The Case For Wang Lingjiao
Ok. I’m going to make the case for the Untamed’s third most unlikable character, Wang Lingjiao, being sympathetic.
Wang Lingjiao starts out her story as a servant. She’s not a cultivator. She doesn’t have a golden core. She has no social or spiritual power at all. She’s just the servant of either Wen Chao or Wen Xu’s wife. And Wen Chao, who has both a ton of social and spiritual power and can literally set people on fire with his mind, decides he likes her. Wen Chao is the worst person to decide he likes you. Jin Guangshan is second worst, only because he doesn’t have a habit of setting people on fire with his mind.
Wang Lingjiao has two options here. Option one: try to fight it and get set on fire at worst and merely fired at best. Option two: go with it, and try to do whatever she can to keep Wen Chao, CQL’s first ranked douchebag, happy and happy with her. When and if Wen Chao gets tired of her, she doesn’t have a lot of options. They are: get set on fire, at worst, and get cast out to fend for herself as a now fallen woman with a bad reputation at best. So she has a big vested interest in doing whatever she thinks will keep Wen Chao interested in her.
This explains the whiny “gooongziiiii” pouting, it explains her vendetta against Mianmian, because if Wen Chao decides to replace her? She’s fucked. He could literally just kill her and no one would care. It explains her being so insanely ride-or-die for both him and the Wen clan, because if he goes down, she goes down with him. It explains her coming along places where it really doesn’t make sense to bring your mistress, because a) gotta keep him interested and keep him from bringing home a new side-piece, and b) do whatever and go wherever he says, enthusiastically. It explains her being extra nasty towards Wei Wuxian, because Wen Chao hates him, and that will impress Wen Chao. It also explains her pouting about being “sooooo scared” after the sack of Lotus Pier and harping on Madam Yu’s qualities as undesirable, in sharp contrast to her. She’s painting herself as dependent, devoted, and desirable. It’s a strategic performance as much as anything, and she’s playing Wen Chao to keep herself safe and in a good position.
Her imperiousness towards Madam Yu also, I think, makes a lot of sense. Madam Yu is exactly the kind of person who Wang Lingjiao has lived her whole life under the boot of. She was born to social power, she is a strong cultivator. Wang Lingjiao spent her whole pre-canon life bowing and scraping and cleaning up after the Madam Yu’s of the world, and, when she didn’t do a good job, getting slapped or beaten or insulted. Of course she’s going to lord it over the current stand-in for the oppressive system she lives under, and have way too much fun with it. Also, in her eyes, Madam Yu’s refusal to offer tea is an insult, not just to the Wen clan, but an insult to her, personally, because Madam Yu thinks she’s better than her, because of her birth and marriage and cultivation. All of these things are completely off-limits to Wang Lingjiao. And when Madam Yu does insult her, it’s not based on her terrible behavior or her violation of Jiang sovereignty, it’s based on her birth (low), her job (a servant), and her lack of cultivation.
On the last night of her life, she knows she’s screwed, not because of Wei Wuxian, but because Wen Chao has grown bored with her. She’s scared of Wei Wuxian, scared of the war, just scared in general, and all he does is yell at her, threaten her, and insult her. We see later that he’s perfectly willing to kill her when she’s bloodied and asking him for help. Of course she was taking the jewels and running. She knew what she was in for the day he lost interest, and she knew that day was tomorrow. Wang Lingjiao never had a chance, not because she wasn’t a good person, but because the circumstances she was in didn’t give her the option to both be a good person and live.
