Loulan

Lady Loulan (楼蘭, Rouran) is a secondary character in The Apothecary Diaries. She is a member of the Shi Clan and the second former Pure Consort of the Garnet Pavilion, succeeding Ah-Duo after she was forced into the position by her father, Prime Minister Shishou, in order to gain influence over the Inner Court.

Appearance

Loulan is a fair skinned young woman with long black hair and dark-golden eyes. Her hair is portrayed as a shade of dark plum in the anime,^[3] while it is portrayed as dark purple in the manga.^[2]

As a consort, Loulan often wore extravagant and exotic clothing and jewelry, having sourced from a variety of different locations and styles. She always wore heavy makeup, concealing the details of her face and making it hard for others to discern her features. Loulan's outfits were seen as excessive even for a high-ranking consort.

Personality

On the surface, Loulan can be described as an aloof and enigmatic individual, given that she doesn't reveal much of her personality to anyone around her. Because it seems like she lacks emotions all together, given the fact that her overbearing mother is the root cause to the "puppet-like" personality she possesses, in truth, she is a free-willed person who strongly cares for both her family and the clan's children from where she hails from.

Abilities

Influence: As a high consort, Loulan held some power within the inner and outer court. However, most of her influence came from her father, a man highly favored by the late Empress Regnant.

Intelligence: Loulan is very cunning, to the point that she is described as a "vixen".

Entomology: Loulan loves insects and is knowledgeable enough to predict the locust swarms that would plague the Western Capital.

Background

Loulan was born to Prime Minister Shishou and his wife Shenmei. Her half-sister Suirei, born to her father's late wife, was abused by Shenmei, but Loulan and Suirei were close, to the point the latter taught her the basics of herbal medicine. However, because of her mother's tyrannical hold over the family, Loulan was forced to feign ignorance to the injustice faced by her sister and father.

Eventually, Loulan was sent to replace Ah-Duo as the next Pure Consort. Despite her position, she often kept to herself, not caring about the politics and power struggles of the Inner Palace. Instead, she would disguise herself as the palace maid Shisui in order to play around with insects and chat with Maomao and Xiaolan. She hid her secret exploits of galavanting to rear palace by having her own attendants to dress up as her and take her place — a feat made possible by her heavy, constantly-changing makeup, and wardrobe which rendered others unable to see her true face not to mention her quiet rarely speaking demeneor. As a result people assumed and differences between her and her rotating attendents were simply the result of a new style. While she is out of the Garnet Pavilion in her alter-ego disguise, she picks one of her ladies-in-waiting to portray her. Once Jinshi found this out while looking for Loulan as he had carefully memorized the features and names of all the ladies-in-waiting of the Imperial Harem. At the time, it turned out to be Renpu, but he initially thought it was Sourin. Her staff was reputed to be the largest in the Imperial Harem at over fifty ladies-in-waiting and servant girls.^[6]

When she learned that the Shi Clan would be eradicated, Loulan succesfully schemed for her young relatives to survive by exchanging information with Jinshi, with the promise he would use the resurrection drug on them and ensure their protection.

Trivia

• During a trip to the baths Maomao is impressed at Shisui's ample bosom. In hindsight, this is a subtle sign of her true identity as the Pure Consort, considering the current emperor is notorious for his preference of well-developed and endowed women.

References

External links

• Official anime S1 character webpage (in Japanese)
• Official anime S2 webpage (in Japanese)