#but like. if everybody else is based on a honkai character then what's zhongli's deal supposed to be?????

[holdharmonysacred]

Someone who’s an expert in Honkai and Genshin lore help me out here. I’m trying to figure out who the hell Zhongli’s counterpart in Honkai is supposed to be, because it is absolutely Buck Wild he is seemingly the odd man out when it comes to “the Genshin archons and some of their associates are wacky AU counterparts/deliberate knockoffs of some of the major characters of the Honkai cast”, and I’m getting stumped. The absolute best guess I have is that he is some kind of genderswap counterpart to Fu Hua, with his hair and earring combo resembling Fu Hua’s hairstyle + his whole thing as an extremely long-lived immortal reflecting Fu Hua’s character, but I’m having trouble convincing my friends who only play Genshin of this theory. I don’t want to think that Madame Ping is the Fu Hua counterpart because then that means they blew Fu Hua on someone who in-game is a generic NPC model, but the best other guess we’ve come up with is Guizhong, who would also be kind of a waste given that she’s a backstory character with no design. Is there anyone who knows All The Things about the literal hoyoverse lore who can help? Is this a thing, or am I being a dumb dumb here?