preetam said:
Me after so many episodes I just can't feel for the "heroes". And one can see how Thep mom has never like Yodlah :/
Well if I were her, I wouldn't like her either. Just imagine if your were in her place. Her son wronged Yordlah, but she comes to their house, immediately steals her sister's husband (which suggests that that was the point of her visit), and doesn't bother trying to get to know Thep's family at all. She spends her entire time with Thep and lords her victory over Dararai to her face. All she knows about Yordlah is what Yordlah has shown her since her arrival. There really isn't anything about her to like. Unless you can point out something that I missed that shows Yordlah in a favorable light that his mother blatantly disregarded because she was unreasonably prejudiced against her, but I think his mother's feelings toward Yordlah are reasonable and justified according to what she's seen and experienced.
beamsgirl said:
I feel bad for Yodlah too. She may be annoying and dumb but she was being lied to and being used. And the two people she loves the most didn't have the decency to tell her from the beginning that they met first and are in love? They carried out her engagement up until "hey! surprise, we're getting married and you? Well you have to watch us live happily ever after."
By saying that, you're dismissing the heartache Dararai went through to come to the decision of stepping aside for her sister, as if she coldheartedly and heartlessly set out to give Yordlah hopes only to snatch it away at the last second - which was not what happened, nor how it played out. Yes, the decent thing to do would have been to tell her sister about her past with Luang Thep, but by this time, Yordlah was already engaged to him and deeply in love with him. How shameless would it have been for Dararai to approach her sister and say, "I knew Luang Thep first and I'm in love with him, so please step aside"? I mean, I'm not sure what telling Yordlah the truth at this point would have accomplished except to make her step aside, so if Dararai tells her the truth, she's shameless and selfish; if she doesn't, she's indecent and still selfish?
beamsgirl said:
I mean, who wouldn't have taken it that way? Yodlah was confused and heart broken over losing her fiance to her sister, and then right after that, all these lies poured in. It may be easy for us and for outsiders to see, but for her and anyone else in her shoes (just as it is for victims in abusive cases), it's hard for her to see the situation that she's in especially when she's filled with anger and grief and heart break. I believe she loves her sister dearly but because she loves her sister so much, she is that angry that her sister would take her fiance (of course it's the other way around but people waited centuries to let her know the truth).
I admit that for Yordlah that's exactly what it must have looked like, but everything you say also supports exactly what I think of Yordlah: that she only believes what she wants to believe. People seem to think that because she was lied to by her mom, her servants, and later lied to and manipulated by her teacher, she's not accountable for her actions. The teacher may have manipulated Yordlah, but he didn't make her do anything against her will. She consciously made her own decisions, even if they were misguided. People also seem to think that Yordlah is easily misguided and gullible. I don't see her that way at all. On the contrary, she's strong-minded and stubborn. For years her mom has been telling her lies about Dararai, but there was never any indication that she ever believed her mom or that deep down she even harbored a tiny seed of belief. She was smart enough to realize that her mom was speaking from her own jealousy and insecurities, so I'm supposed to believe that all of a sudden Yordlah lost the ability to reason and come to her own conclusions?
Another point that backs up my theory that Yordlah believes what she wants to believe is the situation with her father. Her father clearly loved her the most, but because what he said didn't support her own beliefs, she accused him of not loving her and of betraying her by siding with Dararai. Another example is her reaction to Khru Basri. When he foretold that the two sisters would fight over one man, she believed his words, but after she met him and he criticized her (well it wasn't a criticism but a suggestion that she study Dharma so that she doesn't harbor evil thoughts and take the wrong path in life), suddenly, she dismisses him as a quack. Even when Tripope told her the truth, she refused to believe it because it was contrary to her own beliefs. So if you ask me if I feel sorry for Yordlah, the answer is yes because she suffered heartache and betrayal, but that's the extent of my feelings toward her. No matter how misguided she was or how much pain she suffered, it doesn't make what she's doing right, nor does it give her the green light to create havoc. Yes, I can understand why she's doing what she's doing, but unlike popular belief, I don't see her as a pawn in her teacher's quest for revenge; I see her as someone who's a willing pawn because it's what she already believes or wants to believe, therefore, to her it's the truth. If she didn't believe it, she never would, just like it was with her mom's lies the entire time she was growing up or all the times now when Dao and Tri are trying to tell her the truth. Yordlah will never believe the truth until she wants to.
This doesn't mean I think Dararai and Luang Thep are blameless or right. There were things they could have done differently, but at this point I'm not sure the outcome would have been different because there's nothing to suggest that Yordlah would have stepped aside for Dararai if she had told her the truth - not because she doesn't love Dararai (because she does), but because Yordlah has never had to give up anything for Dararai. Yordlah loves her sister and would do anything for her, but because she's never had to sacrifice anything (that we know of), there's no telling that she would have, especially if he was the man she loved. She doesn't even take criticism well because she's so used to praise. But for Dararai, she looks up to her sister, and based on human nature, the one who looks up to the other person would be the one more willing to sacrifice for the other. Dararai may have been wrong to keep the truth from her sister, but I'm not sure I would have done it any differently. As for Luang Thep, I do sympathize with his dilemma, but his actions were selfish and cowardly. He should have done the honorable thing and married Yordlah or done the honorable thing by calling it off and explaining the truth to her. Instead, he forced Dararai to be in a situation that made it impossible for her to refuse marrying him.
Either way, they were all wrong in some way. No one was completely innocent, but even if you believe that Yordlah is "more innocent," that doesn't make her more right.