To be fair, there aren't many clear-cut villains in this series, but even so, when you share the same setting as a notorious pedophile and serial rapist, and even that person comes off as more humanized in comparison, you know you're pretty awful.
Greetings fellow users, and since the year is very young, Happy New Year! I hope it ends up being a joyful, healthy, safe and productive one for as many of you as possible. I’m here with another Pure Evil proposal about a character that only recently had a page made for them here and is one I happen to be familiar with. While I’m at it, I think it’s relevant to point out that when I got into this series (which, by the way, is really well done to the extent it’s become one of my current favorite shows, and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s even slightly interested in the genre it falls into and what it has to offer), it was very much not the type that I was expecting to find a potential candidate from; after all, it’s a historical drama that largely doesn’t involve typical, clear-cut clashes between good and evil characters. Likewise, most of the few characters from it that can reasonably be classified as villains are the sorts that are pretty complex and nuanced in terms of their characterization, motivations and the circumstances that led to them being the way they are. However, in the second season of the anime, which apparently covers volumes 3 and 4 of the light novels it’s based on, a notable exception to this gradually emerged, especially by the second half to final quarter of it, and now that it just so happens that character has a page here, I thought it would be an appropriate time to make a case for why I think they’re a solid candidate for the wiki’s most popular and subjective classification, especially since, while the series itself is far from over, this character’s part seems to be very much concluded, meaning not much should change moving forward. Special thanks/acknowledgement goes to fellow anime fan AkaStve for making said page.
What’s the work?
The Apothecary Diaries is a series of light novels written by Natsu Hyuga that has received two manga adaptations, and most notably, an anime television series that debuted in fall 2023 and already consists of two seasons with a total of 48 episodes that cover the first four novels. Due to its success and popularity, it’s already confirmed to have a third season and movie greenlit for late 2026.
Setting and premise-wise, the series takes places in the fictional country of Li, which is apparently based on Imperial China during the Tang Dynasty, and follows Maomao, a young girl who works alongside her adoptive father in the red-light district of the country’s capital city as an apothecary, using her medical expertise to provide services to various brothels and their courtesans, particularly the local Verdigris House where she was born and raised. One day, however, she’s kidnapped by bandits on her way back from an errand and sold off as a servant girl to none other than the Imperial Palace. While she initially plans to keep her head down until her two years of service have expired, she quickly discovers that the palace’s high-ranking consorts and their infant children are suffering poor health, which she quickly deduces is being caused by face powder with toxic ingredients using her intelligence and expertise. While Maomao’s outwardly a rather snarky, unemotive person who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, she’s also the type with a strong sense of justice who can’t idly stand by when she observes problems she can do something about, so she discreetly leaves a note to the consorts to stop using the face powder. Unfortunately for her, this gets noticed by Jinshi, a high-ranking eunuch who is tasked with overseeing all of the operations in the Rear Palace, from the Emperor’s high consorts and their ladies-in-waiting all the way down to the servant girls and eunuchs (though as we learn over the course of the series, there’s much more to him than that). Much to her surprise though, she’s commended rather than punished for her actions, and not only does Jinshi assign her as a lady-in-waiting and food taster to Gyokuyou, one of the aforementioned four high-ranking consorts, he takes her under his wing to help solve various local mysteries that pop up in the palace, which she has a knack for solving due to her intuitive mind and medical knowledge. From there on, she tries to help out whenever she’s called upon while also trying not to step too far out of line for someone in her low-ranking position.
Naturally, among the various mysteries that crop up, Maomao stumbles upon various political schemes and conspiracies being plotted by various disgruntled parties, from single individuals to entire groups, and as the second season progresses, the largest and perhaps most dangerous conspiracy yet, which has been the root cause of many of the recent incidents to date, begins to take shape. And it just so happens the main instigator behind it all is the topic of this post.
Who is she and what does she do?
Lady Shenmei, or just Shenmei for short, is the main antagonist of the series’ second season, and arguably even the overarching one prior to that. Originally, during the time of the former Emperor’s reign, she was the daughter of the head of the Shi Clan and was poised to be married to a man named Shishou. However, before this could happen, she was brought into the Imperial Palace as a high-ranking consort, and despite Shishou clearly being saddened by it, she quickly and unashamedly broke off her arrangement with him since the idea of potentially becoming the Empress was far more appealing to her. Little did she know, however, that she was actually sent there as a political hostage so that the Empress Regnant, the former Emperor’s mother who was the one really calling the shots at the time due to the Emperor not being qualified at all for his position, could prevent the Shi Clan from continuing its dealings in slavery. Not only that, but since the former Emperor was a pedophile who was only interested in young girls and has outright afraid of older women, she never had a real chance at ever becoming Empress. To add insult to injury, the former Emperor’s first victim was her own-lady-in-waiting, Taiho, a distant relative of only 10 years old at the time, who she disowned after she got impregnated and had a child. Much to her disdain, this caused her to be mocked by other concubines, which was very humiliating to someone as prideful and arrogant as she was. Despite Shishou going to the trouble of creating a secret passage to sneak into the palace and offering her to escape with him not too long into her stay and her initially being tempted to join him, she quickly remembered the words of the other concubines, let her pride get the best of her and angrily accused him of insulting her by even offering that to her and shot him down.
After a couple of decades however, she was released and returned to the Shi Clan when Shishou managed to curry the Emperor’s favor by fulfilling his request to take Taihou’s daughter as his wife when she came of age, who had been exiled from the palace alongside a court physician who was framed as the one who impregnated Taihou to avoid scandal, which he felt remorse for. Anyway, due to fulfilling this promise, allowing him to visit her every so often and even baring a daughter with her with the name Shisui, he convinced him to release Shenmei as a way of returning the favor. However, by the time she had gotten back, her experiences had warped her into a very cruel and outright sadistic psychopath with a need to dominate everyone around her and a burning desire for vengeance. First off, she immediately assumed Shishou wasn’t faithful to her by taking on a different wife (even though practically everything he did, including that, was for her sake), quickly kicked Taihou’s daughter and Shisui out of the house and made them servants. Shortly after that, she caused the death of Taihou’s daughter either directly by personally beating her to death, or indirectly by having someone else do it on her orders. She would then go on to treat Shisui horrendously, whose name she changed to Suirei since she didn’t think she was worthy of her original name, frequently abusing her both physically and psychologically out of sheer hatred for her very existence. This included at least occasionally putting her in the “taibon”, an enclosed space with venomous insects and snakes, which led to Suirei having a crippling phobia of snakes and freaking out at the mere sight of him all the way through to the present day.
Set on revenge against the Imperial Family for causing her humiliation, she took control of the entire clan and ousted anyone who had the sensibility or bravery to not go along with what she wanted, leaving only those who were sycophantically loyal and/or less competent. In the meantime, while she still resented Shishou due to insisting on believing he never loved her despite so much evidence to the contrary, she still had a daughter with him solely because he was from the same bloodline as the later Mother Royal, which she figured she could use to her advantage. Naming her daughter Loulan, she quickly dressed her up in heavy makeup since she was young and forced her to act just like her so she could eventually use her as a tool for her revenge when she grew up. She valued her so little outside of this that whenever she encountered her while she wasn’t in makeup and fancy clothing, she didn’t even recognize her, confused her for a servant girl and abused her just like she would any actual servant, such as striking her with her fan or pouring boiling water on her hands for any mistake.
Another particularly sick hobby Shenmei developed is that she would take women from her clan, many of whom were married and/or had children, and would give them drugs that lowered their inhibitions to the extent that they’d engage in sexual activity with male prostitutes. She would do this to host hedonistic orgies and satiate her satisfaction in watching other respectable women fall from grace the way she felt she did in the Rear Palace. Out of sheer pettiness, she also regularly hosted said orgies right next to Shishou’s room so he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Focusing more on events that happen during the present tense of the series, Shenmei plots her revenge against the Imperial Family by partnering with an imperial envoy named Ayla, who uses her connections to discreetly provide her and the Shi Clan with feifa guns, which members of her clans created workshops around to improve in an attempt to build up the means to give them the necessary firepower to stage a rebellion against the capital per her wishes. In the meantime, now that Loulan was of age, she had her sent to the Rear Palace (this happens around the halfway mark of the first season well before she first appears onscreen) to become the current Emperor’s newest high-ranking consort, taking advantage of the opening created by another consort, Ah-Duo’s, recent departure. During this time, she would occasionally sneak out in more casual attire as a servant girl named Shisui (which was obviously based on Suirei’s original name) and befriend Maomao and her other friend Xiaolan among other things. However, when she participates in a gathering of court ladies who are telling ghost stories, she tells a story that strongly hinted at what Shenmei wanted her to eventually do; bare a child with him and then murder him in some manner to take over the throne as the new Mother Royal.
Meanwhile, around the same time Loulan was placed in the Rear Palace, Shenmei sent out Suirei, whom she’s bullied into obeying her without question under threat of further abuse, along with some other Shi Clan members to carry out various incidents, such as killing Master Kounen by putting excessive salt (which he lost the ability to taste) into his drink, causing a warehouse manager on the Board of Rites to fall ill from food poisoning, set fire to a warehouse and steal some ceremonial tools from the one next to it during the commotion. All of this is carried out so her servants can rig a ceremony so that Jinshi, who performs in it, will be crushed to death by a heavy ornament in a manner made to look like a freak accident. This is because, while it’s only known to a select few people close to him, Jinshi is not just a mere high-ranking eunuch, but secretly the Emperor’s brother, and he resembles the late Emperor when he was young at that, making him a particularly big target of her hatred. Thankfully, he was narrowly saved by Maomao when she did an investigation, discovered the connection between all those incidents and their intended purpose and interrupted the ceremony to push him out of the way just in time. Later, she made another attempt to assassinate Jinshi when he was invited on a hunting trip by Shishou in the Northern Province by sending out several of her men with the improved feifa guns. Thankfully, when they tried to kill him while he was alone with Maomao, he got both her and himself to safety, and subsequently, with Maomao and Lihaku’s help, was able to have them caught and arrested.
After Maomao is later kidnapped by Suirei along with Shishui, who she quickly deduces is Loulan and that she and Suirei are stepsisters, and brought by them to a village in the Northern Province, Shenmei finally makes her onscreen debut when she catches Maomao and a boy from the village named Kyou-u in an old storehouse, which acted as a spot for both Suirei to conduct experiments and a feifa assembly workshop. Holding the two of them at sword point, she intends to punish them severely even after being convinced that they were merely playing around, expressing the desire to have Maomao caned 100 times, and when Suirei tries to speak up on their behalf on two separate occasions, she quickly strikes her each time, demonstrating her casual abuse towards her. However, Loulan manages to get Maomao out of it by convincing Shenmei that she’s the new apothecary that can create an immortality potion, with it then being indicated Shenmei had the last apothecary killed for their failure to make one. Shenmei agrees to the arrangement and brings Maomao to the Shi Clan’s main stronghold, which is located at the base of a cliff a little further north. There, Maomao is confined to a room to get working on a potion that will restore Shenmei’s youth, during which she also pieces together the Shi Clan’s intent to start a war with the Imperial Family.
A little later, Kyou-u makes a well-intentioned, but ill-conceived attempt to help Maomao escape, but is quickly caught by the guard. While Suirei comes along and convinces the guard that the best thing to do is drop the matter for the sake of everyone involved, unfortunately, Shenmei comes along right then and questions why Maomao is out of her room. When Suirei tries to convince her Kyou-u was just playing around with the guard, she’s still intent on giving him a beating despite him only being a kid. Making the situation even more unnerving is that Kyou-u’s mother is bearing witness to the whole thing, having just accompanied Shenmei out of one of her aforementioned orgies, but due to having her drugs in her system, she just watches with passive stoicism while her son is threatened. Shenmei then concludes that someone created an issue where there was none and uses this as an excuse to also plan to have the guard watching Maomao put in the water chamber to freeze. Maomao eventually becomes silently infuriated since it’s apparent that Shenmei doesn’t even care what really happened; she’s just looking for an excuse to make someone suffer. Therefore, she turns her attention and rage on her by first calling her a “crazy old hag” then lying that she instructed Kyou-u to distract the guard so she could escape. After striking her a couple of times, Shenmei plans to throw her into the water chamber instead, and when Suirei tries to plead against it, Shenmei berates her, then smashes her fan over her head so hard that it snaps, drawing blood from the forehead. Then, in a rather sickening display, she licks the blood from Suirei’s forehead before spitting it out just to make a point about “how even the noblest of blood can be contaminated when co-mingling with lowly filth”. Loulan then interjects to convince her that they should punish Maomao with the taibon instead, something Shenmei happily agrees to.
Thankfully, only shortly after this whole incident, things quickly start to fall apart for Shenmei; as it turns out, the whole reason Loulan wanted Maomao to be brought there was to give those back at the palace a means to investigate, find out what the Shi Clan was up to and track them down. And it worked; Jinshi did just that, and after receiving pleas from Lakan, Maomao’s father by blood, who is also the palace’s master strategist, using his authority as the Emperor’s younger brother, he has mobilized the Royal Guard to march on the stronghold and quell the clan’s planned insurgence. She just suggested the taibon method so that Maomao would be safe from the coming battle, and Maomao, being Maomao, actually kills most of the insects and snakes she’s trapped with and even finds a way to cook and eat some of them, not to mention Suirei and Kyou-u bribe the same guard that was watching over her and whom she saved from punishment to allow her to escape. Meanwhile, Loulan further sabotages her mother’s plans by going to the gunpowder factory in the stronghold’s basement, instructing all the workers to leave due to the approaching army and subsequently blowing it up. To further cement their imminent defeat, under Lakan’s instructions, the army triggers an avalanche to bury their armory. All the while, Shenmei is carelessly enjoying one of her orgies and only notices that they’re under attack when she hears the explosion that set off the avalanche. At that point, Loulan comes in to reveal to her what’s going on, as well as rescues Suirei, who Shenmei had tied up and stuffed inside a cupboard.
With the Shi Clan vastly outnumbered and utterly unprepared for the attack, Shenmei’s forces are quickly and easily overwhelmed, with the army dispatching any that fight back and arresting the rest. After Jinshi storms the stronghold, Shishou is found and stabbed to death by numerous guards as a result of him playing up responsibility for the assassination attempts on him and the planned insurgence when in reality, due to conflicting loyalty to his wife and the Emperor, he didn’t actively impede her, but did so in small, subtle ways, like gathering all of their forces, or rather, the “rot” their clan had been reduced to, in one place and having them hole up in a strategically poor place where they would have little means to retreat or escape if they were attacked unexpectedly, which is exactly what happened. Loulan then discreetly brings Jinshi alone at gunpoint to where Shenmei and Suirei are holed up. While she supposedly does it to allow Shenmei to have her revenge on him, she then takes the opportunity to give her mother a rather long and scathing explanation of how, in short order, she was only ever a political hostage back when she was asked to be a concubine in the palace so the Empress Regnant could cripple the Shi Clan’s slavery, how she was responsible for her own misery by not escaping the palace with Shishou since that’s what led to him taking on another wife as a favor to the former Emperor so he could get her released, and how Suirei, the “lowly stepdaughter” she’d been abusing all that time, was actually related to the late Emperor since it was he who impregnated Taihou all those years ago, not the court physician who was framed. To further twist the knife, when Shenmei still stubbornly insists Shishou wasn’t trustworthy and only sought power for himself even after being told all this, Loulan calls her out on her hypocrisy since she was the one who took over the Shi Clan upon returning, ousted all the sane and competent members who dissented from her, and reduced it to little more than sycophants who went along with whatever she wanted. She then calls out her stupidity in thinking she ever had a realistic chance of defeating the Royal Guard with her reduced army of yes men. Infuriated, Shenmei strikes Loulan, takes the feifa gun she had on her and threatens her with it, but Loulan still doesn’t back down and only further taunts her by calling her insignificant. Utterly enraged, she tries to shoot Loulan... only for the gun to backfire since, having anticipated she would do that, Loulan had rigged it, riddling her face with shrapnel and causing her to die a pathetic, but well-deserved death.
Mitigating Factors
In the present tense, this is an easy pass since unlike just about every other character in the series, she has no real redeeming qualities at all. The one major point that definitely deserves some in-depth discussion though is her somewhat tragic backstory/Freudian excuse; after all, despite thinking she was being given the chance to be a high-ranking concubine and potentially be the Empress Dowager, she was only ever a political hostage, a detail she was somehow ignorant toward even all the way through to the present until Loulan spelled it out to her, and at the time, she suffered mockery from other concubines since she was passed over for her own lady-in-waiting, and even though she didn’t understand the whole situation, due to the former Emperor’s pedophilia and outright fear of older women, it was apparent she never had any chance of becoming Empress. So to some extent, yes, she was one of many victims of the system in a sense, and it’s not completely unreasonable that she was left angry and bitter.
However, due to multiple factors, I strongly believe this is one of those situations similar to with Lotso from Toy Story 3 where she may not have become evil for no reason, but the exact extent of how bad she became, what she does and aspires to do are not treated as justified or proportionate at all to what she’s suffered. For starters, while she wasn’t nearly as cruel, sadistic and twisted as she became after her experience, even back then, she was shown to be somewhat arrogant and self-centered, being quick to break off her engagement with Shishou and even taunt him for merely being a local lord, and while yes, it’s far from completely unreasonable to want to become Empress Dowager since due to the inherently patriarchal/misogynistic political system, that was one of the only positions where a woman had any real power, she was still quite quick to abandon a pretty favorable arrangement, and more importantly, someone who genuinely loved her for something even better.
Second, a little ways into her stay at the palace, she had a clear opportunity to get out of her situation by escaping with Shishou when he created a secret path to rescue her, and initially, she actually did have a brief moment of real humanity where she was touched by his devotion to her and was tempted to leave with him. However, this only lasted for about 15 to 20 seconds before she remembered the other concubines’ mocking comments about her, allowed her pride to get the best of her and baselessly accused him of expecting to make her return as a failure and laughingstock before slamming the window in his face. And yes, while he later took Taihou’s daughter as his wife, it was solely because the former Emperor asked it, he did it so he could later ask for Shenmei’s release, and the only reason that was even necessary was because she refused to leave with him when she had the chance, forcing him to find another way to eventually free her. In other words, she could have greatly alleviated the length of time she had to endure that and found happiness if she simply accepted that being Empress was never within reach.
In addition to all of that, none of this even comes close to justifying her becoming such a cruel, sadistic and psychopathic bully who abuses everyone around her even decades later and who essentially plots the ruin of the entire country just to avenge her wounded pride. Loulan outright call it petty, and the narrative treats it as such, especially compared to those who suffered even more than her, like those who were assaulted and impregnated by the former Emperor, some of whom became understandably angry and vengeful towards him and the palace, but none of them either took it to her extent or became anywhere near as cruel and sadistic. Making it even less justified is that by the present when she’s trying to actually stage her revenge, the specific individuals who were primarily responsible for her humiliation, the Empress Regnant and the former Emperor, are long gone, meaning the Imperial Family like the current Emperor, Jinshi and most of the rest of the palace personnel, like the current concubines, have practically nothing to do with her vendetta. Ultimately, while her backstory does showcase why she became so bitter and vengeful, it doesn’t even try to use it to justify the extent of her personal cruelty, heinous actions, the scope of her plot or her complete disregard for her clan. She may have been wronged to some extent, but she allowed her damaged pride to consume her so completely that she essentially devoted the rest of her life to throwing what amounts to a decades-long temper tantrum, making everyone around her suffer the way she felt she did and aspiring to ruin the entire country for denying her what she felt was hers.
With that established, she has pretty much no other potential redeeming qualities. She stubbornly insisted on seeing Shishou as someone who’s self-centered, power-hungry and never cared about her, even though it’s clearly the other way around and she never appreciated for a moment that everything he did was for her sake, up to and including trying to protect her by taking the blame for her actions in his final moments. Needless to say, she treated him with nothing but spite and disdain after returning to and taking control of the clan. As for Loulan, she never treated her like a proper daughter or valued her as a person, only ever seeing her as a tool for her revenge. She didn’t even recognize her when she wasn’t in her makeup and fancy clothes, confused her for a servant girl and abused her like she would any other, and when she finally stands up to her and denounces her for her ignorance and all her poor decisions, she even tried to shoot her out of rage. And of course, she never even pretends to have anything but irrational hatred for Suirei solely due to being related to her former lady-in-waiting and the daughter to the woman that Shishou took as her wife, abusing her terribly throughout her whole life. She may have once cared about Shishou to some extent, but in the present, she retains no care for her family or the rest of her clan, who are pretty much all shown to be deathly afraid of her for good reason. She may not have been as competent or powerful as she thought she was, to the extent her plans were pretty much doomed to fail, but she’s still treated as a vile, reprehensible human being who discarded any good traits or possibility of redemption in favor of avenging her wounded pride at all costs.
Heinousness
Admittedly, the heinous standard of The Apothecary Diaries is an interesting case in that it’s neither particularly high nor low. On the one hand, there are some pretty brutal and uncompromising elements to the setting itself; for example, slavery has only recently been abolished by the present tense, and as observed by Maomao, she and various others are all too aware that while it’s been officially outlawed, it still very much exists more discreetly in certain places under different names. Similarly, the whole reason eunuchs exist is because aside from royalty, only men who have been castrated are allowed to serve in the main palace, and likewise, that practice had only just been discontinued thanks to the current Emperor. Additionally, the main reason Maomao wears fake freckles all the time is because, due to living in the red light district and working at a brothel, she constantly lives under the threat of being “dragged into a back alley” if the wrong person spots her and deems her attractive enough, which in turn, implies it’s a similar threat/possibility for many of those who live in that part of the capital in addition to being kidnapped and sold off, which happens to Maomao right at the beginning of the series. Therefore, despite being progressive in some ways, it still doesn’t shy away from the societal problems of that time period, particularly for women.
On the other hand, there are very few characters in the early part of the series that serve as proper antagonists, with even less among them who can reasonably be labelled as villains, and most of the few there are tend to keep their plans and intended victims rather small, like trying to poison a specific person here (Ah-Duo’s head lady-in-waiting, Fengming, targeted Lishu), trying to create an abortion-inducing drug that’s intended for another specific target there (Lihua’s head lady-in-waiting, Shin, targeted Lihua herself), you get the idea. Because of that, very few specific characters contribute to the heinous standard or do much to stand out for the setting. That said, the bar gets noticeably raised a little into the second season when the former Emperor’s pedophilia gets more attention, with it being made quite apparent he assaulted and, to borrow the tactful phrasing the series uses, “deflowered” many, many young girls who were far too young to consent over the years. Likewise, his mother, the Empress Regnant, was also quite a ruthless figure; she thoroughly dominated her son, to the extent she only increased his fear of older women and enabled his behavior by supplying him with all the young, underage concubines he assaulted and “deflowered” (and before you ask, no, I don’t think either of them are potential PE candidates since despite this, they both have multiple mitigating factors that actually hold water, unlike her).
However, even with those two in the equation, I still think Shenmei is easily heinous enough to stand out as equally bad in her own way, and in some ways is even worse than them since she’s far more malicious, sadistic, and ultimately lacking any of their nuances and humanizing traits. For one thing, her personal cruelty and lifelong abuse towards both Suirei and Loulan is completely unmatched so far, to the extent it has a noticeably traumatic effect on each of them in their own respective ways. Similarly, it’s established she regularly beats and otherwise tortures pretty much everyone underneath her for the most minor reasons, whether it’s caning them many times, putting them in the taibon, sticking them in a water chamber when the weather’s freezing, etc., and as shown with Kyou-u, even the clan’s children aren’t safe from this. She’s also got the unique niche of taking women from her clan, many of whom are married and/or have children like Kyou-u’s mother, giving them drugs that lower their inhibitions and has them engage in sexual activity with male prostitutes for the orgies she often hosts. At the very least, this is forced prostitution, and arguably, it could even be considered an indirect example of you-know-what since they’re being essentially forced into sexual acts with people they’re not married to and wouldn’t be doing it if they were in a more proper state of mind. I would say in a sense, it’s just as bad as the former Emperor’s pedophilia and “deflowering” of underage girls, especially since she’d similarly been doing this for a while. Scale-wise, she’s also the most dangerous character in the series yet since, while it was doomed to fail due to her crippling her own clan’s numbers and overall competence, she aspired to wage a full-scale rebellion/war against the capital of Li, and if she had been successful as she intended, the entire country would have essentially been in disarray and ruin due to the deaths of the Imperial Family and their army.
The one other major thing I haven’t touched on yet due to this post being long enough as it is is that, in a way, her incompetence makes her just as bad in a different sense, because as acknowledged by Maomao, her attempted insurgence against the Imperial Family is considered such a severe crime that even if only she and a relatively small number of others were actually in on it, the entire clan will be punished with execution even if the majority of them had nothing to do with it down to the women, children and infants. And even though this happens offscreen, it is explicitly confirmed through dialogue in the aftermath of the whole incident that most of the clan was indeed executed; the only ones who were spared were Kyou-u, a few other children, Suirei due to her imperial lineage and being deemed not entirely responsible for her actions, and anyone who was previously in the clan, but was kicked out by Shenmei. And even then, the only reason Kyou-u, a few other children and the former members were spared was because Loulan had the foresight to both give Kyou-u and the other kids resurrection medicine which made them appear dead only to reawaken later and implore Jinshi in private after Shenmei died to spare both former members and those “who had already died”, with Jinshi being both a moral and reasonable enough person to agree to this and ensure the children’s safety when they woke up. Sure, Shenmei didn’t intend to fail, but it’s still a stretch to assume, as ignorant as she was in some ways, that she was ignorant about something that major and obvious; she probably just didn’t care enough to give it much thought. Therefore, her intended actions were guaranteed to have dire consequences either way; if she succeeded, she would get her wish and the country would be in ruin, or at least severe turmoil, and if she failed, she’d get her entire clan exterminated. In the end, that’s exactly what happened; she dragged her whole clan into her decades-old grudge, many of whom were completely innocent and unaware of her scheming, and got the majority of them senselessly executed all because of her selfishness and injured pride. Because of this considerable combination of uniquely cruel and vile personal acts along with the large-scale damage she intended to inflict and brought down on her own clan, I don’t think she has any issues standing out as sufficiently heinous.
Verdict
For the extensive reasoning I’ve given, yes, I think she’s the one character from this series that can reasonably be considered “pure evil” so far, but as always, it’s up to you. As always, what I care most about is, regardless of your opinion, that you please keep the tone of your vote professional, try to avoid using foul language if possible and respect differing opinions since I always wish to keep these discussions civil and respectful. In the meantime, thank you so much to anyone who took the time to read this all the way through; I know this one is quite long even by my standards, but I really thought it required a thorough analysis due to the combination of the show’s intricate plotting and her admittedly not being quite as clear-cut as other candidates. Best wishes!