#such as the sordid history of royals marrying their own family members

[lilnasxvevo]

Btw my probably unpopular opinion is that CQL JGY DID NOT kill Jin Rusong because he admitted to every other terrible crime he committed including killing his own father and killing his sworn brother so why wouldn’t he admit to killing his own son???

He doesn’t say to Qin Su that he killed Rusong, only something along the lines of “He would have had to die anyway,” and he doesn’t say anything to Lan Xichen about killing Rusong

MOREOVER, if there was any evidence that he was behind Rusong’s death, don’t you think Nie Huaisang would have found it and dragged it into the light? Do you really think Huaisang would have flinched away from going that far after everything else he did to expose JGY’s crimes? Do you think Huaisang, who had ten YEARS to plan everything, just went “Nah, I have enough evidence” and didn’t BOTHER to look into Rusong’s death???

No. The only explanation is that Nie Huaisang looked, and found nothing. And judging from the rest of Huaisang’s stellar detective work, that’s because there wasn’t anything to find.

Is that because Jin Guangyao covered up all the evidence? I don’t think so.

However. I also think that the reason he didn’t lean too hard into “Of course I didn’t kill my son!” as a way to defend himself was that he was, as he alluded to during his showdown with Qin Su, somewhere around 50% committed to killing Rusong at some point—his enemies just got there first.

I think he was keeping a close eye on Rusong’s development and I think that if Rusong showed any sign of physical or intellectual disability that Jin Guangyao was going to get rid of him as quickly as possible.

As a side note, I will remind everyone that Jin Guangyao’s motive for wanting to get rid of Rusong was not “to cover up the incest”—he was quite confident he could keep that covered up indefinitely, as anyone who knew the truth knew that it would be basically suicide to go public with what they knew. Bicao only agrees to go public when she has secured the protection of two—TWO!!!—different leaders of two different Great Sects. That’s how dangerous she knows this secret is.

Instead, Jin Guangyao’s reason for wanting to kill Rusong to hide any disability or deformity he might have was that it would encourage people to say that Jin Guangyao had dirty/tainted/inferior blood and that’s why his son was inferior. This doesn’t really…make sense to the modern person, but it isn’t a crazy prediction for JGY to make, that people would say such things. It WOULD be kind of nuts to say “oh if Rusong is disabled then people will suspect his parents are half-siblings,” because there are about a billion more likely reasons why someone would have a genetic/congenital problem than incest, so it’s really unlikely that the rumor mill would ever think of that or that such a rumor would gain any ground.