Surprisingly, while watching Love And Destiny, we find the character Yuan Tong much more appealing than the female lead herself. Why? Because there is a lot you can say about her that does not have to do with her love life. Romance is good, but a good character stands on her/his own without depending on the characterization of their love interest, and Yuan Tong is such.
In this post, we will examine her character with ten questions that cover flaws, consistency, development, etc. To each question, the answer would be either Yes (1 point), No (0 point), or Kind of (0.5 point).
WARNING: this analysis 1) contains spoilers 2) is humor-free
1. Does she have a story to tell besides romance? Kind of (+0.5)
Yuan Tong’s story is a long term scheme to protect her family’s name and avenge her mother. At times, however, her motives are a little questionable. To be specific, we can’t tell whether Yuan Tong does everything for revenge or because of her obsession with Jiuchen. Sometimes her plans are not well thought out and seem to serve more as a mean for her to get rid of Lingxi and get Jiuchen’s attention. This will be explained more in question 3.
0.5/10
2. Is she an active character? (Does she make things happen or do things happen to her?) Yes (+1)
Let’s list a few things Yuan Tong does that directly influence the story – burning the letter her brother Yuan Zheng left behind to conceal the fact that he was possessed by demon power from public, bringing the magical lamp (you know… the glowing thing that Yuli gifts Jiuchen but the guy hands it to Lingxi instead? Let’s just call it that since we’re not so sure about its official name) that has been harnessing Lingxi’s demonic energy to the court, harming the soldiers who guard Lingxi during her trial, framing Qingyao more than once, cooperating with the Thunder God to bring the matter concerning Lingxi to the Jade Emperor’s attention. Yuan Tong gets put in prison due to her crime, she gets OUT of prison herself.
Ect.
1.5/10
3. Does she take action to accomplish her goals? Does she have goals outside of her love life? Kind of (+0.5)
Yuan Tong definitely has goals that are unrelated to romance. While her admiration towards Jiuchen drives her to do many things, the wish to maintain and later restore her family’s honor is always the foundation of her actions. As stated in the question above, Yuan Tong plots and schemes as much as she can in order to achieve these goals.
Yuan Tong believes that Qingyao plays a major part in the downfall of her family, so many of her schemes target Qingyao.
However, we will note that when it comes to the goals that are not romance-related, the drama is unclear at times with Yuan Tong’s conversations with Jiuchen. Every time Jiuchen appears, Yuan Tong makes tremendous effort to appeal to him, stating that she only does what she does because she cares about him and would like to be with him, even as a servant. Until the very end, when Jiuchen is down at the abyss at Shanling tribe to contain the demon energy, Yuan Tong still expresses her (questionable) affection towards him and how it is the reason for her actions.
On the other hand, her constant being at her family’s shrine and recalling her mother and brother’s words indicate that she is driven by their former guidance more.
So is her ultimate goal to avenge her family or just to be with Jiuchen all along?
This is an ambiguity.
2/10
4. Does she have an interest? No (+0)
Probably not.
2/10
5. Does she act in accordance with her beliefs? Yes (+1)
As shown a lot of times in the drama, Yuan Tong is raised to put her family’s name above everything else. This is very evident when she decides to get rid of the letter her brother left, which could have cleared Jiuchen’s name but consequently harmed her family.
Similar to the rest of the people in the Heaven palace, Yuan Tong believes that Demonic powers are bad news, however, unlike the rest of them, Yuan Tong is willing to utilize these powers when she believes that doing so will help her accomplish her goals.
3/10
6. Does she develop throughout the story? Yes (+1)
Yuan Tong starts out as an ambitious woman with a bright future ahead of her. She cares about Jiuchen’s well-being, and does not look to clash with anyone. When trouble strikes, especially after her mother’s death, Yuan Tong’s manipulative nature is revealed and she becomes someone who stops at nothing, even sending her loyal soldiers to their deaths, to achieve her goals.
4/10
7. Does she have a flaw? Yes (+1)
Yuan Tong’s most critical flaw is perhaps her stubbornness (kind of like… Jingxiu) and her way of dealing with failure. During the drama, she is given many opportunities to redeem herself and opt for a less dramatic life, but she chooses to plunge ahead with her original malevolent plan of vanquishing anyone who had a hand in staining her family’s reputation. This leads to her own tragedy later on.
5/10
8. Does she have meaningful relationships with other characters besides her love interest? Kind of (+0.5)
Yuan Tong and her mother share a similar strong devotion to their family. It is Lady Yuan’s beliefs that influence Yuan Tong and turn her into a revenge machine later on.
What Yuan Tong does not have is a male influence, which is a pity because her fiance (guy who keeps showing up and telling her where she’s gone wrong) seemed to be an interesting character at first. But Yuan Tong never listens to him once, his opinion and ideas have no impact on her at all. She is also not very grateful for his understanding and he turns out to be not be that much of a factor in any of her decisions.
She gets 1/2 point here.
5.5/10
9. Is her character consistent? Kind of (+0.5)
Yuan Tong’s personality is consistent. Kind of predictable – given a situation and you can almost guess how Yuan Tong would react – but never out of character.
Her skills are a little more difficult to understand than her personality. This problem goes to all characters in this drama (and pretty much all fantasy dramas), not just Yuan Tong. Watching the drama, we just don’t get how powerful Yuan Tong is, exactly, in terms of magic. BUT, because Yuan Tong’s skills are never inconsistent to the point that they influence the main plot – she never does anything that indicates immense powers, never falls ill where she’s not supposed to – we’ll go a head and give her the other half of the point.
6.5/10
10. Can you define her character by her personality? Yes (+1)
Yuan Tong is a pride-driven, stubborn, and ambitious woman to whom family honor is the most important thing.
SO HOW WELL-WRITTEN IS YUAN TONG?
7.5/10
CONCLUSION
Honestly speaking, Yuan Tong’s part in this drama needs much more elaboration. Her goals are questionable at times and her motivations are a little puzzling. And similar to Jingxiu, her ending seems very abrupt and her relationships with others aren’t very well developed. She should have listened to her husband-to-be more, for instance; if she ends up not following his advice then at least she should have CONSIDERED it. Or, if Yuan Tong claims to admire Jiuchen’s skills and accomplishments so much then she should have at least been allowed to be influenced by his good nature before she goes full-time evil.
Towards the end, Yuan Tong becomes more of a character that is written to be hated rather than the villain we expected to have.
However, there is just enough information to interpret her character one way or another. What we can be certain of is that there is some more to Yuan Tong than just her obsession over Jiuchen. Can you talk about Yuan Tong without mentioning how much she likes Jiuchen? Absolutely. And most importantly, the drama allows her choices.
Yuan Tong (as well as Qingyao) is regularly placed in situations that are difficult, but not completely hopeless, and most of the times, she decides what to do with her own fate. She’s never clueless or entirely dependent on another person, and she is also never thrown in a I-have-to-stay-in-one-place-or-the-world-will-explode type of scenario. In most cases, she’s given more than one choices and the one she makes reflects her personality.
My reading of Yuan Tong is she maybe has a psychopathic crush on Jiuchen like a crazed fan girl toward her idol. She likes him to be single and untouched. Lol.
But at her core, she is a narcissistic psychopath who is incapable of love.
When it comes to choose between throwing him under the bus and saving her family, she picked her family or should I say, she picked her glory and prestige.
Because Jiuchen clearly hinted to her about how time are different and her family won’t come to harm. Still she stayed silent.
I think for me her personality become very well defined at the scene when she was getting bullied by the people of the Medicine cave, and she went begging for Jiuchen’s protection. Right after he refused, she went right to the Thunder guy, revealing his secret. Clearly did not give an F about his well-being at all. She wanted to punish him for turning her down.
I like her as antagonist a lot more than that man-crazy woman in TMOP, who were so delusional and kept on chasing the guy pass the point of all reasons.
Yuan Tong knew when to give up and focus on her revenge instead of trying to win Jiuchen over, and she targeted everyone in her quest for revenge, even Jiuchen.
I like that she is resourceful, that she just doesn’t give up. That her motivations and her hatred was clear.
If you read her as a narcissistic psychopath then her development was just on point.
I mean, look up traits of a narcissist, Yuan Tong fit it to a T. For example:
*exaggerated sense of self importance, excessive need for admiration, lack of empathy, obsession with power and success, feel entitled to special treatments or favours.
Her speech at the end was the classic vengeful “look at what you make me do” abusive psychopaths give before they kill the person they supposedly *love*.
Hi! Thanks for your thoughts. Yes, Yuan Tong’s motivations behind her evilness are a lot less annoying than the characters who are just there to make very unnecessary make love triangles, so we can forgive whatever else her character is lacking in terms of her villain story arc 🙂 Her narcissism, if exists, isn’t well addressed at all. Sometimes (specifically during her interactions with her fiancé) she looks like a martyr whose main mission is to die for family honor, some other times she’s just a petty loser with no direction, in her final scene, she seems psychotic but you can reason that it’s just the physical effect of dark magic. All in all, clarification is needed. But as long as she’s not another Sujin from Ten Miles, it’s good enough 😀