I think the reason TGCF is such a tough read for me is that XL suffers such horrific trauma but everyone seems to dismiss it except the narration and HC.
The narration doesn't spare us anything - we get a first row seat to the fall of Xianle, the turn of public opinion against the Crown Prince, the life of XL as a refugee, the horrific experience of being stabbed alive by a hundred people and then gaslit into it being your own fault for advocating for them, the abandonment of his closest friends and family when he can't live up to what he once was, almost becoming a calamity, seeing the futility of revenge, being the state preceptor of the state that overthrew your own, taking up the burden of mass slaughter and being nailed alive into a coffin for it, going back to war for a country you have nothing to do with only to be trampled to death when you try to save some children from the battlefield and then the actual plot. Every one of these instances are described vividly and in detail by the narration. We don't get to shy away from it. XL's life was fucking hard and tragic and we hear all about it.
But no one seems to take it seriously. Not even XL himself. He does not like to dwell on the past - understandably so, it's painful to read how much worse must it be to remember. But everyone else too. I am re-reading vol. 1 now and when it's revealed that General Hua is XL and why he died no one offers any sympathy that it must have been hard to die this way or that he at least saved some children. MQ makes a derisive comment on how it's his own fault for charging out like that and how he never learns to not stick his nose in trouble and the conversation moves on. Only HC seems to see things from XL's perspective, mood noticably souring when he learns of XL's suffering.
And it goes like this everytime. Something of XL's horrific past is revealed, XL tries his level best to focus on something else, someone else makes a disparaging comment and the plot moves along. And as a reader I sit there, trying to grapple with the magnitude of suffering that I am witnessing yet again, on top of everything else I already learned about XL's past and no other character is joining me in that process and that makes TGCF really hard to read for me. It's a novel full with trauma but the continuous dismissal that other characters treat XL with who is an exceptionally kind and resilient person and absolutely will not dismiss other characters the same way makes it traumatic in its own way. XL is the center of the narration, the reason everything unfolds but no character seems to have much care for what happens to him as a person. He serves a function for most of the cast and outside for that he receives almost no regard - except for HC.
Without fail HC will be upset about what happened - even if he already knew of it. He is my - and XL's - saving grace in TGCF because finally someone validates the horrors. What happened to XL was horrific and that no one acknowledges that says a lot about the universe they live in and how little they deserve XL. No wonder XL fell quick and hard. I need HC too to get through.
