Part 4 of Poetry & Power: A Master Class with Shen Tao
Nobody picks up The Poet Empress planning to cry over Terren.
He's introduced as a prince who kills servants over badly poured tea. He tortures the heroine with magic, then heals her so no one can see what he's done. He's cruel to his enemies, his allies, his servants, and his animals.
And yet…
Scroll through reader reviews and you'll find the same confession over and over.
One reader admitted, "i hated him until around the 70/75% of the book."
Another summed it up in five words: "no one is born a villain."
So how did Shen Tao get readers there without ever letting Terren off the hook?
She built him in layers, where each one changes what you think you know about him, but none of them is the whole truth.
→ Catch up on the whole story in The Poet Empress Masterclass | How a Debut Became a Bestseller.
The Plot Reason Behind the Layers
Here's the clever part, and it's easy to miss.
Wei Yin has one reason to study Terren: she's trying to kill him.
The only spell strong enough to get past the ward that protects him is a poem that must be written with love. So to kill the man she hates, Wei first has to understand him well enough to love him.
That means every layer of Terren the reader uncovers, Wei is uncovering too, for her own reasons. As one reviewer put it, she digs into his childhood to "piece together" why he became the man he is.
The layering works because it's built into the plot. Wei needs to see Terren clearly, so we do too.
If your villain's backstory could be cut without changing a single event in your plot, it's decoration. Give your protagonist a reason to dig.
The Four Layers of Terren
Layer 1: The Monster
Terren's reputation arrives before he does. Wei (and the reader) hear the rumors first: the servants, the tea, the violence.
Then Tao confirms every rumor, and then some. He's untouchable, protected by a ward against any attack. He hurts Wei in private and erases the evidence. One reviewer called him "among the cruelest of antagonists I've read all year long."
Notice what Tao doesn't do here. She doesn't give any early hints that he's secretly soft (e.g. no sad glance out a window in chapter two).
Why does that matter? Because every later layer needs something to push against. And if you soften the monster too early, the reveal has nothing to overturn.
Try this: Write your villain's introduction as if the reader will never learn anything else about them. No foreshadowed sympathy, no hedging. Let the first impression be complete and frightening on its own terms.
Layer 2: The Cracks
Next, small things start slipping through.
Terren loves fish. During a blizzard, he tries to save the palace carp from freezing. After one of Wei's worst ordeals, he leaves her tea.
Tao doesn't explain any of it. There's no internal monologue, no speech about his hidden pain. The moments just happen, right next to the cruelty, and she moves on.
That's what makes them unsettling.
A crack is an action, never an explanation.
The moment you explain why your villain did something kind, you've closed the question. Leave it open, and your reader keeps turning pages to close it themselves.
Layer 3: The Boy
This is the layer that changes everything.
Through diary entries and recollections scattered across the book, Tao takes us back to Terren's childhood.
We meet a boy who adored his older brother, Maro. A boy who wanted to be loved in return.
And we learn what was done to him. He was abused by his own mother and exploited by the court long before he was old enough to understand it.
One reviewer described the effect of these chapters as "almost" having the reader "rooting for the villain."
Now look at when this layer arrives. Tao gives us the boy only after we've watched the man do terrible things.
Why does the order matter? Because sequence changes meaning. If we met the boy first, every cruelty afterward would read as a symptom, and we'd excuse him before he ever hurt anyone. Meeting the monster first means the backstory can explain him, but it can't pre-forgive him.
Layer 4: The Man Who Still Chooses
Here's where many sympathetic villains fall apart, and where Terren doesn't.
After the diary entries pull us into the past, Tao brings us back to the present. And the present hasn't changed.
Understanding why someone became cruel is different from forgiving them for staying cruel.
This final layer is what separates a complex villain from an excused one. The backstory explains him. His choices in the present keep him accountable.
Try this: After your villain's sympathetic reveal, write a scene where they choose harm again, fully aware of who they are and what it costs. If the reader's heart breaks a little while they watch, you've done it right.
Every Layer Adds, None Erases
Look at the four layers together.
The monster. The cracks. The boy. The man who still chooses.
Each layer complicates the one before it. None of them replaces it.
By the end, all four remain true.
That's how real people work. Your first impression of someone is never the full picture. Neither is your second, or your third. There's always another layer you haven't seen.
Tao's great achievement with Terren is that she never lets any single layer become "the truth" about him.
Understanding Is Not Forgiveness
This was deliberate.
Tao told Publishers Weekly that when Wei learns about Terren's traumatic past, "I wanted her specifically not to forgive him for it."
She's also said she didn't think of the book as a romance at all while writing it. (Which is interesting, given it was published by a romance imprint. More on that in the final post of this series.)
So Wei understands him. She may even come to love him, because the poem requires it. But she doesn't forgive him, and the book doesn't ask her to.
Tao has described Wei's own journey as closer to "a corruption arc." Wei changes too, and not always for the better.
→ Discover more about how Tao approached Wei's arc in Who Is Shen Tao? | 9 Manuscripts, 10 Years, 1 Debut.
This is exactly why literature matters.
Fiction lets us stand inside the life of someone we would never excuse in real life, and understand how they got there. That understanding leaves us wiser about how cruelty is made, and how easily it could be made again.
Empathy and accountability can live in the same book. The best fiction holds both.
Where Readers Push Back
Not every reader thinks Tao got the balance right, and their critiques are worth studying.
One essay argues that the book gives Terren's own trauma far more weight than the trauma he causes, and that it "forgets the humanity of his victims." Another reviewer couldn't connect his backstory to the sheer scale of his violence toward servants and animals.
Here's the hard truth for writers: those critiques point at a real risk.
The more layers you give your villain, the more page space and emotional attention they absorb. If the people they hurt stay flat, readers can end up grieving the abuser more than the abused. That's the opposite of what most authors intend.
And the reasons you give your villain need to match the scale of what they do. A backstory can explain cruelty toward one person more easily than cruelty toward everyone.
If your villain gets layers, the people they hurt deserve layers too.
The Dynasty That Made Him
Terren didn't become who he is alone.
The same dynasty that starved its villages also shaped its princes. Two brothers who once loved each other were turned into rivals by a court that needed a winner. Terren's layers are personal, but the forces behind them are political.
→ We go deep on this in The Pain of Power: The Poet Empress's Broken Dynasty. (coming soon!)
What Terren Teaches About Writing People
Most villains get one layer. The good ones get two.
Terren gets four, and Tao delivers each one in a specific order for a specific reason.
Commit to the monster. Let cracks show without explanation. Reveal the past only after the damage. Then let him choose again.
Write your villains the way you'd want to be understood yourself: fully, truthfully, and without anyone pretending the worst parts didn't happen.
Your readers may not forgive them.
But they'll never forget them either.
What does your first impression say about you?
Readers decided who Terren was the moment he walked on the page…and agents and readers decide who you are just as fast. Make sure your first impression shows the author you actually are.
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