Focus on the Rebel Leader: The Most Ambitious Among Them

[waterscroll]

The Rebel Leader was the leader of a group of Dixing rebels and the antagonist against whom the Alliance of Humans, Yashou and Shen Wei’s Dixing forces united in the Allliance-era flashbacks. He kidnapped Ye Zun and abused him for many years while convincing him that Shen Wei abandoned him and stoking his anger against his brother. His Dixing power is mind control and when Ye Zun ate him he gained that power. He appears in episodes 1, 35 and 40 of the drama.

In the first few minutes of episode 1, in the opening infodump, we’re told that when the meteor depleted Dixing’s resources Dixingians escaped to the surface and some of the most ambitious of them invaded Haixing and Yashou lands, leading to a war in which the Haixing people defeated the Dixingians with the help of the Hallows. This makes it sound like a war between Haixing and Dixing and we don’t find out until later that there were Dixingians on both sides.

In episode 35 we see Ye Zun giving the Hallows, which he stole, to the Rebel Leader, who berates, insults and kicks him. The Rebel Leader has no idea how to use the Hallows and asks Ye Zun to figure it out. Ye Zun convinces him to use his own dark energy to activate the Hallows but it doesn’t work, so the Rebel Leader berates and abuses Ye Zun some more and talks about how he’s going to kill Shen Wei. When he’s choking Ye Zun, Ye Zun’s Dixing power finally awakens and he eats the Rebel Leader.


How do these Hallows work and how can I conquer the world with them?

In episode 40 we get the flashback to how the Rebel Leader kidnapped Ye Zun by throwing Shen Wei off a cliff and then convincing Ye Zun that his brother abandoned him.

I find the Rebel Leader interesting because he’s the one who starts all the problems, but we’re given very little insight into his character. We’re mostly shown him as Ye Zun’s abuser but he was clearly enough of a leader to be a very serious threat.


Fanworks:
The Rebel Leader often appears briefly as an antagonist in YOHE-era fics but is usually untagged. Here are two Ye Zun-centric fics in which he abuses Ye Zun in different ways:
Two by circumference (cn: emotional manipulation)
Bruises Rage-Red by extrapenguin (cn: gang rape, E-rated)
Any other fics featuring the Rebel Leader that you’d like to recommend?

Some questions for discussion:
1. What do you think made him so powerful that it took an alliance of Humans, Yashou and Dixingians to defeat him?
2. What proportion of Dixingians do you think supported him vs. Shen Wei? How large do you think his army was? Was it only Dixingians?
3. Do you think the people who followed him were all mind-controlled or did some choose to follow him? Why?
4. Why do you think he wanted the Hallows? What did he intend to do with them?
5. Why do you think he took Ye Zun? What do you think that relationship was like? (Other than: terrible and extremely abusive)
6. He’s presented in canon as someone entirely destructive. Do you think it is possible to read him as well-intentioned in any way or wanting the best for Dixingians at least? Or do you like having a villain at the start of things who is straightforwardly villainous?

The Rebel Leader is a drama-only character.

Comments

[glymr]

It's hard to find anything sympathetic about the Rebel Leader, isn't it? Even if he were motivated by helping the Dixing people, he doesn't come across that way. He seems only power hungry. He's actively cruel, throwing Shen Wei off that cliff and taking Ye Zun and then torturing and tormenting him for years.

It's interesting, because most of the villains in Guardian are redeemed in one way or another. It's shown that they were misled or confused or tricked. Even the face-stealing couple get a moment of humanity (er, so to speak) when they try to defend each other (not redemption, though). The shadow guy from the first episode comes back and gives his life to free Shen Wei. And so on. Zhu Jiu and the Master of Nightmares were under Ye Zun's influence. There are very few completely unsympathetic characters: off the top of my head, I can think of the guy who runs the fighting arena (who gets his comeuppance when Zhu Jiu kills him), the Regent, and the Rebel Leader. And the one who really drove everything and caused poor Ye Zun to become what he was, was the Rebel Leader. Such a completely unsympathetic character might have bothered me if he'd had a larger role: unrelenting evil and cruelty are either hard to watch or too over the top (or both). But he has such a bit role (and yet such an important one!) that his cruelty and hunger for power feel real, rather than too much.

[china_shop]

Such a completely unsympathetic character might have bothered me if he'd had a larger role: unrelenting evil and cruelty are either hard to watch or too over the top (or both). But he has such a bit role (and yet such an important one!) that his cruelty and hunger for power feel real, rather than too much.

Oh, that's a really good point. His being so terrible worked because we didn't really see much of him. (I feel like even the Regent got a few moments of nuance.)

Ooh, and what we did see of the Rebel Leader was mostly through young!Shen Wei and Ye Zun's eyes -- is there any chance they were unreliable narrators, I wonder?

[glymr]

Ooh, and what we did see of the Rebel Leader was mostly through young!Shen Wei and Ye Zun's eyes -- is there any chance they were unreliable narrators, I wonder?

I usually like trying to understand all the POVs and often find myself sympathizing with villains, but it's very hard to read the Rebel Leader's actions as anything but utterly cruel and selfish. Sometimes abusive actions are taken by people/characters with the excuse that they need to "toughen up" a child or weaker person, but that doesn't feel like the case here, there's no "I'm doing this for your own good," or "be a man" garbage justification. Just raw, sadistic brutality with no mitigating factors at all. If the Rebel leader wanted to genuinely help the Dixing cause, it's hard to see how 'killing' one Dixing child and enslaving the other would do any good. Filtered through SW's and YZ's POVs or not, his own actions stand against him, and without utterly twisting the narrative (ie, I dunno, Ye Zun's perspective was warped by the Holy Tools and the rebel leader was actually kind to him?) I can't find anything sympathetic in the RL at all.

Edit: On further consideration, there might be a twisted justification of: "I will sacrifice this one weakling to keep up the morale of the rest of the troops." You use the term "whipping boy" and it seems quite apt with Ye Zun. That's not really a sympathetic POV, but it might be how the leader justified his own actions in his eyes.

You mention that the Regent even gets some nuance, which I do agree with! He's also a tremendously selfish character (the way he callously and casually condemns An Bai and his friends to death is very telling) but doesn't seem sadistic to quite the same level as the Rebel Leader. (On the other hand, he had Chu Shuzhi tortured and whipped, etc, so...)

[china_shop]

Heh. Whereas I rarely sympathise with villains, but like you, I do want to understand why they think they're doing what they're doing, because yeah, most people have at least a halfway relatable motive. And you're right -- the Rebel Leader doesn't, that we see.

Edit: On further consideration, there might be a twisted justification of: "I will sacrifice this one weakling to keep up the morale of the rest of the troops." You use the term "whipping boy" and it seems quite apt with Ye Zun. That's not really a sympathetic POV, but it might be how the leader justified his own actions in his eyes.

I woke up this morning thinking that the start of child!Shen Wei's interaction with him is very telling: when Shen Wei sees blood on his hands and accuses him of having just killed someone (with very childlike and Shen Wei-like righteousness), the Rebel Leader doesn't excuse or defend himself, or even see anything wrong with it. "Haixing's been hit by a meteorite. The world's in upheaval. Killing a person isn't a big deal."

So I don't think he's on a mission to help the Dixing people. I don't think he has a grievance, though he may well be exploiting other people's. I think he's just a bully and a thug (and a dangerously charismatic one, at that, PLUS mind-control /o\).

You mention that the Regent even gets some nuance, which I do agree with! He's also a tremendously selfish character (the way he callously and casually condemns An Bai and his friends to death is very telling) but doesn't seem sadistic to quite the same level as the Rebel Leader.

I don't think the Regent cares about individuals, and he's very end-justifies-the-means, but he does care tremendously about Dixing, in his own way.

[waterscroll]

I think the most sympathetic take on the Rebel Leader is in the episode 1 infodump, where his invasion is described as a result of Dixing's destruction. Based on that, I was expecting to see in the flashbacks someone trying his best to help Dixingians survive the destruction of their home. But that's not really what he comes across as when we meet him.

[waterscroll]

Ooh, and what we did see of the Rebel Leader was mostly through young!Shen Wei and Ye Zun's eyes -- is there any chance they were unreliable narrators, I wonder?

I wonder about that too. I don't doubt that Ye Zun was abused, but he might have some reason to play up how much he was mind-controlled in order to not take responsibility for some of what he did.

[waterscroll]

It's interesting, because most of the villains in Guardian are redeemed in one way or another. It's shown that they were misled or confused or tricked.

Yes, it is interesting, it makes me wonder if he was also misled or tricked in some way we didn't find out about.