If you have other thoughts about other mdzs's charac (or again jgy!) in other role, I would love to read them!

Thank you for your patience, anon! I meant to answer this yesterday along with the one about JGY and Edmund. Each of these involves characters from the Henriad--Richard II, the two Henry IV plays, and Henry V.

-Hotspur, my beloved and cherished son who appears briefly in Richard II and is the antagonist (in the "opposes the protagonist" sense, not the "is a villain" sense) of 1 Henry IV, is the midpoint between Jiang Cheng and Nie Mingjue. Hotspur is essentially a child soldier; his descriptors suggest that he's a young teen when he joins his father in deposing Richard II in favor of Richard's cousin Henry IV. When we see him as a young adult in 1 Henry IV, he's fully immersed in warfare as a way of life, and while he's won great renown, he's... not really doing so great. Some of his lines are alarmingly visceral (ex: "they come like sacrifices in their trim/ and to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war/ all hot and bleeding we will offer them."), and his wife's concerned speech describing his behavior in II.3 reads like a checklist of PTSD symptoms. Hotspur also wholeheartedly believes in his personal code of honor and is clinically incapable of guile in a way that comes off to me as almost childlike. If a cause is just, then it will prevail no matter the odds (spoiler: it does not)! He loves his family and trusts that they have his and the kingdom's best interests in mind (spoiler: they do not)! Basically every line Hotspur speaks in Acts IV and V of the play could be given to Mingjue and you'd only need to replace all the proper nouns.

(Hotspur is also canonically SUCH a horse girl and so is Mingjue in my heart.)

Meanwhile, on the Jiang Cheng side of things, Hotspur also wants SO badly to do a good job. He is so so SO determined to fulfill his roles as a knight and as a son to their fullest extent, and has nothing but contempt for Hal because Hal, despite being heir to the throne, does jack shit and spends all his time drinking and pickpocketing for funsies. For all his impetuousness and general lack of an inside voice (which is NOT a Jiang Cheng problem), he shows flashes of being a strong leader--particularly in his speech outlining his grievances against Henry IV in IV.3. Personality-wise, Hotspur is filled with BIG FEELINGS and most of them manifest as cantankerousness. He is prickly and argumentative by default, which makes him lowkey one of the funniest characters in the play (see: his soliloquy arguing with a letter at the top of II.3, his entire exchange with Owen Glendower in III.1), and also make his moments of genuine vulnerability hit hard (ex: "come, wilt thou see me ride?" in II.3 and his death speech in V.4).

-On the flip side, Huaisang reminds me of Prince Hal. Remember how I said Hal doesn't do jack shit? Hal's flop era is deliberate. He knows he can't run from his responsibilities forever, so he's slacking off to lower people's expectations for him. The first soliloquy we get from him in I.2 is an EXTREME Huaisang mood and I'll try to trim it to the most relevant bits:

I know you all, and will awhile uphold The unyoked humour of your idleness: Yet herein will I imitate the sun, Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world, That, when he please again to be himself, Being wanted, he may be more wonder'd at... I'll so offend, to make offence a skill; Redeeming time when men think least I will.

His flop era does NOT endear him to his father, who wishes he were an accomplished warrior like Hotspur, and their relationship is rocky. When Hal becomes king upon Henry IV's death, Hal decides to jettison his past friendships, quash the joyful aspects of his identity, and go do war crimes in France. I describe Hal's actions in the play Henry V as "Hal doing his best Hotspur impression," except that whereas Hotspur honest-to-god believed he was fighting for justice, Hal is more calculating. Sure, he gives us the "once more unto the breach, dear friends" and "we few, we happy few, we band of brothers" speeches, but he also cheerfully threatens mass slaughter in response to an insult in I.2 (and ratchets up the threats in gruesome detail III.3).

-Huaisang is also Hamlet, of course, but I don't personally subscribe to the "Huaisang was always sooooo scared of JGY" interpretation of the timeskip. Fear makes you act with urgency, as Hamlet very much does post-Mousetrap and post-return to Denmark. Readers give Hamlet a lot of shit for dithering on killing Claudius, but he does get the job done in just a couple months (much of which he spends offstage with pirates) because all he wants is Claudius to be dead. Huaisang takes his sweet time because he wants JGY utterly destroyed, which is more a Hal vibe.

-Lan Xichen is NOT Richard II at all. I'm not even going to explain why he's not because he's not. However, Richard's big soliloquy when he's imprisoned alone in the penultimate scene of the play is VERY MUCH Lan Xichen in conclusion. It's long--66 lines!--but I will excerpt the relevant portion.

Music do I hear? Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is, When time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives. And here have I the daintiness of ear To cheque time broke in a disorder'd string; But for the concord of my state and time Had not an ear to hear my true time broke. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; For now hath time made me his numbering clock: My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar Their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, Whereto my finger, like a dial's point, Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.... This music mads me; let it sound no more! For though it have holp madmen to their wits, In me it seems it will make wise men mad. Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me! For 'tis a sign of love; and love to Richard Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world.

I JUST!!!!