Depending on how much of what we and everyone else see of her is an act, caring for someone's power and skill and how they can be useful to her may be as close as she's capable of getting to caring about that person. Her having serious mental/emotional problems is not unlikely from what we know of her background, and it's one of the ways to take Six's comment about an unfinished doll not understanding.
It's not actually a secret that Shenhua is a
terrible, terrible person, who did horrible things in the interest of creating her perfect heir.
That doesn't mean that Renxiang is a lost cause, just that actually toeing that line to help her become something Good and Great rather than a doll that can only do what its maker permitted is going to require a hell of a lot of time and effort--as is doing so in a way that Shenhua won't decide is a lost cause and just start fresh. More effort than the flighty Dreaming Moon and their emanations can really muster, so they just default to giving the stink eye.
Part of why I wanted to go this route was to
actually try to do this. Because holy hell, Renxiang needs friends badly, even if she doesn't know what that is outside of an academic understanding. I'd feel guilty as hell to leave her to her own devices--and Guangli alone can't help carry all that weight.
That aside though, I'm starting to get the idea of what happened with the Weilu--we already know that they're really popular among the Moon and Sun spirits--especially the Dreaming Moon--and we know that they were cast down in the first place because they basically ignored Ogodei's invasion. I'm starting to get the feeling that what happened to the Weilu is precisely what happens when an Ancient Clan truly becomes more spirit then man--they become detached from the world at large, and hit a sort of echo chamber of themselves--and the themes they favored were ones of rampant life and revelry. In short, they collapsed due to their own hedonism, and didn't even notice the sky caving in until it was too late.
But their vassals were used to the relatively light touch, which led to corruption and a general undercurrent of hedonism--so Shenhua taking charge was like dropping a god damn depth charge into a bathtub. No
wonder she basically secured her throne on an ocean of blood, and the only surviving Weilu Conservatives were far enough on the fringes that they didn't drink all the kool-aid--though the Meng clan deciding to give up what was apparently cordial relations with the Bai Clan in favor of Sun Shao might be a desperate attempt to
get the fuck out before Shenhua chokes them out for being troublemakers who aren't willing to leave their personal feelings at home when it comes to politicking.
