The Flower Dances and the Wind Sings - Ch. 22

[baejoohyun]

i hope she would pull a divorce card when the flashback is over.

also y'all being soft to the bad dad who killed their daughters in other stories but criticizing ercella that much for the neglect in here is just ain't sit well with me.

 

[Danni4]

Real talk for women out there, some people dont love their babies immediately. This is normal. I dont mean they HATE the baby, or that they're not protective, I mean the emotional bond doesnt kick in immediately. Feeling guilt about it and keeping this quiet as if it never happens, or isnt normal, only makes it harder for the women who are trying to love their kids when they're told that they're monsters for not automatically being besotted. If you find yourself in that situation (obviously not her fucked up situation, but in a situation where you're struggling to emotionally bond with your baby) be kind to yourself and give yourself time. Some people love immediately, some need to grow love. Especially if you have postpartum issues. Take care of yourself, or you'll find it hard to take care of the baby.

 

[Blue_Robin]

@Jasnah

Agreed. She's pretty clearly suffering from post-partum depression in addition to recent trauma and having difficulties connecting with her child. The father doesn't even seem to be trying. He's not trying to be a good husband or a good father. Shame on him.

 

[shotachin]

At this point, i honestly just feel bad for her. She was so neglected too and remembering the chapter where Harssen called her out.. LIKE LMAO FUCK YOU YOU WERE FIRST

 

[New_page]

can you imagine living like that for 18 years?! She really want to love her child, but she just cant. All her frustration she felt, she put that on her child. An indifferrent husband, neglected child, a mother suffers from depression. i dont know why this household hasnt burnt to the ground yet 😔

 

[Adestan]

I feel bad for them, all of them. The husband probably just don't know how to act since he hasn't seen her in a long time, and I can't blame him for it. Ercella married him because she had no choice but still hoped for love and seeing him like that after his return must have been a shock. Also, I don't think she was ready for a child and it's normal to not want to let her past "free" self go, since a mother is in no obligation to give up her happiness for her child. I also think that Vicente isn't to blame since he literally didn't do anything wrong. I don't think anyone is to blame, it's just that life is complicated and situations aren't always optimum, so we gotta deal with it to continue living and overcome problems, even if it's tough, and nobody is to blame since everybody plays a part in the mechanism of life.

(Sorry if it's not ritten well, I originally speak French so I might have missed or misplaced words😅)

 

[mynameisneens]

Oh the poor girl it just gets worse and worse 😭

 

[silkyprada]

not excusing harsen’s neglect towards ercella or the child but i think we are forgetting that he went to war at a pretty young age and that probably affected him in some way. not sure if he had some sort of ptsd like lots do after going to war but the author hasn’t really hinted at that. even so, going to war at a young age isn’t just gonna be a fun little trip to the trenches, i’m sure it must have messed with him mentally and may be part of the reason why he seems so detached (he already seemed that way when he was younger but it felt like he was just reserved. now, it’s more like he’s really indifferent). like some people have already said, they really just shouldn’t have had a child considering that they both had a lot of growing and experiencing to do. it sucks how fucked their circumstances were.

 

[flirts]

i remember talking to a relative once about her postpartum depression when she had her second child. she said that she felt like a zombie, almost like she couldn’t access her heart and she couldn’t access her emotions? she couldn’t connect and she felt terrible & felt like a failure. i think she said that the hardest part for her was acknowledging the problem since she thought postpartum depression meant you were sobbing every single day and incapable of looking after a child. but there are different shades of it and depths of it, which is why it’s so important for women to talk about. there’s a lot of misunderstanding and there are a lot of people out there that think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds, e.g. ‘oh, it’s hormones.’ and a lot of people just brush it off when in fact, it’s something that’s completely uncontrollable. it’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support. i’ve seen some people downplay just how bad depression can get and how much it affects the person suffering as well as the people around them. and especially back in those days, they didn’t have any sort of proper support regarding treatment so you would just have to live with it and hope for the best. i think that if harsen and ercella were just more honest with each other about what they were going through and their true feelings, things might have worked out differently. gosh it’s so sad how these two just can’t catch a break, especially ercella. it’s just one bad thing after the other.

 

[TheyCallMeBeanz]

I want to first say that I'm not excusing Harsens's behavior because he's just as guilty for this trainwreck of a relationship and neglectful abuse, but we have to remember that he just had to execute basically his whole family because they were after his position. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of environment he grew up in with a family like that.

 

[Amaya19]

Postpartum is the saddest and harshest thing to happen to a woman.

 

[yuchiyo]

Postpartum depression is real

 

[enyoteremchi]

i don’t understand how that last bit is any of his business

Spoiler

unless he’s the father

but i’m gonna choose to trust him. fingers crossed i don’t get disappointed, but i’ll stop shipping them if i do because that is some shit i will never tolerate.

@silkyprada thanks for saying that because he seems so normal i forget that he was probably just as mentally unstable as ercella was at that time

anyways i’m glad this story touched on postpartum depression because i’ve never known much about it and i’m learning a lot from the comments, like @flirts, and from the storyline in general.

Spoiler

however reading it just now it kinda seemed like she loved her child and a switch flicked to her hating her child. it seemed like it began after realizing vicente looked like harsen, which i feel like only amplified her depression because she had so much pressure on her while being pregnant and the child bares no resemblance to her child so it’s as if that’s not even her baby even though she clearly gave birth to him. at least that’s how i’m understanding it. additionally, i don’t want to say it’s harsen’s fault but low key if he wasn’t such a useless and neglectful husband then i don’t think her hate for vicente would have gotten as bad as it did. this is only because vicente looks like harsen, and she was constantly missing harsen, but even though she could see harsen in vicente, she also hated the fact that they looked so alike so i feel like all of that brewed into something ugly. anyways i really hope he didn’t cheat. that’s unredeemable for me whether it’s modern or medieval society

Spoiler

but honestly i can’t stop being so angry at how disgusting harsen has been. i mean they’ve both been terrible parents, but it started from their terrible marriage. and ercella actually tried with that. harsen completely neglected her, ercella starts hating her baby, harsen completely neglects him too, harsen makes these just- like what he said to her was so absolutely disgusting after reading all of this, seeing him be so uncaring towards her and his son, he literally has no right yet he opened his damn mouth and used something that she confided in him about against her. it’s just the hypocrisy for me. i absolutely hate that bs

honestly they both made terrible “mistakes” mistakes in quotes because i feel that word is way too light to describe the bs atrocities they committed but i don’t think either one of them deserve hate for it. i never really had a chance to be mad at ercella because she was on her death bed and automatically went to regretting the way she treated vicente. i can’t completely hate pathetic people so... but just watching harsen’s bs first hand and then knowing he doesn’t even try to make himself better in the present is just so infuriating. like i said neither one of them deserve hate (?) but i’m just so... not even like mad mad. i’m like calmly irritated rn ig, i’m gonna move on as soon as i post this comment and start doing something else on my phone

 

[Gackt1]

More backstory got unveiled, more spechless I become. Trauma, feeling like stranger in your own house (both of them, while husband side of family greedy for his position, the wife feel like she is nobody - no one care for her opinion, no one to talk with and when she try to connect back with her old life, it doesn't go well), lack of communication and understanding... no wonder things turn out bad...

 

[kowoyoshi]

LOL, I actually find the lack of empathy towards harsen actually disturbing, lets see:-
[ul]Sent to War because he married out of love[/ul]
[ul]Was Force to become ruthless and became extremely busy because of the dutchdome because he became a successor over night[/ul]
[ul]Lost his only remain parent[/ul]
[ul]Had to actually EXECUTE HIS OWN FAMILY because they fought to remove him from power and take his place[/ul]

But everyone "oMg hArSen iS sO nEgLEcTFuL,HaRsEn BaD HuSBanD", harsen hasn't even gotten a moment to breathe, dude was literally thrown into this responsibility and has to carry the weight of that responbility if you can't recognize that weight as he LITERALLY had to purge his own family members if that doesn't direct the harsh reality of what's happening with Haresn not sure what is.

As for Ercella, she to had it hard as she lost her dad, developed postpartum depression and has no idea what to do and is neglected because Harsen is forced to look after the dukedom without checking her but if the last couple of scenes is any indication, harsen doesn't want her to get down and dirty in the work with him, like you think Ercella who not long came out of child birth can handle doing something like putting to death her in laws?

It's a shit situation for everyone involved honestly and I wonder if Harsen or Ercella had come to one another and confide in each other if, the neglectful abuse towards Vencette could've of been avoided.

 

[nancevv]

Ooohhhboi this is on of the reason why a motherlike figure (own/in law momma etc) to accompany a new mother is really REALLY needed and it's EVERYTHING ;-; uuu

Thanks for double chaps '-')7

p.s.
wait where's the usual kind elder lady tending the baby trope???! She didnt have one??!

 

[vonni604]

Honest question, does anyone believe that harsen was actually attracted to Ercella (like affection wise) when they first met and that was why he proposed marriage? Or do we think they just used each other?

 

[StellarIceberg]

@enyoteremchi the first princess is Ercella's older sister if I remember correctly. As Ercella's was going through a hard time he probably ordered the servants to block any sort of bad news from the mansion.
@kowoyoshi I totally agree on this one. Both of them were going through the hardest times of their life. Without a bit of communication between them, it all snowballed to the present.
Harsen's duties as the duke led him to undermine his responsibilities as a husband and Ercella's postpartum depression and anxiety that led her to believe that she was losing her beauty after giving birth and that was why Harsen no longer loved her made me unable to love her own child who greatly resembled Harsen.

 

[cookie_honey]

oh my goddd i feel so sad for ercelle!!

bad things keep happening on top of her pregnancy + hard birthing and just godd, no proper support from either the husband (due to literally all his duke responsibilites) and her own family (due to her father also being sick) liek damnnnn the time was bad for just everyone in the family

😢😢😢

 

[cookie_honey]

@kowoyoshi true! i dont understand the harsen hate also coz the situation was bad for literally all of them at the same time.