We readers tend to make assumptions based on only partial knowledge. It should be noted that none of her reborn family was actually privy to the inner workings of Ning Nuan’s marriage with An Wang. Her parents both died before Ning Nuan, and her brother was oblivious to most things. We never actually know if Ning Nuan did actually suffer in her marriage, and given that so many novels in this genre make a point of the fact that the ML/Prince/whathaveyou use a false front to foil outside attacks - they make it appear as if they hate the ones they love and love the ones they hate, or in specific terms they might accept the women offered them into their fu to protect their wife - there is a high probability that An Wang and Ning Nuan actually had a good relationship. Then too, we look at a “past life” as determining the character and behavior of characters like the ML or the MC’s family, while fully accepting that the MC changes her entire character after a “rebirth.” This story shows us how one little change (like Jiang Shi’s personality shift makes everyone and everything else change from any previous timeline. People are inherently adaptable, no one is entirely immutable. So someone whose goals might have been in conflict with the MC might be completely aligned with them in a reborn timeline. It’s not consistent with human nature to expect the same result from different situations - kind of the opposite of the definition of insanity being repeating the same thing but expecting the same result. It’s reasonable to dislike the way a character behaves but assuming the character will be exactly the same shows a reader bias and author’s lack of skill. Honestly, it would be boring to read. Seeing character responses to change is more interesting to me - and as a Buddhist, it speaks to me about the meaning of karma (real karma, not action-consequence but the spiritual concept of working toward enlightenment by working through one’s accumulated actions through multiple incarnations) and rebirth. Read more Read more So going back to the monk’s warning, does it actually have meaning other than challenging An Wang’s perception that he can get what he wants easily? I agree, he is pretty naïve, but his real mother died when he was young and he was raised by another of the emperor’s women in the palace. Who knows how many false realities he was indoctrinated with? Naïvety often develops because one is raised with the impression of a charmed life - if everything appears to work out for you, there’s no need to analyze your life and develop a healthy skepticism. Show less