what if the jiangs had stood with wei wuxian and the wens? the jiangs would have been crushed, their position was excruciatingly weak at that point.

for one, they were trying to rebuild the sect after the massacre at lotus pier, which takes money, manpower, and a lot of outside support: they didn't have the infrastructure to withstand being ostracized by the other sects at that point

i'm sure their political situation was extremely precarious too: jiang cheng would've had to unite the sect under his banner with absolutely nothing but his name. he didn't have a capital, he barely had an army, i'm sure their finances weren't exactly looking great

and madam yu had insinuated earlier that jiang cheng's political position was interesting, since jiang fengmian clearly favored wwx, clearly *didn't* favor jc, and wwx's parentage was frequently brought up in a way that insinuated he might be a threat to jc's claim to the sect

so like... jiang cheng was also navigating whatever internal politics would be involved in him, specifically, taking control of the sect as a 17 year old boy when there were undoubtedly whispers that, if jiang fengmian wasn't sure he could do it, why should anyone else be?

after the sunshot campaign, yunmeng was also politically isolated, since the alliance between lan xichen, nie mingjue, and jin guangyao effectively left yunmeng flapping in the wind and scrambling for allies

i imagine yanli's marriage into the jin family was a blessing, since that offered yunmeng some access to legitimacy and also to that sweet, sweet jin money & manpower, but wei wuxian also frequently & flippantly threatened that alliance so like... jc was in a real bad spot lmfao

allying himself with wei wuxian and the wens would have essentially been him upending this entire precariously arranged chessboard and dooming his sect, all in the name of... *checks notes* doing the right thing

like ultimately that choice was between doing what was morally right (and in doing so damning his sect to destruction or conquering) or buying peace with someone else's blood, and he made a sect leader's choice, for whatever worth that has

even wei wuxian recognized the position that jiang cheng and yunmeng jiang was in: that was the whole point of wei wuxian leaving the sect. he was trying to distance himself from yunmeng jiang so that his actions would no longer reflect on jc or the sect, to protect them