The Apothecary Diaries is nothing if not a tangle of mysteries, conspiracies, and – undeniably – coincidences. The latter stretch credulity at times to be sure. But it is what it is, and it means you should probably assume everything you see and hear is going to be important sooner or later. It also means that some “secrets” are actually lies to cover up bigger secrets. And I wonder just how much we saw that playing out this week.
Things start out low-key enough (though we know that’s usually a misdirection with Kusuriya). Suiren is clearly pleased to have Xiaomao back in Jinshi’s residence even for a night. She’s also keenly aware of his interest in her and equally keen to play matchmaker. Their interaction is quite charming, but naturally it leads to the clue that breaks the case from last week. Inside a box of Jinshi’s old toys that Suiren has kept around (sentimental to be sure) are a strange golden rock and a painting Suiren doesn’t want Maomao to see. Both (of course) are crucial pieces to the puzzle Maomao has been tasked with putting together.
The rock is orpiment, a mineral that historically used as a pigment for that rich color. That went out of fashion as other options because available because, as what Maomao knows, it’s toxic. That’s no secret – it was used as a bug killer (and a medicine) in China for millennia. Orpiment is known as an arsenic sulfide mineral, which tells you (and Xiaomao) what you need to know in context. Arsenic is a poison than is known to retard decomposition (what a coincidence) and thus is planted the seed of Maomao’s theory about the late emperor’s curse.
That’s where things get really interesting. It’s revealed that the former guy spent his last years holed up in a single room, with only a mute former slave attending him. That slave is still around, but disinclined to cooperate with Maomao’s investigation even via a nod or a shake of the head. But she’s pretty well nailed it (as usual) anyway. The former emperor was thought to be many things – a puppet of his mother, a pedophile, an idiot. But as it turns out he was also a painter, and a very good one too. As the mural Maomao reveals… reveals.
Most of the big revelations come courtesy of Anshi. That they come courtest of her internal monologue does grate on me a little. Characters explaining things via internal monologues is kind of lazy writing. But that aside, it was certainly a hell of a tale. Seems like most of what we heard about TFG was no lie, but Anshi was no victim – even if she started out as one. Her father basically brokered her to the Emperor’s use as a power play, getting her into the Rear Palace as an lady-in-waiting to her older half-sister, knowing who the Emperor would actually go for. But Anshi was ambitious, even as a child. And she sensed her power over him, and used it to her advantage.
Much will be made of this story, surely. One has no sympathy for the former Emperor, though in a sense he was a victim himself – ill-suited to be emperor and warped by his mother’s control. As for Anshi, she was convinced he’d completely forgotten her once she was too old to appeal to his twisted appetites. That turns out not to be the case – no doubt in part because Anshi raped him to make sure he remembered her. But it’s implied that he did anyway – she’s almost certainly the one in the mural, though she assumed it was his mother. She’s certainly the figure on the painting Suiren his from Maomao. And it seems that her non-consensual final tryst with him was what finally broke his mind completely.
The headline here, sorry for burying it, are the practical implications of all this. Jinshi is certainly the former Emperor’s son, that’s now a lock. He seems very much to be Anshi’s son too. She even teases him about his feelings for Xiamao, warning him (wisely) to hide his favorites, lest someone else hide them from him. But the big question is, what of the girl whose mother claimed she was the late Emperor’s daughter, who was “exiled with a doctor”? I’d thought the matter of Maomao’s parentage was more or less sorted, but the implication there seems pretty clear. I’m leaning towards Lakan still being her father, but that’s certainly no longer a settled matter.
Nellie
March 8, 2025 at 6:31 pmThis episode really drove home the fact that abuse is a cyclical thing. The previous emperor likely suffered hands at the hands of his mother, and developed an interest in young girls probably because he couldn’t stand being around grown women- and one of his victims included Anshi. Anshi was made to be a mother as a preteen, and became (unhealthily) attached enough to the emperor that she seethed with rage when he seemingly stopped paying attention to her and did to him what he did to her all those years back. I’m morbidly curious to know exactly what about the previous emperor’s upbringing made him into a man who mentally disintegrated every time he came into contact with a grown woman, but I suppose we’ll never know.
Anshi and the former emperor were each other’s victims and each other’s abusers. That’s pretty twisted.
As someone who’s seen people unironically believe that rape done by woman to a man is somehow not rape and is less heinous than rape than by a man to a woman, let’s admit they were both seriously messed up. Thank you for acknowledging outright that Anshi wasn’t exactly an innocent babe in the woods. A lot of people were ignoring that bit. One went to suggest that Anshi’s rape was justified given that former emperor needed to be broken so that he’d stop seeking out young girls. That ticked me off though, I’m not sure if it should. This is a period piece, after all, with a very different set of cultural norms and a very different justice system.
Forget Koukyuu no Karasu, honestly- Kusuriya reminds me more of Oooku, with how unflattering in can be in painting a portrait of history. One wonders of Hyuuga Natsu read up about Imperial China and decided to write a series about all the things she found objectionable.
I’m still on Team Jinshi-is-Ah-Duo-and-the-current-emperor’s-son. That said, holy cow- he’s a dead ringer for the previous emperor save for the hair and eye colour (I think they had Otsuka Takeo voice him too). Jinshi has no liking for little girls- of that we’re certain. I wonder if it’s meant to suggest that he might have ended up like the previous emperor if his circumstances were different- no Gaoshun or Suiren in his life for starters. They seem to have been more present in his childhood than Anshi was. If the baby swap did happen- I don’t think it implausible that Anshi wouldn’t want to keep the son she’d birthed out of rape.
Guardian Enzo
March 8, 2025 at 7:48 pmI don’t think they would make him look like a doppelgänger unless it was meaningful. This was more than suggestive, it was identical.
I mean… rape is rape. It’s never justified. I feel zero sympathy for TFG but as you said, there’s a cycle of abuse he’s a part of here. Anshi is admirable for being strong and not being content with being a victim, but one shouldn’t romanticize what happened.
Nita
March 8, 2025 at 8:59 pmhttps://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1j5q8sl/comment/mgnzlmu/?share_id=u6ZUm7RFvxgepr3J-RSwz&utm_content=2&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
I found this on reddit.
According to the LN author the previous emperor suffered abuse from his father’s other consorts, not his mother.
Nellie
March 8, 2025 at 9:52 pmI don’t think her being overprotective squares up with what we’ve seen so far, unless “overprotective” involves enabling her son’s paedophilic tendencies.
Admittedly, we haven’t seen a lot of her.
But if it’s the LN author saying it, who am I to dispute?
Getting targeted by the other consorts when he was presumably still a child… the inner palace is a horrible place to live in, isn’t it? Messed-up people making each other suffer.
Guardian Enzo
March 8, 2025 at 10:12 pmThat said, the current Emperor seems like a real improvement and a generally decent person.
Vance
March 9, 2025 at 7:34 amBut one huge detail you seem to have missed is that neither the previous Emperor nor Anshi herself has purple hair like Jinshi does, and we know Ah-Duo does, which is probably where the colour of Jinshi’s hair comes from. Being the previous Emperor’s doppelganger doesn’t necessarily indicate that Jinshi is his son as there are many grandsons who are the spitting images of their grandfathers.
Simone
March 9, 2025 at 7:15 pm> One went to suggest that Anshi’s rape was justified given that former emperor needed to be broken so that he’d stop seeking out young girls.
I mean… I doubt anyone would have issues if she outright stabbed him or poisoned him then and there. People would understand and sympathize. With rape I guess it’s hard to argue that somehow anyone could do it with the same sort of “it will surely stop him” mindset. Compared to more direct impairing violence it seems like it can really only have a purely sadistic motive on the perpetrator’s part – pursuit of selfish pleasure and of power over the other.
In practice, I think Anshi would have had somewhat selfish motives for either the rape or the murder. Though herself has been shaped of course by being groomed for intrigue by her family. Thing is, this setting specifically is one in which the sexual is always political. Everything from who the Emperor spends the night with to who bears his children has huge ramifications. So it’s not particularly surprising that even rape can become not a crime of passion or sadism but a tool used in service of cold political aims. Which ain’t particularly better, but, y’know. Places it roughly in the same bucket as assassination.
Simone
March 9, 2025 at 7:09 pmThe thing that gets me with this show is that not only it’s full of intrigue – the intrigue is spread and woven throughout the show, with hints dropped in sometimes entirely unrelated contexts, and it’s often full of subtle or half said and implied things. This is probably one of the shows I’ve had to rack my brain most about just to make sense of it (which is one of its greatest appeals).
So yeah, my takeaway from this episode was “oh yeah Jinshi is a child of rape between Anshi and the former Emperor, thus the current Emperor’s brother”. But then I read people theory crafting online and many were already thinking one level beyond that: that Jinshi would be the *son* of the current Emperor, switched at birth with the brother (aka Anshi’s son), who then died as a baby due to honey poisoning (remember that early S1 subplot)? I honestly don’t even remember enough details to judge that theory, I’d need to rewatch. It would make Jinshi’s importance bigger and the reasons to keep him hidden more conspicuous (though, why bother with all the brouhaha around the concubines being pregnant if the Emperor already had a heir? Does he himself not know? What makes it worth risking making that crown prince sterile to keep the masquerade up? And how do the timings align? I had guessed the current Emperor was born when Anshi was 13 or so and the second child when she was in her 20s but that would make the current Emperor still too young to have a son himself. It could have happened when she was in her 30s though).