Is your argument really that owning a favour to a friend is the same as being a vassal to somebody?? You really believe that? Because that argument is so obviously false I am not even sure where I should get started.
Ah oversimplification, my old nemesis.
Your attempts to cull nuance from a discussion for the sake of strawmanning into a binary choice between loaded rhetorical choices shall never come to an end, shall they?
There is an obvious difference in relationships between friends and the one of a vassal and a lord, in the first the participants are roughly equal while in the second case there is an obvious hierarchy. That is very significant difference. A vassalage is like owning not one favour to a friend but owning endless favours to your lord and having only a limited if any possibility of saying no. It means that it is the lord that leads, saying which "factions"/people to support and which to hinder
Only if you view it in a vacuum. For the sake of politics, you may be right, but we aren't doing shit for the sake of politics save as a concern for the fallout for any such actions we may take. In terms of fallout, by the way, mitigating that aspect of restricting our freedom is heavily mitigated by having Cai and her own power structure in our favor. Moreover, she's a person who repays loyalty with loyalty by all appearances.
Ergo, even if Qi fucks up, Cai will be very likely to have her back for the sake of saving face if nothing else.
Because, in the chinese sense, the actions of ones subordinates reflect the actions of their lord. Which is where face comes into play. So unless Cai keeps us heavily restricted, tyrannically so, then your described scenario isn't capable of occurring. No, far more likely is that Cai will be called in to clean up our messes and follow our own lead simply to avoid losing face for risking the appearance of biting off more than she can chew.
And that is, once again, ignoring the fact that Cai
actually happens to be eager to win over Qi, which itself implies a strong personal favoring of her on Cai's part. Making your hypothetical scenario of her constantly pulling rank on us completely unlikely at the very best.
If you wish to discuss politics with me, then I'm all ears. I'm quite well equipped for that discussion, I assure you.
I mean the few quasi-vassal relationships we have seen so far don't exactly suggest much room to make your own decisions - your lord leaves the conference/alliance, you leave too no question asked or order needed. Your lord makes an enemy, that somebody is no your enemy to and if you can you are supposed to hurt them. Hell, even the relationship between Han Jian and Fan Yu, which are supposed to be more like allies than anything else, makes it pretty clear that saying no to your boss isn't exactly done.
How much of Han Jian's personal situation is the result of his own anguish over having to do his best for the sake of those vassals, though?
If things were that straight forward, and there was no give and take, then Fan Yu would be alone and Xiulan would have gotten to be
with the man that she wanted.
That apparently
liked her back?
If Cai is invested in Qi's friends (which by all appearances she seems to at least be on the surface at this time) then someone who takes the idea of face and being a perfect leader as seriously as she does will also do her best to fulfill those kinds of expectations and responsibilities. But let's go ahead and set that oversimplification aside once again. You're looking things in a vacuum, which is fine if you're being academic, but ignoring relevant context makes for poor judgement
And all taht will be made worse by the fact that we are supposed not just some vassal but one of the "inner" circle of Cai, which means we would be even more tightly bond to her than normal.
That is in my opinion a massive reduction in freedom, be it responsibility or agency.
Let's ignore the fear-mongering.
And the explanation of consequences for freedom of action vs freedom of responsibility you brushed over for the sake of said fear mongering.
Fundamentally, on the mechanics side of things, taking a major action for the sake of acting on Cai's orders is no different from taking a major action for the sake of helping out a friend of ours.
Having CRX in our corner, in fact, actually makes that kind of simplification entirely possible for us to view those decisions under! Because Vassalage to CRX means that we have the fallout to those independent actions covered on the political side of things
purely by virtue of them having to get past Cai in order to reach us in the first place.
If you want to become a wandering hobo that's ultimately fine, but keep in mind that that is the path which Yu Sing is ultimately pursuing.
And if that's how you want Qi to develop as a character that's also perfectly fine.
But let's not pretend that a spade isn't a spade. Fair?
