What does 'this venerable one' mean in danmei?

If you've read any danmei or xianxia in English, you've met a character who refers to himself as this venerable one. He is usually the head of a demonic sect, usually wearing black, and usually about to say something cutting. The phrase confuses new readers because it sounds like a title, and it is not. It is the word "I."

What 'this venerable one' means in Chinese

The Chinese is 本座 (běn zuò). 本 means "this" in the sense of "this here, the one speaking," and 座 means "seat." Literally, the speaker is calling himself "this seat," the way a judge or a bishop might be referred to by the chair they occupy. It belongs to a family of self-references that swap out the plain "I" for a statement about status: an emperor says 朕, a prince says 本王, a palace lady says 本宫, a young master says 本少爷. Chinese fiction uses these constantly, and each one tells the reader how the speaker sees the room.

What it says about the speaker

Using 本座 is a claim. The speaker is the head of something, a sect or a cult or a mountain, and is reminding everyone that he is speaking from the seat. In a righteous sect this would sound arrogant, so righteous leaders in fiction tend to use it less, or only in formal settings. Demonic sect leaders use it all the time, which is why the phrase has become shorthand for a certain kind of character: gorgeous, dangerous, and unable to say "pass the tea" without making it a decree. When such a character stops using it and says the plain "I," even once, Chinese readers hear a wall come down. That is the trick English keeps losing.

How translators handle it

There are three common choices, and each buys something.

Keep it literal as "this seat." It preserves the image and the strangeness, but most English readers hear furniture, and a line like "this seat is displeased" reads as a joke the author didn't make.

Render it as "this venerable one." This is the fan-translation standard and the reason you know the phrase at all. It captures the self-importance and marks the speaker every time he opens his mouth. What it loses is economy: 本座 is two syllables, and in a long, fast argument the English version turns every sentence into a small speech.

Translate it as "I" and carry the status elsewhere. The sentence reads naturally, and the translator leans on word choice and rhythm to make the speaker sound like a man who owns the mountain. This is what most licensed print editions do. It loses the marker completely, so the moment he drops 本座 for the plain pronoun, the moment Chinese readers feel, is invisible.

What we'd choose

We'd keep a marker, but a light one. "This venerable one" in the character's first scenes and in formal or furious speech, then plain "I" in ordinary conversation, matching how the Chinese actually shifts. The wording matters less than consistency: if a translator uses the phrase in chapter three, the reader should be able to trust that the same word behind it gets the same treatment in chapter three hundred, so that the one time it changes, the change means something. An invented example: a sect leader saying "this venerable one does not repeat himself" at the start of a book, and then, much later, "I was wrong." If both lines were rendered as "I," the second one would be just another sentence.

How to read it comfortably

Read "this venerable one" as tone rather than a name. It's a raised chin. Once you hear it that way it stops slowing you down and starts telling you who is about to lose an argument.

For a translation that keeps this choice the same from the first chapter to the last, so that the day he finally says "I" you actually notice, read it in Crossleaf.