We Need to Talk About Fang Runin & Chen Kitay (the friendship that ripped my heart out and stomped on it)

hello everyone and welcome back!! someone tell me how it’s possible we’re already through february 😐 and no i did not forget about my january (or february) wrap-ups, contrary to my previous track record! it’s just that i’ve been dealing with a book hangover of the highest degree and quite literally cannot bring myself to do anything but wallow in my emotions. so today, i’ve decided i might as well wallow online with you all! 😚

you’ve all read the title: the books in question are the poppy war trilogy by r. f. kuang 🥹 i’ll talk more about the books themselves in a moment, but the whole point is that i find myself unable to move on from the heartbreak of this trilogy, and i’ve decided to write the most random discussion post to try to cope with it—specifically about the friendship between rin and kitay. chen kitay and fang runin are the tenderest, most precious, most emotionally devastating pair of platonic soulmates i’ve ever had the misfortune of getting attached to; as the title of this post implies, they ripped my heart out, shoved it back in, and smashed it into pieces 😍

full disclaimer that this post is basically a mess of brain vomit and a quote dump… please don’t expect too much coherent thought and please do expect a preposterously high word count 😭 without further ado, please welcome me into my emotionally unstable era!!

📚 about the books 📚

the poppy war trilogy by r. f. kuang has three books and one novella: the poppy war (#1), the dragon republic (#2), the drowning faith (#2.5), and the burning god (#3). the genre is grimdark military epic fantasy, and the plot is heavily based on the history of 20th-century china. in book 1, we follow war orphan fang runin (she goes by rin) as she defeats all odds to attend the most elite military academy in the country, discovers her ability to channel the power of gods, and is dragged into a war that she might have to sacrifice her humanity to win. and things basically just go downhill from there 😀

i devoured all 3.5 of these books in january and the emotional devastation is so real. i don’t think the series is perfect and i do have at least one critique for each book, but as soon as i finished the burning god, i knew all my rational thinking was done for 👍 kuang has written something unforgettable with this series. it’s so intelligently written, not to mention how it’s just such a compelling story with amazing characters. the next time someone contests the literary merit of fantasy books, i will point them to the poppy war, because this series has changed forever the way i think about so many topics, like imperialism, war, and human nature in general. and i learned so much about chinese history, too. (i highly encourage everyone to read tiffany’s amazing post about the historical and cultural context of the series.) thank you so much to cherelle, suhani, and everyone in the blogosphere who screamed about this series until i finally read it—therapy bills will be heading your way 😇

all that being said, i want to say upfront that these books are dark. they contain violent (but fact-based) portrayals of some of worst atrocities in history, including the 1937-1938 rape of nanking. they also contain heavy and at times discomfiting discussions about the motivations of european imperialists and Christian missionaries (or kuang’s fictional equivalent) in the 20th century. please be mindful of the content if you choose to read this series, and please feel free to reach out to me if you’d like trigger warnings.

🚨 WARNING: from here on out, this post will have spoilers for the entire series!!! 🚨

🏫 you have a friend. singular. 🏫

a dark-skinned peasant girl from the south with enough anger to last a lifetime and a pale-skinned strategic genius with a strong sense of justice walk into the same military academy… and so begins the indelible love story that i would argue is the backbone of the entire series.

i should have known from the moment kitay was introduced in the poppy war that he was going to be special. kitay is the one who, in rin’s earliest history class at sinegard, first introduces rin to the account of the speerly genocide and starts her down her own particular vicious circle of history.

it was the wiry-haired boy in the front who got it right. “we won because we lost speer.”

the poppy war

rin found herself crammed between niang and the wiry-haired boy who had spoken up in history class. “i’m kitay,” he introduced himself, once he’d finished inhaling his stew.

the poppy war

kitay is her first friend, her only ally in the face of the cruelty only insecure children can impose on their peers, the host of her first and last summer vacation, the smasher of teapots, the one who once wanted to see the face of the enemy and hoped that they would be human, who comforts rin on the eve of her first battle.

“seriously,” kitay asked over lunch one day. “what are you learning?”
kitay, like everyone else in her class, thought that lore was a course in religious history, a smorgasbord of anthropology and folk mythology. she hadn’t bothered to correct them. easier to spread a believable lie than to convince them of the truth.
“that none of my beliefs about the world were true,” rin answered dreamily. “that reality is malleable. that hidden connections exist in every living object. that the whole of the world is merely a thought, a butterfly’s dream.”
“rin?”
“yes?”
“your elbow is in my porridge.”
she blinked. “oh. sorry.”

the poppy war

“are you all right?” kitay asked.
“no,” she said, trembling. her voice was a frightened squeak. “i’m scared. kitay, we’re going to die.”
“no, we’re not,” kitay said fiercely. “we’re going to win, and we are going to live.”

the poppy war

he’s the one rin—pragmatic, cynical rin—screams for in the ruins of golyn niis, and he’s the one who searches speer for her in the aftermath of a genocide of her own doing.

she walked golyn niis alone in a daze, trying to both see and not see. in time she found herself inured to the smell, and eventually the sight of bodies was not a shock, just another array of faces to be scanned for someone she knew. all the while she called kitay’s name. she screamed it every time she saw a hint of motion, anything that could be alive: a cat disappearing into an alley, a pack of crows taking off suddenly, startled by the return of humans who weren’t dead or dying. she screamed it for days. and then from the ruins, so faintly she thought it was an echo, she heard her name in response.

the poppy war

rin’s eyes and throat were sore from weeping. she had been clutching kitay’s hand for hours, fingers wound tightly around his, and she never wanted to let go.

the poppy war

and then there was kitay. lovely, wonderful kitay. amazingly unharmed kitay. there was a hard glint to his eyes that she had never seen in him before. he looked as if he had aged five years. he looked like his father. he was like a sword that had been sharpened, metal that had been tempered.

the poppy war

and lastly, he’s the one who first shows her what it’s like to be feared for the intensity of her hatred, who convinces her of the irrationality of morality. and that’s the conflict between rin and kitay’s core philosophies that persists from the beginning of book 1. they ultimately are two people with very similar feelings of grief-fueled rage but very different approaches to war—rin, who sees war as a justified event in and of itself, or kitay, who sees war as a painful but necessary means to an end.

“they were monsters!” rin shrieked. “they were not human!”
kitay opened his mouth. no sound came out. he closed it. when he finally spoke again, it sounded as if he was close to tears.
“have you ever considered,” he said slowly, “that that was exactly what they thought of us?”
they glared at each other, breathing heavily. blood thundered in rin’s ears.
how dare he? how dare he stand there like this and accuse her of atrocities? he had not seen the inside of that laboratory, he had not known how shiro had planned to wipe out every nikara alive . . . he had not seen altan walk off that dock and light up like a human torch.
she had achieved revenge for her people. she had saved the empire. kitay would not judge her for it. she wouldn’t let him.

the poppy war

⚓️ anchor us. just tell me what i have to do. ⚓️

that conflict continues into almost half of the dragon republic, by which point kitay and rin have both lost the people who mattered most to them and have been coping with their grief in less-than-healthy ways. kitay, unable to move past the horrors of golyn niis and the knowledge of the atrocity rin committed against the longbow island, desperate for peace to quell the voices in his mind. and rin, unable to move past altan’s death and unsuccessfully trying to repress her own feelings of guilt, desperate for bloodshed to quell the voices in her mind.

she could see it in kitay’s eyes, how badly he wanted to resolve the contradiction between loyalty and justice—because kitay, poor, upright, moral kitay, always so concerned with doing what was right, couldn’t reconcile himself to the fact that a military coup might be justified.

the dragon republic

after kitay learns of his father’s death, everything changes—he learns the lesson rin was forced to learn months ago, that there is nothing precious enough in the world that it cannot be touched by the violence of war.

“i want a seat at the table. chief strategist.”
“you’re rather young for that,” vaisra said drily.
“no, i’m not. you made nezha a general. and i’ve always been smarter than nezha. you know i’m brilliant. i’m a f—ing genius. put me in charge of operations and you won’t lose a single battle, i swear.” kitay’s voice broke at the end. rin saw his throat bob, saw the veins protruding from his jaw, and knew that he was holding back tears.

the dragon republic

the scene directly after kitay kills niang is so painful and, in my opinion, highlights exactly why rin and kitay are drawn to each other. in the end, they’re just two children who want the world to make sense. the boy who screams his questions into the unresponsive void and is met only with his own echo. the girl who’s clobbered with cruel questions by a cruel world and wrings out her soul for answers. they turn to each other, desperately, perhaps naively, to become the answers to their own questions.

“and the worst part—the worst part is that i don’t know who’s causing the screams. it was easier when only the federation was evil. now i can’t figure out who’s right or wrong, and i’m the smart one, i’m always supposed to have the right answer, but i don’t.“
she didn’t know what she could possibly say to comfort him, so she curled her fingers around his and held them tight. “me neither.”

the dragon republic

“i just wanted it to be over,” she said. “i wasn’t thinking. i didn’t want to hurt them, not really, i just wanted it to end.”
“i didn’t want to kill her. i just—i don’t know why i—”
“i know.”
“that wasn’t me,” he insisted, but she wasn’t the one he needed to convince.
all she could do was squeeze his hand again. “i know.”

the dragon republic

and after that, their relationship deepens by several orders of magnitude when they’re bound as anchors by the sorqan sira. kitay tosses aside his privilege to stand with his antithesis, abandoning his skeptical atheism to give rin her fire. and in the process of their platonic soulmate arc, both of them are changed irreversibly.

this was the point in the series at which i realized that rin and kitay—this unlikeliest of pairs, the most inflammable of friendships—had dug their claws into my heart and were never going to let go. kitay was the last thing in the world that was still fundamentally kind and good. 🥺 he saw parts of her that she didn’t even understand herself. 🫂 “do you love him?” “yes. more than anyone else in the world.” 🥲🥲🥲

“i don’t think you’re weak.”
“then why—”
“because you don’t know anything about this world, and you never should.” she didn’t care if the phoenix tormented her, but kitay . . . kitay was pure. he was the best person she had ever known. kitay shouldn’t know how it felt to call a god of vengeance. kitay was the last thing in the world that was still fundamentally kind and good, and she’d die before she corrupted that. “you have no idea how it feels. the gods will break you.”
“do you want the fire back?” kitay asked.
“what?”
“do you want the fire back? if you can call the phoenix again, will you use it to win us this war?”
“yes,” she said. “i want it more than anything. but i can’t ask you to do this for me.”
“then you don’t have to ask.” he turned to the sorqan sira. “anchor us. just tell me what i have to do.”

the dragon republic

all of her secrets, her insecurities, her guilt, and her rage had been laid bare. he saw her cruelest, most brutal desires. he saw parts of her that she didn’t even understand herself. the part that was terrified of being alone and terrified of being the last. the part that realized it loved pain, adored it, could find release only in pain.

the dragon republic

she saw how scared he was, trapped and isolated in his own mind, watching his world break down around him because of irrationalities that he could not fix.
and she understood his sadness. the grief; the loss of a father, but more than just that—the loss of an empire, the loss of loyalty, of duty, his sole meaning for existence—
she saw his fury.
how had it taken her this long to understand? she wasn’t the only one fueled by anger. but where her rage was explosive, immediate and devastating, kitay’s burned with a silent determination; it festered and rotted and lingered, and the strength of his hate stunned her.
we’re the same.
kitay wanted vengeance and blood. under that frail veneer of control was an ongoing scream of rage that originated in confusion and culminated in an overwhelming urge for destruction, if only so he could tear the world down and rebuild it in a way that made sense.

the dragon republic

“do you love him?”
“yes,” rin said immediately. “more than anyone else in the world.”
“then you don’t need to worry,” qara said. “if you love him, then you can trust yourself to protect him.”
rin hoped that was true.

the dragon republic

“you make the same face every time i summon a flame any bigger than a campfire. it’s like you’re dying.”
“do i?” he blinked. “just a reflex, i think. don’t worry about it.”
he was lying to her. she loved that about him, that he’d care enough to lie to her. but she couldn’t keep doing this to him. she couldn’t hurt kitay and not worry about it.
if she could, she’d be lost.

the dragon republic

the rest of the dragon republic is as close to domestic rinkitay fluff as we’ll ever get. he gives her the literal wings to fly, she trusts him with her entire life. two halves of a soul 🥺

she flung her arms around him and hugged him tight. “you genius. you wonderful, wonderful genius.”
kitay leaned back, arms raised. “careful, you’ll break the wings.”
she twisted her head around to check them and marveled at the thin, careful craftsmanship that held the apparatus together. “i can’t believe you did this in a week.”
“i had some time on my hands,” said kitay. “wasn’t out there trying to stop a fleet or anything.”
“i love you,” she said.
kitay gave her a tired smile. “i know.”

the dragon republic

“i don’t know what to do about the hesperians. for once, i haven’t the faintest idea, and i hate it. but we’ll figure our way out of it. we’ve figured our way out of this, we’re going to survive the red cliffs, we’re going to survive vaisra, and we’ll keep surviving until we’re safe and the world can’t touch us. one enemy at a time. agreed?”
“agreed,” she said.

the dragon republic

⚔️ she loved him for trying. ⚔️

if rin and kitay in the last quarter of the dragon republic are domestic fluff, they’re pure love in the first three quarters of the burning god. the fact that rin no longer fights from pure rage after being anchored to kitay, because now she fights to protect him—that might very well have been my final straw 😀 they love each other so tenderly, despite all their differences, and they literally and figuratively cannot live separated from each other. it reminds me of what chaghan tells rin in the dragon republic right before the sorqan sira is assassinated, that rin’s eventually going to have to find something, someone, to fight for. there is no doubting that kitay is rin’s reason.

“i have to do this,” she said. “otherwise i have nothing.”
“if you say so.” chaghan turned to gaze at the river. he seemed to have given up on arguing the point. she couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or not. “maybe you’re right. but eventually, you’ll have to ask yourself precisely what you’re fighting for. and you’ll have to find a reason to live past vengeance. altan never managed that.”

the dragon republic

“at dawn,” she said.
“at dawn,” he agreed. he put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her forehead.
this was their standard way of parting, the way they said everything they never spoke out loud. fight well. keep us safe. i love you.
every goodbye had to be so much harder for kitay, who wagered his life on hers every time she set foot on the battlefield.
rin wished she didn’t have that vulnerability. if she could cut out the part of the soul that endangered kitay—that was endangered by kitay—then she would.
but the fact that his life was at stake lent an edge to her fighting. it made her sharper, warier, less likely to take risks and more likely to strike hard and fast when she could. she no longer fought from pure rage. she fought to protect him—and that, she had discovered, changed everything.

the burning god

rin lifted her head just as three airships peeled away from the fleet and veered toward the mines. she understood their plan in an instant—they couldn’t count on taking jiang out, so they were going to take out the southern coalition instead.
they were going to fire on kitay.
oh, f— no.
your turn, rin told the phoenix. show them everything we’ve got.

and rin is kitay’s reason for suffering through divinely inflicted pain in silence, for trying to create logical loopholes in places he knows better than anybody else where they don’t exist 🥺

she’d limit her use of flame if only he asked. he never asked.
“i’ll be fine,” he amended gently.

the burning god

she wanted to kick herself for forgetting that she could call the fire only because he let her, because every day he let a vicious god claw through his mind into the material world. he’d borne it all in silence because he didn’t want her to worry. he’d borne it so well that she’d stopped thinking about it entirely.

the burning god

“why don’t you even want to talk about this?”
“because he’s just my brother.” she gave him a helpless look. “and i am the last great hope of the south. how do you think history will judge me if i throw away its fate for one person?”
kitay opened his mouth, paused, and closed it. rin knew his mind was racing; he was trying to come up with a way to save kesegi, a way to foil nezha, or a justification why one life might be worth more than thousands.
they didn’t exist. she knew that. she loved him for trying.

the burning god

even their banter makes my heart seize up ❤️‍🩹

“you see,” rin told kitay. “it’s a good plan.”
“this has nothing to do with your plan.”
“opium kills tigers. literal and metaphorical.”
“it’s lost this country two wars,” he said. “i don’t mean to call you stupid, because i love you, but that plan is so stupid.”

the burning god

and please don’t talk to me about the aching desperation and soul-shattering grief they feel when they’re forcibly separated. i will actually cry.

she knew he was alive. she knew he wasn’t too badly wounded, not more than she was, because she would have felt it. he has to be here. she didn’t dare consider the alternatives because the alternatives were too awful, because without kitay she was just—
she was just—
her whole body trembled.
oh, gods.

the burning god

a pain that had nothing to do with her injuries stabbed at her chest and spread like blades splintering into daggers, gouging at her heart like grappling hooks. she gasped, then clenched her mouth with her hand.
tears dripped down her fingers. she couldn’t do this alone. gods, she missed him so much.

the burning god

she felt as if she’d been slowly drowning without realizing it until one day, abruptly, she broke for air.

the burning god

“it’s me,” she whispered.
he blinked blearily, as if unsure whether or not he was dreaming. “oh, hello.”
she rushed toward him.
they collided over his cot. he rose halfway to meet her, but she knocked him right back down, arms wrapped tightly around his skinny frame. she had to hold him, feel the weight of him, know that he was real and solid and there. the void in her chest, that aching sense of absence she’d felt since tikany, finally melted away.
she felt like herself again. she felt whole.

the burning god

“come back down,” he said, his expression suddenly grim. his fingers clenched tight around hers. “listen, rin. i don’t care what else happens up there. but you come back to me.”

the burning god

but of course, it’s never all love and cotton candy with r. f. kuang. something i find incredibly fascinating about rin and kitay’s dynamic is their respective relationships with the concept of surrender. kitay is decidedly more open to being defeated, while the very idea is anathema to rin. the conversation they have after rescuing kitay from arabak is especially interesting to me. the fact that rin considers kitay’s resignation to defeat to be even worse than a betrayal is very telling. is it a result of their differing backgrounds—kitay’s privileged and soft-spoken childhood versus the constant pressure rin faces to prove her own humanity? or is it a result of their differing views on war—since rin sees war as a justified event to some degree, does she feel surrender is fundamentally immoral? or are those differing views on war a result of their differing backgrounds? or vice versa? 🫠

“they see human evolution as a ladder, and they’re at its top, or at least as far as it can reach for now. and we—the nikara—are clinging on to the lower rungs. closer to animals than human.”
“that’s bulls—.”
“is it? they built dirigibles. not only can they fly, they’ve been flying for decades, and here we are with only a rudimentary knowledge of seafaring because we bombed our own navies to bits in civil wars over nothing. why?”
dread twisted rin’s stomach. she didn’t want to hear these words from kitay’s mouth. this felt worse than betrayal. this felt like discovering her best friend was an utter stranger.

the burning god

shaqqi, it turned out, had been the only strategy game that rin never managed to grasp. they played many times in class throughout the year, but never could she bring herself to surrender. she’d played the role of the underdog since she could remember. it seemed so ludicrous to ever give up, to simply acknowledge defeat as if the future might not offer some chance, however slim, to reverse her fortunes. she’d been relying on those slim chances for her entire life.

the burning god

and to that end, rin needs kitay’s validation—validation that her desire for vengeance is justified, that her anger at the world is warranted. as a result, rin’s vulnerability in kitay’s presence is further deepened, because she’s baring her very conscience to kitay, while kitay is also forced to put in an additional emotional investment as he begins to compromise his morals for rin’s sake (and increasingly, for his own sake).

“kitay?”
she needed to hear him speak before she could continue. she wasn’t waiting for his permission—she’d never needed his permission for anything—but she wanted to hear his confirmation. she wanted someone else, someone whose mind worked far faster than hers ever would, to assess the forces at play and the lives at stake and say, yes, these calculations are valid. this sacrifice is necessary. you aren’t mad. the world is.

the burning god

rin felt an aching burst of pride. she forgot sometimes how resilient kitay could be. one would never have suspected it by looking at him—the archetypal reedy and anxious scholar—but he bore hardship with iron fortitude. sinegard hadn’t worn him down. even golyn niis hadn’t destroyed him. nezha could never have broken him.
no, whispered the little voice in her head that sounded too much like altan. the only person capable of breaking him is you.

the burning god

ultimately, that emotional codependence takes a fatal toll. once it becomes intermingled with the actual battles of the southern army, and especially the victory at arlong and the ensuing bureaucratic disaster, rin and kitay start to crumble. because, as i said earlier, they’re just children, and there’s only so many questions they can forge the answers to.

those seemed like tentative signs of progress. or that was, at least, the lie rin and kitay told themselves, to avoid facing the crushing pressure of the fact that they were children, unprepared and unqualified, juggling a towering edifice that could collapse at any minute.

the burning god

it struck her then how incredibly tired he looked, how shrunken and diminished, so wholly different from the confident, authoritative persona he acquired during the daytime.
that scared her. it seemed like physical evidence that everything was, after all, a farce. that they were pretenders to the throne, playing at competency, while their victory slipped from their fingers.
the empire was fracturing. their people were starving. the hesperians were going to return, and they had nothing with which to stop them.
she reached for his fingers. “kitay.”
he squeezed her hand in his. he looked so young. he looked so scared. “i know.”

the burning god

and then we have the opium field catastrophe in tikany, where everything implodes.

everyone was clamoring for answers; they wanted orders and assurances, and rin had nothing to give them. the burned fields were the final blow. now rin had no plan, no recourse, and nothing to offer her men. she and kitay had to solve this, and they could not leave the room until they did.
but to her disbelief, the first suggestion he made was surrender.
the way he said it made it sound like a foregone conclusion. as if he knew this to be true, had known months ago, and was only now bothering to let her in on it.
“no,” she said. “never.”

the burning god

“please, rin. tell me you get it.” he sounded so desperate.
she looked into his eyes, and she couldn’t recognize the person she saw there.
this was not kitay. this was someone weak, gullible, and corrupted. she’d lost him. when had he become her enemy? she hadn’t seen it happening, yet now it was obvious.

the burning god

“they can’t do this to me,” she said dully. “i was supposed to win.”
“you did win,” he said sadly. “this entire country is yours. just please don’t throw it away with your pride.”
“but we were going to rebuild this world,” she said. the words sounded plaintive as she said them, a childish fantasy, but that was how she felt, that was what she really believed—because otherwise, what the f— was this all for?

the burning god

(flashback to when kitay said “we’re going to win, and we are going to live” before their very first battle. respectfully, i am in tears,)

no, that’s where he was wrong. rin could not bow. tearza bowed. hanelai bowed. and look what that got them: quick, brutal deaths and complete erasure from a history that should have been theirs to write. their fault was that they were weak, they trusted the men they loved, and they didn’t have the guts to do what was necessary.
tearza should have killed the red emperor. hanelai should have murdered jiang when she’d had the chance. but they couldn’t hurt the people they loved.
but rin could kill anything.

the burning god

she had to feign vulnerability. she had to make him believe this was a hard choice for her—that she’d broken, just like he wanted her to.
“i’m just . . .” she let her voice tremble. she widened her eyes, so that kitay would think she was terrified rather than capricious. kitay would believe that. kitay had always wanted to see the best in people, d— him, and that meant he would f—ing fall for anything. “i’m scared i can’t come back from this.”
he pulled her close against him. she managed not to flinch against his embrace.
“you can come back. i’ll bring you back. we’re in this together, we’re linked . . .”
she started to cry. that, she didn’t have to fake.

the burning god

(the way she turns against the qualities she once loved most about kitay 💔 and the way she can’t hide the fact from herself, try as she might, that she is absolutely shattered by his perceived betrayal.)

if she couldn’t count on her people and she couldn’t count on kitay, then she’d have to finish things herself. she had the only ally she needed—a god that could bury countries. and if kitay tried to deny her that, then she’d just have to break him.
she knew she could do it. she’d always known she could, since the day they knelt before the sorqan sira and melded their souls together. she could have erased him then. she almost had; she was just that much stronger. she’d held herself back because she loved him.
and she still loved him. she’d never stop. but that didn’t matter.
you’ve abandoned me, she thought as he wept with relief into her shoulder. you thought you could fool me, but i know your soul. and if you’re not with me, you’ll burn, too.

the burning god

(SHE STILL LOVED HIM. SHE’D NEVER STOP. BUT THAT DIDN’T MATTER.)

💔 she still loved him. she’d never stop. but that didn’t matter. 💔

do you guys sometimes just lie awake at night and think about chapter 34 of the burning god? because i do 🤩 what absolutely guts me in this chapter is the utter self-contradiction of their relationship that somehow still manages to make sense. their relationship is no doubt the most intimate one in this entire series—their very lives and souls are tangled up in each other’s fates—but simultaneously the most self-destructive, and both sides of that balance are on full display in this section. because fire and water may destroy each other by nature, but fire and paper burn together. they create a conflagration that could not happen without the fire burning itself out and the paper turning to ashes.

and burn rin and kitay do till the very end.

the way rin and kitay have never touched each other even in practice fights because they physically could not bring themselves to hurt each other—but their last mortal moments are them fighting with each other’s life and death at stake.

she’d never fought kitay before.
she realized this as they wrestled to the ground—a dim, floating observation that was really quite amazing, for almost everyone in her class at sinegard had fought everyone else at some point. she’d sparred against venka and nezha plenty of times. her first year, she’d tried so hard to kill nezha that she’d nearly succeeded.
but she’d never once touched kitay. not even in practice. the few times they were paired against each other they found excuses to seek different partners, because neither of them could stand the thought of trying to hurt the other, not even for pretend.
she hadn’t realized how strong he was.

the burning god

the way rin is on the verge of insanity and still has the state of mind to try and stop kitay from stabbing himself. and yet the way it’s surrender, not agreement, in the end. the way she could bend his will, but she’d never again have his heart.

she could rip the god’s power through his mind like he was nothing more than a flimsy net.
he knew it, too. she felt his resignation, his wretched surrender.
surrender, not agreement. they were enemies now—and she could bend his will, but she’d never again have his heart.
yet something—sentiment, heartbreak—compelled her to try. “kitay, please—”
“don’t,” he said. “just—go ahead. but don’t.”

the burning god

rin’s last words to kitay are a plea of heartbreak: “kitay, please—” kitay’s last words to her are full of pain and anguish: “you’re hurting me.” and yet. that two-sided coin of wretched, desperate, resentful love spins in the air one last time. because he can’t help but love her. because she could ruin him, ruin the two of them, and he’d let her.

their eyes met. she felt a shock of horror.
she recognized the way he was looking at her. it was how she’d once looked at altan. it was the way she’d seen daji look at riga—that look of wretched, desperate, and reproachful loyalty.
it said, do it.
take what you want, it said. i’ll hate you for it. but i’ll love you forever. i can’t help but love you.
ruin me, ruin us, and i’ll let you.

the burning god

kitay stopped trying to argue. they both knew there was nothing he could say. they had only one option; he was too smart not to see it. he might hate her for this, but he would forgive her, as he always did. he’d always had to forgive her for necessity.

the burning god

that heartbreak, that anguish and desperate love, fuels a cleansing fire that destroys the world and rebuilds it one last time. rin, self-appointed force of nature who has painted over the world’s canvas in blood, stops her destruction in its tracks at kitay’s words. because what was all of this for, if she gets to watch the world go up in flames and she has nobody by her side to hold her hand and watch with her?

kitay anchors her until the very end. it goes back to that quote from chaghan: “eventually, you’ll have to ask yourself precisely what you’re fighting for. and you’ll have to find a reason to live past vengeance.” rin fights for kitay. rin lives for the love the two of them share, and she drags herself from the edge when she finally remembers that. but kitay isn’t just rin’s reason for living past vengeance—he’s also her reason for surrendering. for dying past vengeance.

if she broke through his soul and took everything she wanted . . .
she’d never stop. there would be no limits to her power. she’d never stop using him, ripping his mind open and setting it on fire every hour and minute and second, because she would always need the fire. if she did this then her war would extend across the world and her enemies would multiply—there would always be someone else, someone like petra trying to banish her god and crush her nation, or someone like nezha trying to foment rebellion from within.
and unless she killed every single one of them, she would never be safe and her revolution would never succeed, and so she’d have to keep going until she reduced the rest of the world to ashes, until she was the last one standing.
until she was alone.
was that peace? was that liberation?
she could see her victories. she could see the burned wreckage of hesperian shores. she could see herself at the center of a conflagration that consumed the world, scorched it, cleansed it, ate away its rotted foundations—
but she couldn’t see where it ended.
she couldn’t see where the pain stopped—not for the world, and not for kitay.
“you’re hurting me,” he whispered.
it was like being doused in ice water. repulsed, she gave a sharp sob and jerked her hand away from his neck.

the burning god

the way there is no world where rin dies and kitay remains alive, because rin and kitay are bonded in a way that nezha can never understand. the way rin dies in nezha’s arms, writing her own escape from the currents of history, and kitay dies alone on the sand, the third party, the in-between, the willing executioner of rin’s direction who inks in the outlines of her vision, the anchoring weight who tips the scale from what if? to reality. they build each other up and destroy each other to the very end, burning brightest in their final moments, until nothing is left but ashes to litter the ground and make room for something new.

kitay lay still beside him. he knew kitay was gone, too—that kitay had died a bloodless death the moment he plunged the blade into rin’s heart, because rin and kitay were bonded in a way that he could never understand, and there was no world where rin died and kitay remained alive. because kitay—the third party, the in-between, the weight that tipped the scale—had chosen to follow rin into the afterlife and to leave nezha behind. alone.
alone, and shouldering the immense burden of their legacy.

the burning god

i read in a fanfiction somewhere that rin and kitay’s relationship defies the foundations of the universe itself. “nothing lasts. rin and kitay did.”

“most think it’s a nihilistic cry, a warning that nothing lasts. not friendships, not loyalties, and certainly not empire. which makes it consistent with your translation, kitay, if you think about it. this world is ephemeral. permanence is an illusion.”

the dragon republic

she glanced down at kitay.
he was awake, his face set in resolve. he gave her a grim nod.
that was all she had to see. that was permission.
she couldn’t release him. neither of them knew how. but she knew, as clearly as if he’d said it out loud, that he intended to follow her to the end. their fates were tied, weighed down by the same culpability.

the burning god

to the end. he follows her to the end. he grants her his confirmation even if it’s the last thing he does. he might hate her for the choices she makes, but he’ll forgive her for everything. out of necessity. out of love. because he’ll love her forever, even if it’s against his own will.

nothing lasts, nezha? not friendships, not loyalties? permanence is an illusion, my foot.

i—i think i need to lie down after that cathartic brain dump 😀 the last time i did one of these was for the shades of magic trilogy and it was nowhere near as in-depth as this one, so i am completely emotionally drained LOL 🥲 i have nothing left to say after literally thousands of words, so i’ll just leave this post at that.

what did you all think about rin and kitay’s relationship in the poppy war trilogy? make sure to let me know in the comments below 🫶

until next time, happy reading and stay safe everyone! 💗