um anyway does anybody else ever think about how jiang cheng especially in the later flashbacks is like painfully aware of the narrative being woven around wei wuxian and chooses to play a particular role in it but then ends up so locked into that character that he forgets who wei wuxian really was to him
like hes so aware of the politics of every situation hes in like even though people like meng yao and nie huaisang are much Much better at manipulating the situations hes always reading them, you see it at the nightless city banquet when he freezes up abt the yanli/zixuan engagement bc he fully understands the stakes, the weight of the choice, how much its going to affect how hes percieved as a leader, but he doesnt know yet what kind of leader he wants to be percieved as. i think that uncertainty is part of why he stays quiet and relatively passive about the yiling wen situation, but even then he has the awareness to stage the fight between him and wei wuxian and to keep yanlis visit secret, and once he fakes killing his own brother he has absolutely sealed his future reputation for ruthlessness
bc thats the thing he doesnt play the role of “hero slaying the villain to save the day” thats way too close to what HE THINKS!!!! wei wuxian was always trying to be and he sees where that led him and also. im so sure his inferiority complex wouldnt let him. no bitch hes playing the bad guy. like he loves jin ling to death obviously but hes the harsh strict uncle who threatens to break his legs for misbehaving, people believe that he hunts down and tortures demonic cultivators which is an awfully convenient story if you want to dissuade people from doing the stupid shit that killed your siblings, he constantly portrays himself as a cruel and violent person all because in order to get away with what must have been an act of mercy (letting wei wuxian take his own way out of a world with no place left for him) he needed people to believe that it was out of hatred. so he forever has to seem like the person who could do that.
and i genuinely think he thought that the truth and the story could be kept separate. like when wei wuxian is still alive he tries to secretly keep him involved with the family and he never Actually hurts wei wuxian aside from that staged battle, even after he thinks he killed yanli, even when hes allegedly killing him he doesnt touch him. and i think thats part of why he targets the future demonic cultivators, bc he thinks if he can annihilate every last trace of Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch then all that will be left is the memory of his brother and he can finally mourn. unfortunately he has to keep playing the character of himself forever and ever and the false version of wei wuxian is central to that narrative so he ends up cannibalised by his own story. fucked!