How do you depict social class disparities on a personal level, rather than masses of people with very different means and lives and the unwritten rules that divide them? How do you tell a meaningful story staked on these differences?
There are a lot of reasons why Nirvana in Fire is compelling, one of which is the assured way the narrative knows when to be subtle and when to bring the angst and drama, and its exploration of how identity is deeply entwined with social class is a great example of this.
Historical background
Though NiF is a story with a fictional historical setting/架空, it is still grounded in real history, and the choice of the Northern and Southern Dynasties as a very loose background period is no accident. During this time, the ruling class’s stranglehold on society was especially strong. In canon, you see nobles such as Xie Yu/Marquis Ning and Marquis Huaiyi own large estates and their own private militia, which was very much the situation back then. There were a large number of rebellions and unrests led by these aristocrats during this time, and being Emperor was a delicate balancing act to keep them happy but not let them gain too much power.
This kind of background is what a work of fiction generally wants to avoid directly dumping on the audience as exposition; a good period-setting story should stake its narrative conflicts on its historical basis in a logical manner and make the audience feel the conflict. As an example, the nine-rank selection system/九品中正制, the official selection process in use during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, is exactly what’s being discussed in the scene where Xiao Jingyan brings Shen Zhui and Cai Quan over to Su Manor (and in my opinion a good change from book to screen).
In particular, they’re talking about how to choose the selection officials/中正官 who grade candidates to be selected and ranked into positions of the imperial bureaucracy. Instead of the imperial examinations/科举 that many later dynasties use, this system has these selection officials recommend people to become officials and was instituted to replace the previous system (察举制) which had been fully taken over by the aristocracy. At first, the selection criteria of the nine-rank system were the candidate’s family background, virtue, and talent, but this again became corrupted over time by the ruling class to essentially only depend on background and connections with the selection officials. There was a well-known saying back then: 上品无寒门，下品无士族, which means no commoners in the top ranks, no upper class in the lower ranks.
In canon, corruption of this process is specifically linked to the ex-Crown Prince and Prince Yu’s power struggle, each packing the government full of well-to-do officials sympathetic to their own factions. Shen Zhui lists the factors in the process of choosing selection officials, from family background to houses of marriage and mentors, from which it’s clear that ruling class influence is inextricably tied to this process. They discuss whether to go for bold reforms and possible conflict and bloodshed, or something more incremental, and decide on choosing the least corrupt candidate within the pool of eligibility that would not ruffle feathers, essentially trying their best while staying within the bounds of the system.
This scene is also narratively important as the first Jingsu reunion after Mei Changsu was imprisoned in the Xuanjing Bureau and Jingyan discovered painfully that he had accused him of things he didn’t do. Through the class angle, I think Jingyan interprets Su Manor turning him away when he tried to visit earlier as the way a subject would implicitly slap the hand of their lord by reminding them of their place. If Jingyan has no official business to be at Su Manor, if he is only there to make a personal visit and apologize, then he is not there as Mei Changsu’s lord, but as his friend, which Jingyan has no right to be, any longer. Of course, that’s not the real reason (at least, not the only one), but Jingyan doesn’t know that. With these boundary-enforcing interactions, Jingyan believes Mei Changsu wants to remind him that he had erred precisely because he was too emotionally invested in his relationship with Sir Su instead of thinking logically, that the boundaries are there for a reason and he should maintain them.
So what does he do instead of trying to make more personal visits? He brings Shen Zhui and Cai Quan with him on an official visit from lord to subject, one specifically designed to pave a path forward for Su Zhe’s advancement in government, showing that he knows he was wrong and wants to make amends in a useful way without making an explicit apology, which Mei Changsu neither wants nor needs. Mei Changsu receives them warmly yet professionally in return, showing in turn that he has no qualms about continuing to serve his lord and that the past is past.
All in all, I find this scene a good example of subtle layered storytelling that occurs a lot in NiF: this conversation that is about social class on the surface has its underlying structure and place in the narrative also reflecting class differences. It shows how the feudal hierarchy leads to rampant misconduct in government while also warns of the dangers of venturing too far from the rules that are in place.
celia had loved the sea. loved the whitecaps that foamed like milk, the waltz of sunlight atop the peaks. kasey did not. the sea was a trillion strands of hair, infinitely tangled on the surface and infinitely dense beneath. it distorted time: minutes passed like hours and hours passed like minutes out there. it distorted space, made the horizon seem within reach. and it was the perfect place for hiding secrets.
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In hindsight, Scar will admit: he’s made a few mistakes, and this was one of them.
To be fair, he hadn’t thought Grian would be capable of following through on “if you know my name and a lot of illager magic you can technically summon me, yes, especially since I severed any tie I would have had with any other mage”. He hadn’t thought it was possible! He’d told that to Grian in the middle of the night because he didn’t think Grian could learn evoker magic! It’s not like it’s common, or a thing illagers write down, or a thing they’re willing to teach players! He’d thought he was safe!
So, Scar may have made a mistake. He makes a lot of them! He didn’t think this one would catch up with him.
He didn’t think, until the swirling magic in the back of his head cools off, and there’s blood on a sword Scar didn’t remember getting as he pulls his arm from where it had phased through the last of the enemies around them, and he blinks several times to try to figure out how he’d gotten here and what time he’d been missing, and—
“Scar?” says a shaky voice. “Scar, they’re gone now, I’m sorry, I panicked, it was a joke.” Oh. His new summoner. A thing purrs in Scar’s chest, the thing that Scar hasn’t had to deal with since he and Cub had shattered it together. Satisfaction. A lack of decision. He’s missing time. There are dead mobs and, he thinks, maybe dead players here too, but mostly mobs, and isn’t that strange? Normally his evoker would have…
“Scar. Scar, you’re scaring me.”
Scar turns to the summoner and tries to figure out how to—
Grian stares back, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Grian?” Scar says, and his voice echoes.
“I—hahaha, it was a joke, Scar,” Grian says, shaking. “I’m fine. See? You can—I did something, didn’t I? I…”
“…yeah Grian, I’d say you did something,” says Scar, thinking of back then, on burning yellow sand, handing a man Scar shouldn’t trust his Name, because he didn’t trust Grian at all but trusted Grian with his soul utterly, and—it’s too late to take that sort of thing back, Scar thinks.
Far too late.
“You’re all blue,” Grian says, reaching for Scar, who is beginning to empathize with how panicked Grian looks. “And glowing. I couldn’t touch you.”
“That’s how vexes tend to work, Grian,” Scar says, much calmer than he should probably feel. The thing in his heart continues to purr. “Where did you even learn enough illager to manage this?” he asks.
“You don’t even sound mad,” Grian says.
“I don’t think I can be? Not yet, anyway. Not this early.” He shrugs. He should probably be mad about that too, but the yell in his head of summoner, summoner is overriding it entirely. He hasn’t had an evoker since—well, and now it’s Grian, someone Scar had handed over his soul to willingly. It’s hard to fight the instinct to start smiling again, so he doesn’t, and he grins, and he knows it’s some crooked fey thing, and probably making Grian more concerned, but he doesn’t care.
“What did I do,” Grian says, and Scar wants to laugh at him, or maybe at himself, but instead he says—
“I think you’re going to need to learn a lot more illager.”
“Oh right, to reverse it. Of course. I didn’t… I thought you’d just teleport here and we’d both… hold on.”
Scar watches him, and decides that letting Grian think he’d said that so it could be reversed was what he’d meant for the time being. Eventually, Grian would learn there was only one way to do that, and if it had been anyone else, maybe, but…
Scar thinks about mistakes, and mistaken trust, and the genuine fear for his sake in Grian’s face, and thinks: at least it’s not that bad.
Or maybe that’s the magic talking.
Grian mumbles to himself about lessons while Scar follows him, idly wondering how badly Cub’s going to kill them both when he finds out. He supposes he’ll see.
