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Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Wú Guó Tài (Lady Wu) 吴国太

Posted by Ricky Chua On 1:50 PM 7 comments
Translated Description:
Fearsome Militant Empress 武烈皇后 (wǔ liè huáng hoù)

Who is she:
There are only a handful of elder women who are significant in the story (such as Xu Shu 徐庶's mum who hanged herself). Lady Wu is arguably the most notorious in the story because she turned the tables on her own son, Sun Quan 孙权, and gave this ruler of Wu Kingdom a massive headache! In the deadlock between the Kingdoms of Shu and Wu, one city was the epicenter of all the troubles: Jing Zhou 荆州.

Liu Bei 刘备 "borrowed" the city from Sun Quan, but he turned renegade and chose not to return this strategically crucial city. Out of frustration, Sun Quan and his advisor, Zhou Yu 周瑜, decided to up the stakes and use the classic Maiden ploy 美人计. The bait? None other than Sun Quan's very own sister, Sun Shang Xiang 孙尚香. It was a wonderful plan except for one tiny oversight... nobody told Lady Wu that the future happiness of her only daughter would be sacrificed. To make matters worse, Lady Wu only heard about the news when Liu Bei was already in town to receive his bride. Imagine her horror when she received second-hand information from the streets that her daughter was to be wedded to the enemy, without her prior knowledge!

Boy, was Sun Quan gonne be hurt reeeeeal bad.

Character ability 1: Heavenly Essence 甘露 (gān lù)
In the action phase, you can choose 2 players to exchange all of their equipped cards. The difference in the number of equipped cards between the 2 players must not be more than X, where X is the amount of health you have lost thus far. Limited to once per turn.

Character ability 2: Ameliorate 补益 (bǔ yì)
When a player is at the brink of death, you can display one of the on-hand cards of that player. If that card is not a basic card, the player will discard that card and regain 1 unit of health.

(Basic cards are ATTACK 杀 (any type), DODGE 闪, PEACH 桃, or WINE 酒)

Ability's relation to story:
The abilities do not seem to follow the story much, though there are some interesting points to the ability names. The Chinese characters 甘露 have a few meanings, the most common refers to "liquid essence" and is used in poems. I chose this version because it sounds more royal and fitting for an Empress... in comparison to the other meanings. You see, 甘露 can also mean the leaf of a plant, similar to the banana plant, that is used in modern chinese desserts. We can choose to pervert the words 甘露 even further and think of them as an acronym of the 4 characters "甘愿暴露", which translates to "willingly expose (the body)".

Logically speaking, "willingly expose" seems to denote some form of stripping, which would more accurately describe this ability, doesn't it?

The 2nd ability "Ameliorate" has very link to the story. Probably the only instance of Lady Wu offering any assistance was when she stopped Sun Quan from launching an all-out invasion of Jing Zhou, but only because her daughter was in that city. This ability does seem to be related to the game mechanics though. Since Sun Shang Xiang is has the ability to heal, therefore so should her mother?

Additional info based on story:
1. Most famous achievement - Ironically, Lady Wu turned out to like Liu Bei quite a fair bit. Since the word was already out in the street that Liu Bei was to marry Sun Shang Xiang, Lady Wu could not possibly rubbish  it as a rumor. The only chance was to meet Liu Bei in person when he asks for Sun Shang Xiang's hand, and disapprove of him using her maternal rights. Yet Liu Bei was a righteous and honest leader (or so the story claims) and quickly won the approval of Lady Wu. In fact, she happily gave the marriage her blessing! This turned out to be a disaster for Sun Quan, because the ploy was to trick Liu Bei into entering the city and keep him under house-arrest indefinitely, without actually having to marry his sister to Liu Bei. Now as it turns out, not only will Liu Bei enjoy the royal treatment as a guest of Lady Wu's, he will actually be walking away with Sun Shang Xiang's hand in marriage!

2. Cause of death - There is an anomaly in the story here that differs from history. In the story, there were 2 women who were married to Sun Jian 孙坚 (Lady Wu's husband). One was Lady Wu herself, and another was her younger sister. The story states that Sun Quan's mother was the elder Lady Wu, who died early and asked Sun Quan to treat her younger sister like his own mother. The younger sister gave birth to Sun Shang Xiang, thus making Sun Shang Xiang the half-sister of Sun Quan. However, none of these is true in history, as there was only one Lady Wu and both Sun Quan and Sun Shang Xiang have the same mother. There appears to be no mention of the cause of Lady Wu's death.

Wiki Link
Lady Wu Wiki

7 comments:

  1. Is she allowed to use Ameliorate every time Zhou Tai gets hit and adds a no death card?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I believe how Zhou Tai works is he only enters brink of death when he gets two of the same card value. So not every time he gets hit.

    ReplyDelete
  3. actually I believe she can use it once for each time he enters brink of death (meaning he has to come out of refuting death mode before she can activate her ability again) as Zhou tai's ability states he will survive in brink of death state while her ability is once per instance

    ReplyDelete
  4. I cannot use her second ability own herself right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes she can. And if you read the official FAQ, she chooses the card in that case instead of draw randomly.

      Delete
  5. Hmm, I thing it'll be funny if this character is played with huanggai at tye same team, and they're allowed to chat. Huang gai might just grab all the cards on the deck. Maybe with little help of cao cong

    ReplyDelete

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