Bao Qian's in the odd situation where his biggest liability in this is kind of... the Bao?
Not in the pervasive internal rich people alienation sense, seen in both him and Qingling albeit in different ways. That's effectively a charm point. Makes him cute and vulnerable.
It's that the Bao are good at what they do and what they do is secure themselves more of the pie. In the culture of the empire, marriage is a legal and business arrangement between clans. What the individual partners manage to get out of it in terms of emotional fulfilment is almost their own business, besides the point. The Bao are really good at business, though. The main business offering the Ling can make is a chunk of its future- the potential and room for growth it has in the south.
There's real reason to be cautious in trading that away. And of course, Bao Qian's more independent approach to wealth generation is laudable on an individual level, but it means he's distanced from the internal levers of his clan's politics. His capacity to navigate a good deal is diminished. Not eliminated, far from that, he's got a solid head on his shoulders. The tldr of it is that the clan tensions that make him a sympathetic and interesting character also makes joining fortunes with the Bao daunting, and doing it in a way we would find palatable would mean leaving a lot of the Bao's on-paper offerings on the table, so to speak.
Now, I think this is going to be true to some extent of any clan. Clans are just like that. But Bao Qian's case stands out in terms of contradictions and cross-interests, I think. Like, if we married Meng Dan, the thing they'd want would be his faction wanting us to do cultural things we're already doing, and our reward would be closer ties to, and support from, a sympathetic cultural faction. That's pretty clean, for all I'm sure there'd be complications. Bao Qian, at least on current read, brings a whole lot of north-south control/independence/etc narratives to the table, in a prospective marriage. Not sure how fun that'd be.
Like, Bao Qian can always more or less cut off the Bao. That would be a valid resolution and/or thrust to that narrative! And we'd still have him, who is a solid and competent dude. Buuut, it's hard to be enthusiastic about a marriage that involves putting up barriers against the donor clan, rather than getting stuff from them. And getting stuff from the Bao on an institutional level seems like it'd be a pricey purchase, in terms of some of the things we value most, like autonomy and choice.
It's a conundrum.
