The Apothecary Diaries Season 2

Episode 33

It almost doesn't matter that I was right about the late emperor's cause of death (orpiment is an arsenic sulfide) or that the solution to his “curse” is a combination of the infamous Victorian arsenical wallpaper and perhaps the equally infamous Radium Girls, who were poisoned in part by tipping their paintbrushes with radioactive paint in their mouths. The bigger takeaway from this episode is the history of the late emperor and Anshi, and that's not a comfortable story.

We've known that the previous emperor was a pedophile for quite some time now; that was made clear when we learned that it was Lishu, not Ah-Duo, who was once one of his consorts. We also know that Anshi had the current emperor very young. But what's revealed this week is that the former emperor was almost certainly some form of neurodivergent and just as certainly abused by his mother to the point where he developed a pathological fear of or aversion to adult women. While that's absolutely treading some very slippery ground by putting “neurodivergent” and “pedophile” in the same sentence, the more important takeaway is that he was a victim himself. That doesn't excuse what he did, but it does inform his character.

Equally important is the fact that Anshi herself abused her husband. We see very plainly that her second son was the result of her raping the emperor, an inexcusable act in and of itself. Anshi seems to have done it both out of jealousy that she'd lost her power over her husband (rape is a crime of power, after all) and perhaps out of a misguided desire to save the young girls like Lishu who had entered the inner palace. She may have gone into her relationship with the emperor with her eyes wide open – in fact, she went into it very deliberately, especially due to her early menarche and young-looking face and form – but these girls may not be. Her sexual relationship with the emperor likely scarred her emotionally on some level, and she may subconsciously be trying to prevent that in innocent children who have no real idea what they're getting into.

With all of this going on, I wonder why Anshi wanted to know the truth about the late emperor's death. If she cursed him, she may feel she has to shoulder more of the blame, because her “curse” would certainly have occurred during or because of her sexual assault on him. But maybe she just wants to know if she has that power, either for later use or to make sure she doesn't harm anyone else. I'm more inclined to think the former because what Suiren tells Maomao about Jinshi's childhood indicates that his mother (biological or adoptive; at this point, it doesn't matter) raised him very strictly. She controlled him, perhaps out of fear that he'd become like his father (or grandfather), never letting him develop a lasting attachment even to a toy. Essentially she forced him to grow up, something she experienced herself, albeit differently. When she cautions him about letting his fondness for Maomao show, she's reminding him that letting on when he likes something opens the door for it to be taken away.

For all of their issues, both the late emperor and Anshi are sad characters. They were shaped more by their traumas and ambitions than anything else, and that led them to follow paths that brought them and those around them no happiness or comfort. They stand as a lesson to both the current emperor and Jinshi about how not to do things, and the open question that remains is whether or not they'll heed it or realize that the lesson has been imparted in the first place.

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