Reborn After Widowhood Chapter 168 Discussion

Rating: 3.8

Summary: Princess Hua Yang was married to a man she disdained for being unrefined, until he died on the battlefield four years after marriage. Widowed but unwilling to remarry, Hua Yang can't help but miss the man she loathed and his absence highlights his few good qualities in her memory for the next three years. Suddenly, her esteemed father-in-law, the Chief Minister, dies and shockingly, her in-laws are accused of heinous crimes. Her younger brother, the new emperor, sentences them to exile and ruins their family despite her pleas. Collapsing from fever and sorrow, Hua Yang wakes up back in time to the first few months of her marriage and decides to live differently this time. She will try to look for her husband's hidden and sparing good qualities and safeguard her in-laws. As she tries to compromise with her husband, however, she finds that perhaps as loathsome as he is, he might not be that bad!

Why I'm Considering Dropping:

I wanted to write the review now while it's still fresh in my mind. I may not choose to continue reading this novel and here's why:

I did end up reading a lot more than chapter 37. I'm currently on Chapter 168 but I am considering dropping it again for lagging on.

The ML. A lot of people here seem to really like the ML but I can't help but see him as rather childish. To be fair, MC isn't particularly mature when it comes to him either. That being said, he is still fairly respectful of her boundaries and emotions even if he likes to tease her.

My issue with him comes from the fact that he is very much a brat. ML was raised in a family with only two generations of officials, but both his father and brothers are very intelligent and capable so their family has two first rank scholars and one third rank scholar from the imperial exam. His father is the Crown Prince's tutor and one of the Emperor's most trusted and respected officials. ML is the youngest in his family and growing up, all he heard was that he had to be like his father or brothers. Petulant and enraged, he decides to give up studying literature or sitting for the imperial exams in order to become a martial artist. Luckily, he's very talented in martial arts. Unfortunately, his family does not respect him for his skills. His father, a very strict person, is always accusatory or standoffish with him. He reacts to this by purposefully agitating his father further.

I don't understand how I'm supposed to take him seriously. Man got jealous and angry that MC's eunuch was good looking. He is also constantly picking fights with his family and lusting after MC. It's funny in a way, and it's not like I dislike the ML, but he's not the ML I want to read about.

I ended up liking ML more and more later on. Especially when he and the MC start to really care for each other. The way he cares about her but also respects her and is willing to go along with her random plans. I still think he's immature, but it's an affected immaturity and recklessness. He's very proud and stubborn but bends easily for her which is cute.

His Family: They might just deserve the award for crappiest family. The entire family dislikes and looks down on him. His father treats him as a disgrace and troublemaker; his eldest brother sees him as an unreliable brat, his other brother sees him as an idiot and potential scapegoat. Only his mother is any kind of good to him.

His family isn't that bad. In fact, his relationship with his eldest brother, mother, and niblings are very sweet. I was laughing so hard at how his brother sussed out information from him. His mother remains the person who cares about him the most in the family but that's not so strange. His father still irritates me though. I don't care how much of an old fox he is or how he understands their motives, if you can react to your child getting stabbed so logically, I'm suspicious of how much you actually care about this child.

There's this whole thing about how his father is such as good Chief Minister that MC really respects him, causing friction with her husband, but I fail to see the hype. He's smart and we are told that he is capable, but he is pedantic and unfair. His discrimination against his youngest son is harsh and so awful. He's also almost sycophantic towards MC. The author may intentionally do this in order to allow the reader to pity ML, but ML's attitude is also so annoying that I'm just speechless and irritated.

To be fair, the novel actually continuously addresses these flaws in the father. There are some pretty great parts where MC or ML are lecturing the father until he has to accept it!

MC. I don't have any major issue with MC except that she's also rather silly and kind of annoying. MC disdains ML because ML is a rough guy who lacks hygiene, doesn't care much about his reputation, and very obviously lusts after her. This is all so so valid, especially the hygiene issue! That being said, when she's decided to live with him well this life, she should try to understand him and treat him seriously as her consort rather than continuing to sigh over his mannerisms and attitude in comparison to his siblings and father.

Fundamentally, this is a compatibility issue. Someone else pointed out that this novel exposes some of the pitfalls of falling in love/lust at first sight, namely that you don't actually know or respect the other person. Even then, the incompatibility of the leads is too much for my comfort. ML is, put nicely, down to earth, determined, decisive, and devoted. Put rudely, he's too rough, too stubborn, too impulsive, and too obsessed. With an MC who is proud, noble, wise, and authoritative, or too arrogant, too stuck-up, too know-it-all, and too bossy. On top of that, they keep directly triggering each other because his mannerisms when drinking or s*x trigger her trauma from watching her father r*pe someone and her preference for self-contained, scholarly people triggers his lifelong issues with his family's pressure.

What's more annoying is that it doesn't make sense how they ended up together. The novel tells us that they were arranged by the Empress, MC's mother, and the Emperor. It's stated that it may be an attempt to make sure that her father-in-law, a formidable minister, is on her brother's (Crown Prince) side. This doesn't make sense because (1) her brother's teacher is her father-in-law, which in ancient China is a very powerful connection, (2) her father-in-law is a loyalist, (3) her husband is her father-in-law's least favorite son, and (4) MC is supposed to be the most favored and beloved princess. It makes no sense that the Empress and Emperor agreed to marry off their most favored princess to the least liked and rough-mannered son of a family already loyal to them, especially when they are not a military or aristocratic family.

Again, this is addressed within the novel too. A running issue is that everyone tells ML that he's lucky that his father is so powerful or lucky that he's good looking because otherwise, there's no way he's worthy of marrying MC. It's actually pretty interesting because it is part of a larger theme in the novel where we can flip the script of typical novels where the one in power is the ML and the person who is "lucky" is the MC.

This is why I'm probably going to DNF here. Except I didn't. Eventually I did really like the relationship between the leads. It grew to become very sweet and loving. BUT, the novel gets really lagging after the Emperor dies. It's just dragging on. MC is trying to destroy the 7 major crimes that the FIL was labeled with after death, and it's just going on and on. It would be better if there had been a complete list of this crimes somewhere but it only comes up when the Princess MC is actually dealing with one.