ig my 'unpopular opinion' (hate that term) is that lwj Should feel bad about how he treated wwx, and I'm glad he does, because that pushes him to grow as a character and make difference choices in the future. he should feel bad that he sided with the passive and corrupt clans instead of trusting wwx and being more proactive in protecting all those people. on the flipside jc's grief and misery surrounding wwx never seems to include regrets about what HE could have done differently, so he doesn't undergo any of that positive character growth, he just blames everyone around him and lashes out and sinks deeper into bitterness and contempt and fury. if he had thought about the consequences of his choices a little more, maybe he could have taken some responsibility for how it all went down too and like. acted differently when wwx returned.

but despite him going on about how family/clan is more important than anything, he doesn't even try to trust wwx, he just assumes the worst of him. and ik he's being manipulated and he's got trauma related to being abandoned, and wwx wasn't the most communicative about what was happening, but clearly he was trying to protect a group of innocent people and a child, so why couldn't jc extend to wwx an iota of good faith and like. back him up since this was clearly so important to him and also there are literal farmers and a toddler being threatened with murder? jc isn't to blame for wen chao or jgy or su she's actions, but he did have a certain amount of power in his role and he seemed determined not to use it. he publicly cut ties with wwx, allowing public sentiment to build against him, and he folded easily to demands that he kill wen ning despite having an actual argument against that. obviously being attached to the burial mounds community is politically disastrous, but lwj was speaking for wwx at the time too so it's not like jc was entirely alone. if he was a great political mind like I've seen people claim he was, he also could have curried favor with jzx through jyl's connection...idk it was important to wwx and I wish jc had been able to stand up for him or at least was capable of critically analyzing his own actions after the fact