matter how much it hurts him. he is his anger.