THE APOTHECARY DIARIES - Ep. 1x2 REACTION!!
Added 2025-09-18 15:52:46 +0000 UTCSomebody please tell Jinshi that his seduction won’t work on Maomao 🤣 She’s way too busy being devoted to her true first love… POISON 💀
NOTE: There was so much to absorb in the first episode, we wanted to give it the attention it deserved. We’ll aim to bring you 2 episodes next week!
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Comments
Hey J&J, When you guys said, “What is stopping a Eunuch from developing feelings or having a romantic non sexual relationship with a concubine?” I giggled a little, I’m not going to lie. Not that it can’t happen, but the thing that would stop this is fear. The fear of death (most likely) or of expulsion from the palace, if found out. It would be seen as an eunuch who is insolently messing with the emperor's woman. And the woman would forever be marked as unfaithful. This has nothing to do with the story. This is to answer the heir question you had. The answer is tricky because it depends on the period piece you are reading. If a commoner, servant, slave, or someone who is “low-ranking” gives birth to a healthy son, that child could become the heir. However, the emperor’s council would definitely push for the child to be an “honorary prince”, a prince in name only, not the crown prince, the official heir. They would do this to make time for the high-ranked concubines to have a son so that their child could be the actual heir. As for the mother, again, the council would push back on her being the Empress, especially if she doesn’t benefit the Emperor, despite the feelings of the Emperor himself (of course, he can override this, but for simplicity's sake, I will stick with this prompt). The reasoning would be “feelings come and go,” so it wouldn’t be “proper” to make her Empress based on feelings. Instead, if the child and mother are not secretly killed due to politics, a high-ranked concubine would adopt the son [of the low-ranking individual] as her own, the child would be “hers,” giving her the empress position and the child the crown prince position officially at least until she has her own child. But the relation between the prince and his birth mother would most likely be severed by separation permanently. The politics behind these actions are always complicated and vary per dynasty and time period in which they take place. And yes, the heir position is only available to a son, typically firstborn, if not the most qualified son, but this leads us to a different conversation. So I will stop here. I hoped this helped a little. Returning to the story, this is a time period when scientific and medical reasoning are not commonly used or available, unless the individual has a high-ranking position to access the knowledge or has relevant experience. For example, Maomao has experience as an apothecary. Not that it doesn’t exist, but it's not like today's society, where specific medical and scientific laws or theories are common knowledge. There will be a lot of cases where characters look at, for example, “poisoning” at face value. Unless you were an apothecary or florist, you wouldn’t consider scientific topics like botany (the poisoning of the soldiers) as a possible cause for being poisoned. Unexplained phenomena are also looked at as curses or paranormal activity. (Example: we know that COVID was a virus that traveled via airborne and droplets. So we wore masks as protection. In TAD, the average individual would say it is a curse.) Jinshi is 23. Poison testers are expendable. If the person is poisoned, it would be known that the food was tampered with. As for the poisoned individual, it is seen as a “damn, that’s crazy” situation, but they would not be the priority. The priority would be investigating who poisoned the food. Sure, if they can be saved, an attempt would be made. But if they die, they die, and another person would be picked as the poison tester as soon as possible. It is a ruthless job. Thank you for the reaction. I can't wait for the next one. Byeeeeee
Nia (N-Eye-Ah)
2025-09-23 00:11:46 +0000 UTCHello! I am glad you’re very thorough and take time to understand the details, because it’s important as the story progresses. For instance, please remember the young officer in 33:01 and the young lady at 33:10. Trust me!!! ✌🏼 Anyway, as many have said, MaoMao is such a fascinating lead. In the coming episodes, you will see how intelligent, witty, and sharp she is. Her unconventional problem-solving skills make her a refreshing character. And her interactions with Jinshi is always entertaining (even Lady Gyokuyou thinks so too). 🫰🏼💜
LouCas27
2025-09-19 10:07:02 +0000 UTC
