Painter Of The Night: Rumors and The Yoons

This is where you can read the manhwa. https://www.lezhinus.com/en/comic/painter But be aware that this manhwa is a mature Yaoi, which means, it is about homosexuality with explicit scenes. If you want to read more essays, here is the link to the table of contents:  https://bebebisous33analyses.wordpress.com/2020/07/04/table-of-contents-painter-of-the-night/

It would be great if you could make some donations/sponsoring: Ko-fi.com/bebebisous33  That way, you can support me with “coffee” so that I have the energy to keep examining.

This won’t be a long analysis but the new chapter from the second season made me realize the importance of rumors. In one of my former essays, I discovered that there were two different kind of gossips:

1. The one among the nobles, where Yoon Seungho is condemned for his relationship with the painter.
2. The one among the commoners, where people believe that Yoon Seungho has now a fiancée.

After giving some thoughts, I realized that there were also rumors in the first season but I never really paid attention to the origins of the gossips. If we pay attention to the rumors about the Yoons, we’ll notice there are two different kind of rumors circulating about this family. In the chapter 13, Lee Jihwa insults Yoon Seungho as filthy libertine and describes that Yoon Seungho is from a declining family.

Then in the chapter 22, Yoon Seungho replies to the low noble that he knows about the existence of his bad notoriety.

Notice the contrast between these two rumors. On the one side, they are described as if they were losing their influence, on the other side the Yoons are called as wealthy but uncultured. This looks like a contradiction, yet there is none. The declining family is actually referring to Yoon Seung-Won and his father who are losing their influence because they have no official post, whereas the wealthy but uncultured family is an allusion to Yoon Seungho. Since he decided to keep his distance from the government, he put all his strength and knowledge in order to get power through trade. That’s how he became powerful and influential, while his father and his younger brother had no power any longer, as they were living too far away from the capital and the government. Now, the manhwaphiles understand better why the brother visited his brother and asked him to visit their father. By reconnecting to the eldest son, they hoped to use his money but also his connection to get some influence but they were turned down. With his help, they could have got a direct nomination as official, however the eldest son refused to follow the request. Through Jihwa’s curse, we can detect that the red-haired noble looks down on Yoon Seungho because of his father. Since the father’s influence is in declin, then

Yoon Seungho might keep his distance from the officials, however he has definitely power and can use his connection to get a government post. I doubt that he was lying to the painter, when he threatened him in the chapter 11.

Now, we can better comprehend why the nobles were attracted by Yoon Seungho despite his terrible reputation.

He was powerful through his trade and his connections and the nobles needed his help, either because of his wealth or because of his closeness to officials. It becomes even clearer why Jihwa claimed in the chapter 18 that in fact he had been using Yoon Seungho all along. Therefore the sex sessions with the seme were a sort of prostitution. They approached him for their own interests, however the main lead was aware of that and chose to humiliate them with his sex sessions. That’s why he abhors prostitution and was happy to have found someone so pure. Now, you realize the importance of the hearsay. The nobles are the ones spreading these rumors about Yoon Seungho. He is uncultured because he does commerce and deals with commoners. They need to spray this gossip in order to keep their dignity and remain honorable. They use grapevine in order to tarnish the main lead’s reputation as they can’t accept that they have to lower themselves in order to get what they need from the protagonist.

No wonder why Yoon Seungho is so confident about his influence and never looked down on Baek Na-Kyum despite his humble origins. Yoon Seungho is already an outcast among the aristocrats and Jihwa tried to use the rumor in order to force him to keep his distance from the painter.

As you can detect, the hearsay is among the young nobles and the red-haired lord is trying to use this as a weapon to weaken the rich master. This doesn’t surprise us that the seme refuses to submit to this kind of pressure and even replies that he will make sure that this rumor will become true. This would ridicule more the young nobles. Right from the start, the rumors are a weapon of the nobles targeting the protagonist. Consequently, the manhwaphiles grasp better why in the second season Yoon Seungho is also using gossip among commoners to get support, to change his reputation. He is a transformed man. At the same time, it outlines how powerful and influential Yoon Seungho is. He is not seeking for an official post because of his traumatic past, yet he learnt due to his bad experience that he needed money to protect himself and through his fortune, he could create his own network without getting too close to the government. This also explains why he hates nobility and even feels closer to merchants and commoners. This arrogance among the nobility towards Yoon Seungho doesn’t surprise me at all. In France before French Revolution, the bourgeoisie was also despised by the aristocracy, although the high bourgeoisie was even richer than some old families among the nobility.

The nobles needed to turn Yoon Seungho into an unrefined noble because they couldn’t accept that despite his declining family and his terrible reputation as sodomite, he was more influential than them. I don’t think that he lied to Jung In-Hun and Baek Na-Kyum about his power,

however the irony is that he never said clearly that he would give Jung In-Hun a government post. When he says “our”, he is actually speaking about himself and not his other relatives.

Because of this, I have the impression that once Jung In-Hun realizes that he has been abandoned by Yoon Seungho and Baek Na-Kyum, he will turn his attention to Seung-Won and his father as they represent the old and traditional nobility, whereas Yoon Seungho is a loner. Due to his family, he belongs to the aristocracy, yet he decided to develop his influence through commerce thereby I suspect that Jung In-Hun will look down on him for mixing with commoners and will attempt to help the Yoons (father and son) unaware that they might use him as his pawn and sell him to an old official.

As you can observe, with each new chapter, we get new info which helps us to perceive the older episodes in a different perspective.

Feel free to comment. If you have any suggestion for topics or manhwas, feel free to ask. If you enjoyed reading it, retweet it or push the button like. My twitter/tumblr account is: @bebebisous33. Thanks for reading and the support.