Apothecary Diaries 2x9 | Full Length Reaction

My theory is that: 1. Thee emperor is known for his handsome/ gorgeous looks. Maybe he was grape as a child by some older women or his mother ( maybe thats why he is so afraid of her) that is why he's so scared of women and can only talk to younger girls cause he has more control. Maybe thats why he painted her as this women surrounded by happy girls. Implying that she saved them(girls) somehow from him. 2. I think the reason he locked himself in his room is because after the empress grape him while also telling him the trauma of her giving birth as a child made him realize that what his doing ("pedohilia") is wrong. Maybe in his mind the reason why he never think that what he was doing is wrong cause in his mind the girls are send their to be his concubine and bear his child, does making him think that the graping is consented. 3. I think that the reason why the Empress talk about herself as a child full of ambition and stuff like that is a self defense mechanism because people who experience this kind of stuff prefer to have control over her past. Like it was a choice rather than something that they fell victim too. Her narrating the past like she has a level of agency towards the situation.

Alright, let's answer your discussion questions as best as i can without spoilers. All the below info is already known information or hinted at information: The thing about the drawing and her yellow color clothing favoring implies that the emperor drew HER in that picture not his mother. She basically graped him in her adult form as he was tormented and scared of adult women, and she thinks that the fruit of the incident is jinshi (putting aside Ah-duo's theory that maomao came up with ). And Anshi believes that the former emperor, traumatized by being graped by her, ended up trapping himself in that room for years to separate himself from anyone. She was upset that he used her and then discarded her, and she thought that graping him would "leave a mark" on him indefinitely, similar to the scar mark she has from having her belly open to birth the current emperor. In a way, she got her wish since she got stuck in his mind. What Anshi was frustrated about in the end, was that she thought that she still didn't impact him, and that his drawing was a drawing of his mother who kept manipulating him, and had so much more power than her, that the mother was still called EMPRESS and not EMPRESS dowager, even though Anshi birthed a male heir already. What she didn't know until jinshi pointed it out (With the yellow dress theory), is that in his final moments, the former emperor DID remember her, and he drew her FONDLY in a field of flowers surrounded by "flower girls", implying that even though she scared him and traumatized him, she still was on his mind but he just was too scared of her because she was an adult, and he was traumatized of adult women (again, because of his mother being the boogey woman in his life, i think). Dont take me wrong, he's a monster that preyed on little girls, but he's also the outcome of his surroundings: all his male siblings died and he was forced to become the emperor, the last male heir and he had no interest in procreating with women, so they pushed him towards younger girls and ENABLED him for the only reason of propagating the bloodline of royalty as he was the last male heir. His entire life was telegraphed by his mother, he was the outcome of her meddling with his life, and he went from being a victim of his mental issues to becoming a monster that was enabled and allowed to continue being a creep because he was the emperor and they enabled him to become the PDF that he became. I think in his mind he was forced to "grow up" fast, while unprepared, and his mental remained to be a young child scared of adult women (probably because he was afraid of his mother). Don't forget that in the episode with the colorful doors, we found out that all the past siblings of the former emperor died from a sickness (probably from inbreeding + some sickness that affected their low immunity system), and he was the sole survivor... In fact, the prevailing theory is that he didn't get sick BECAUSE he was always isolated by his mother from the others... There's even theories that his own mother used to also abuse him and grape him because of his looks, and that might be the reason why he's afraid of adult women, because they remind him of his own abuse by his mother... But basically because he was isolated and confined, he didn't get sick, and became the only male heir and he was NOT prepared to inherit the throne... He never thought he'd be the emperor and he wasn't ready for it, and he was forced to grow up too fast while retaining the mental capacities of a child that was abused and tormented: a child that never got to follow his own dreams and play with his "favorite toys" (painting etc) because he had to be the emperor, and all the BS that comes with it... like a pawn. And maybe that's why jinshi was was forced to be trained to be more adult early on by hiding his favorite toys so that he learns to not hyperfixate on something he wants vs the "betterment of the palace". And that's also a nod that Anshi said to jinshi at the end : you better hide your favorites (maomao) or else someone will take them away from you (similar to his toys as a kid), implying that he needs to be more careful with hiding his feelings to maomao (which his mother figure Anshi picked up on), or else someone might take her from him to manipulate or hurt him. Dont forget, again, reminder: the perspective on who jinshi is, that's told from the perspective of the characters, not from a "Factual" base. So if anshi believes she's his mother, she believes it. She calls him a child of immorality because in her mind, putting aside the Ahduo situation/theory, she thinks she's his mother, and because of that, she thinks that he was born out of the grape scene that she committed on the former emperor. Whether jinshi is the brother of the current emperor or the son of the emperor, he would look like Anshi and the former Emperor because he'd be either their son or their grandson. But in the eyes of anshi, she's the one that raised him even if the theory that Ahduo is his real mother, so in her mind, she's "been watching him for a long time", because she raised him and tought him to be better than the former emperor ESPECIALLY since he looked a lot like him... subconsciously. Today in this episode, it's the first time she got remember that he looks like the man that tormented her and that she tormented in return... and when she looked at him finally, while still seeing herself as the mother that raised him, it became clear to her than Jinshi may look like the former emperor, but he's far from being the same as him, and she loved jinshi regardless of her past transgressions, no matter what, and that's why she gave him the little wink and nod that "hey, u're my son no matter what, hide your favorite toys, silly bbbbaka boy!" People who might have called the former emperor a bad person, i dont really think it's a spoiler because they might have been referring to the fact that the concubine Lishu was made as his concubine first (when she was only ~9-10 years old), so they called him a bad person because of hte implication of pedophilia. We now know that he DID screw up, he was a bad person from the perspective of society, but we also know that he's the outcome of his surroundings and he was sick and instead of being treated and helped, he was instead enabled and allowed and even PUSHED (by political parties and his mother) to abuse young girls purely for the sake of creating a male heir... He basically was treated as a pitrie dish, just to create a male spawn and his own emotions and mental and health didn't matter to anyone, not even his passion for painting etc: he was just a pawn made to spawn more male pawns, and he became a monster because of it. --- There's a reference to ANOTHER baby that was alleged to be fathered by the former emperor, but there was a scandal that maybe it was a doctor who slept with a concubine (unconfirmed now), and they say that the daughter of the former emperor, because she was not male heir, was discarded and thrown out of the rear palace (unlike Anshi's baby who became the current male emperor and was "recognized" by the emperess mothee)..., meanwhile the concubine mother of the "banished" female baby was trapped in the rear palace and unable to leave forever, almost like a punishment for being part of the conspiracy. That's also around the time, because of the potential implication of a doctor that slept with a concubine (whether it's true or not, or if it's to hide that the former emperor graped a young girl or not at first, it's not said), and because of that scandal, almost like someone hiding things under a rug, they started to castrate doctors almost like they're doubling down on that conspiracy theory.