Character Blog #6: The design process of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom

(full pic here)

Nǐ hò! It’s been a good while since the previous character blog; mid January to be exact! Several months has passed since, and as I am writing this it’s already Holy Week in the Christian calendar.

Holy moly, how time has passed…

Speaking of holy, let me regale you a sermon about a ‘pious’, God-fearing lady. A nun too holy. A devout follower of a man who claimed to be Jesus’ little brother. Like the man she follows, she is a lady who totally comes in peace, a great peace even, and has no psychopathic tendencies whatsoever. So join me today as we go through the design process and inspiration of Waifu Britannica’s resident murder nun known as Taiping.

Now Taiping is based off the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and she is a character I particularly wanted to get right (or at least something I want to be really proud of) because my family’s history to the Taiping Rebellion. The founder of my family was part of the same Hakka Hong clan as Hong Xiuquan (the leader of the rebellion), and was forced to flee China due to Qing prosecution of the Hong clan after the rebellion was crushed. So even before I started designing there was a bias to make her really special among the cast of Waifu Britannica.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What is this Taiping Rebellion? And who is this self proclaimed brother of Jesus? Knowing these is important to provide context on Taiping’s visual design process.

The Taiping Rebellion was a civil war in China that lasted from 1850 to 1864, fought between the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the Qing Empire. The rebels aimed at overthrowing the ruling Manchus and transforming China into the image of their own version of Christianity. At its peak, the Heavenly Kingdom controlled a large chunk of Southern China, whose armies consisted of devout followers as well as disgruntled anti-Manchu fighters.

The rebellion is considered to be one of the bloodiest wars in history with 20-30 millions dead, surpassing even the death toll of World War I. The conflict plunged the Qing Empire further into decline, and the death and destruction left in its wake contributed to the instability and further rebellions that led to the end of the Qing dynasty. And all of this happened because some guy had visions that he was the brother of Jesus after a mental breakdown from failing his exams.

Still made a name of himself despite flunking his exams. Inspirational. I’m still waiting for his TED Talk.

Born to a Hakka family in Guangdong province, Hong Xiuquan (birth name Hong Huoxiu) was groomed from an early age to enter the civil service. His family spent a great deal of their finances to fund his education so that he may pass the extremely brutal civil service examinations. And although he passed the local-level examination, at the provincial-level exams in Guangzhou he failed.

And he kept on failing, again and again.

After his third attempt and failure, he suffered a mental breakdown and was ill for days. During his state of delirium he claimed to have had visions of visiting Heaven, where a heavenly father told him of of his celestial family, his celestial older brother, and his mission to slay the demons infesting Heaven. At the time he did not understand his visions, but after his fourth failure in the examinations that he began to reinterpret it as a vision coming from the Abrahamic God, and that his older brother was Jesus Christ, after reading the Christian pamphlets he had received from Guangzhou many years prior. After this revelation, he made it his mission to bring all of China to his interpretation of Christianity, and burn all away the old order that came before him.

Reenactment.

To keep a long story short, he eventually amassed a large following into his ‘God Worshipping Society’ which alarmed Qing authorities, causing them to attack the God Worshippers which failed. The failed attack on them, which eventually was called the Jintian Uprising, marked the start of the rebellion. Hong Xiuquan would then establish the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, with him as its Heavenly King.

Both sides committed massive atrocities on the civilian population during the civil war. Hong Xiuquan would order the massacres of tens of thousands of Manchus, women and children included, while the Qing forces would massacre the civilian population of Taiping held cities, with ethnic Hakkas specifically targeted. Hong Xiuquan himself would die during the rebellion, dying of illness in 1864 during the siege of Nanjing. Though his uprising against the Qing had failed, he would eventually inspire future Chinese leaders such as Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong.

The depopulation of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui prefectures after the rebellion.

So that is more or less the history of the Taiping Rebellion and the man who started it. While the conflict is undeniably complex, most people would know two things about it; it was one of the bloodiest in conflicts in human history, and the guy who started it said he’s Jesus’ younger brother. While it is regrettable to boil down the conflict to just that, they are useful into simplifying Taiping’s design philosophy into two themes; violence and theocratic.

Would you like to join her Bible study sessions?

The ‘violence’ part of the design process was going to influence her personality, and very quickly I was drawn to the anime trope of yanderes, an unhinged love-obsessed person, specifically to the more psychopathic depictions of them. To me I figured this made sense; the senseless bloodbath caused by the Taiping Rebellion was because one guy started having delusions after suffering a mental break. So Taiping is obsessed with following the teachings of Hong Xiuquan, and she’s willing to unleash delusional, holy fury to fulfill his goals.

Now that the general idea on how she acts like was made, it was time to actually translate this into a design. The Blue Archive character Tsurugi first came to mind when I was working on Taiping’s expression, something creepy yet cute in a way. Then I looked to classic yanderes like Yuno Gasai, and I figured that kind of unhinged expression was perfect for her. A straightforward and classic ‘yandere’ look should send a clear enough message that there’s something… off with her.

Now that her expression has been decided, it was time to translate it into a design. I eventually decided to give her a gothic look, to fit both her planned Church aesthetic and because I felt it enhances the creepiness/unsettlingness of her. Pokemon’s Hex Maniac, probably one of the more popular creepy goth girls, was one of the main inspirations for Taiping’s goth look. I really liked the purple hues of the Hex Maniac, since it gives off this creepy vibes, so I incorporated purple into the design through Taiping’s hair colours (and the Hex Maniac’s hair length too since I felt it enchances the ‘unhingedness’). Shiori Novella of Hololive English was also another major inspiration, the face of her VTuber model has this very striking look that would work perfect with Taiping’s unhinged expression. Shiori’s eyes were in fact the inspiration of Taiping’s own eyes. Taiping’s physical design was then finished off with dragon horns, a staple of WB’s China girls.

What a lovely lady. I’m sure she wouldn’t kill 30 million people.

Designing the murder nun

(note: the nuns here aren’t the actual references I used, since the ones I used were personal drawings of artists posted on Twitter)

Lies I tell to my Discord server (please don’t let it be Taiping at the confessional)

Moving on to her outfit, early on I knew I wanted a nun look for her to reflect the theocratic nature of the Heavenly Kingdom. Many of the sexy nuns in Eastern media tend to be a hybrid between a nun outfit and a Chinese qipao, with its long side slits. For Taiping’s sexy nun outfit, I wanted to make that hybridization even more apparent by making it basically a Chinese dress but with some Catholic elements here and there. And yes, while the history buffs reading this would know that the God Worshippers weren’t Catholics (they were actually Protestants) and probably never had nuns wearing Western nun outfits…

Uhhh…

I don’t care. That is my argument >:(

I will get my sexy nun outfit grrrrrr

Overall, I’m very happy how her nun outfit turned out; a combination of Christian(-ish) and Orientalist elements, as well as being very pleasing to look at. The heavenly little bro’s strongest missionary.

Now that I’ve gotten my sexy nun, how do I tie her back to the Heavenly Kingdom? To solve this I took a look at a picture of a statue of Hong Xiuquan in Nanjing. On his statue I noticed he was holding a jian (a type of Chinese sword), either as a reference to the sword he claimed God gave him in his vision, or his demon-slaying swords he commissioned during his ‘Earthly mission’. In any case, I decided to equip her with said jian, so that she can pretend to be slaying demons as she’s committing horrific massacres against a civilian population.

Another piece of accessory I added to her were the little long strips of cloth hanging from her nun habit. And written on it are religious verses of her beliefs (God is the Father. Hong Xiuquan is His Son). I thought it was a very fitting article of clothing for a religious fanatic like her; a nice piece to top off her design.

(Btw fun fact, there’s an alternative text for her fascist alt)

I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about

Overall, I am very, very happy with how her design turned out! While many artists sometime feel like what they’ve drawn doesn’t match what they’ve envisioned -and I’ve felt that many times myself- Taiping’s design was beyond my expectations. I’m very happy that my vision of an evil Orientalist Christian nun turned out better than expected, and Taiping can be both cute and alluring when she’s calm, and crazy and creepy when she’s unhinged.

Taiping is definitely one of my favourites among the WB OCs (and even when the Waifu Universalis girls are accounted for), and the folks at the WB Discord server seems to see eye-to-eye too! Taiping is a community favourite, and was even voted as the most popular China girl in the WB Discord, comfortably beating fellow China-girl vixen Beiyang in a community poll with a surprising lead.

Taiping definitely has her fans. Perhaps her proselytising efforts has finally paid off.

You go king/queen

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And that is the end of the character blog! Thank you for reading to the end. I apologise for taking this long between Blog #5 to Blog #6; unfortunately writing this blog takes time and I had to prioritise other things between these three months. Since I’m not sure when Blog #7 might be out (and considering the popularity of Taiping), I’ll be releasing this blog into public access two weeks after publication, so I hope the paid supporters are fine with that. So see you again in Blog #7 (whenever that is)!