Honor of Kings World Sparks Gender Controversy by Using Obscure Variant Character 「姪」 Instead of 「侄」

A seemingly insignificant Chinese character has thrown Honor of Kings World into the spotlight — players discovered that the standard character 「侄」(zhí, meaning nephew/niece) was swapped for the archaic variant 「姪」, which carries the female radical 女. Outrage ensued.

The issue surfaced when eagle-eyed players noticed that in-game dialogue — where a character addresses himself as an elderly man (「老夫」) — used 「姪」 instead of the officially standardized 「侄」. According to China's National Standard Character Table (《通用规范汉字表》), 「姪」 is classified as an obsolete variant of 「侄」 and appears only in traditional/variant character cross-reference lists. As one player complained, you'd have to scroll through dozens of pages in your Chinese input method just to type this obscure character.

The comment section exploded. One user quipped: "NetEase and Tencent — what's going on with these two companies blowing up one after another?" Another sighed: "The game is already dying this badly, just let it go." The internet's favorite "pig and goose" (NetEase and Tencent) rivalry was trotted out again: "Pig and goose forever — a pair of star-crossed lovers indeed."

Internet sleuths went deep on possible hidden meanings. One user did an elaborate breakdown: 「姪」 can be split into 「女」(female) and 「至」(zhì), and the combined pronunciation vaguely resembles 「吕雉」(Lü Zhi) — historically the first recorded empress to have a rival mutilated into a "human swine" (人彘). The word for swine (彘, zhì) sounds identical to 至. While this etymological chain is admittedly a stretch, the core question remains: why use such an obscure character at all?

A well-researched commenter provided a philological deep-dive: in classical Chinese, 「姪」 referred to how a woman addresses her brother's children — the "caller" must be female, while the person being addressed could be of any gender. The character was still in use through the Qing dynasty, appearing in classics like Dream of the Red Chamber. But none of that justifies using it in place of the modern standard 「侄」 in a game that otherwise uses contemporary vernacular Chinese. Another user confirmed: "In modern standardized usage, '侄' is the universal character. Using '姪' here while writing the rest of the text in modern vernacular can't possibly be for antiquarian authenticity — it's deliberate."

A particularly thorough commenter dismantled the dialogue's own inconsistency: the character calls himself both 「老夫」(an archaic self-address) and 「我」(the modern first person pronoun) in the same passage — wanting to sound authoritative but unable to resist modern phrasing. They also pointed out that 「姪」 historically shared a reading with 「耋」, a character previously flagged by radical feminists as misogynistic. So what exactly is the intent behind using 「姪」 here? Their verdict: "If you're unhappy with official standards, debate it privately. Shoving it into a published product? I smell bad intentions."

Some commenters took a lighter approach: "Last time I saw this character was in the title of a... manga (doujinshi)," and another noted, "This character does appear in history books — Emperor Wu of Han's mother was named 王娡. But using it as equivalent to '侄' is extremely niche. I can't think of any reason other than a feminist dog whistle."

All told, this is far more than a simple typo. With Tencent working overtime to rebuild its reputation, having a character so obscure that even your phone keyboard can't easily produce it pop up in official game text raises serious questions about editorial intent. As one commenter put it: "Tencent has been busting its ass trying to salvage some goodwill, and then some 'sister' changes one character and wipes it all out — I can't help but laugh." Whether the official response addresses this directly remains to be seen.