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Princess Weiyoung is determined to seek revenge for the killing of her entire family/clan. But what happens when she falls for the enemy?
I really liked the premise of this story - but at 23 episodes in - it got too repetitive. Princess Weiyong's 'stepfamily' abuse her and undercut her at every turn in incredibly obvious ways. Frankly, almost every character is out to get her.
The brave but bumbling love interest hurts as much as he helps. He can't understand that Princess Weiyong's family are abusive and that his own family is conspiring against them.
I liked that Princess Weiyoung rescues herself because everyone around her is incompetent...but it wasn't like her rescues were impressive or unique.
I grade on other criteria:
Complex Themes - 5
The only person who can rescue you is you. Judge people based on their actions not based on their family or reputation.
Character Growth -3
None that really stuck with me. Perhaps there is a twist later that changes the two main characters. I didn't get there. 3 points because the character Li Changru was really intriguing, complex, and the actress was able to show the layers of the character really well.
Nuanced Women -3
Li Changru is a real fascinating character, but the rest are Cinderella story caricatures.
Cinematography/Production Values - 6
Every once in awhile, there will be a really gorgeous cinematic take, but generally the costumes, makeup and hair look a bit garish and cheap. Cinematography is mostly serviceable - just captures long shots and reaction shots.
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You may love it or hate it.
This story is about Princess Feng Xin Er/Li wei young., how she overcome all types of problems. She is smart, resilient and kind. The whole story is a rollercoaster, you will be laughing, crying and hating characters in every single episode.About Luo Jin/Tuo Ba Jun, I love you, period.
At some point it became repetitive, you already knew what is going to happen, so it may feel slow sometimes. However, the acting, cinematography, clothes, music, were on point. I will watch again, as soon as I can get over that ending (good, but expecting more).
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Great movie
I loved the story and the actors. I loved the fact that the main two characters and together in real life !!! The main actrice is so beautiful as well as the two main male characters! Even if it is an imaginative story, it still is fun and great to watch. Also the music from the movie and soundtrack is great. I enjoyed every episode so much! The chemistry between Tang Yan and Lou Jin is amazing and also the other love stories and so beautiful. The fights are just like in stories for kids but other aspects of the story is valid no matter of the time scale. It is a very well don movie indeedWas this review helpful to you?
This review may contain spoilers
Loved it
Historical dramas are definitely my thing, and this was the second Chinese drama I ever watched. I loved how strong the female lead was, and how the show took a very feminist angle! While pursuing romance, the female lead also seeks to enact revenge. Weiyoung is smart, witty and driven. So, she becomes the empress in the end,I also loved the male lead, and his devotion to the female lead. It helps that the couple are married in real life, because their chemistry is insane. I cried so much at the ending, the villains did not give them a chance to have a happy life at all.
Now onto the villains, as much as I hate Changle and Changru, they were awesome villains to watch. They were determined to get what they wanted no matter who they hurt. It made for an entertaining show.
The only part of the show I didn’t like was the second male lead, I felt nothing for him, and I didn’t like his braids!
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A touching and well acted story
I'm a sucker for these extravagant, powerful, touching historical dramas. I would rank Princess Weiyoung high up along with Ashes of Love. The series was engaging and interesting and can easily be watched repeatedly.The acting is superb in Princess Weiyoung. From the two main leads to the secondary characters and even the smaller characters in between. I'm really impressed with the ML and FL and read online that they're married in real life. How fun!!!
Princess Weiyoung is a dynamic story of history, war, love, tragedy, enemies, friendship, and a whole lot of court drama. The clever plotlines of the enemies particularly the two Princes, made this story so much fun.
Overall, Princess Weiyoung is a clever and well written story. The acting is phenomenal, you can't help but root for the two leads, but also feel a connection with the others.
The Prince Na'an did a splendid job. He was a cold and emotionally disconnected person. But also a bit ambiguous in nature. I couldn't help but feel bad for him due to his abusive childhood which caused so much PTSD. Therefore i think that was why he was the way he was.
A somewhat tragic ending but at least the ML and FL had some happy years together.
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Second time watching and it did not hold up to scrutiny
Princess Wei Young was the second C drama I watched and I suspect the novelty of something other than Hollywood or franchise movies made this seem much more interesting than it actually is otherwise I wouldn't have given in to nostalgia and chosen to watch it again. First off, the lead characters were insufferable and whoever chose to have a whiny arse childish hero and a martyr complex heroine did us a disservice. By the time we reached the 25th episode most of the characteristics that I liked about the leads were reduced to them being/doing/speaking irrationally.What the heck happened to Tuoba Jun and Wei Young? The initial 10 stars is now reduced to 3.5.
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A rather disappointing series despite the casting.
I made the mistake of watching this series just after "The rebel princess" (with a top cinematic quality)... Suddenly, everything seemed cheap: the costumes, the abuse of the green screen for outdoor filming, choreographies with cables, etc.PLOT: The FL, princess of a kingdom decimated following a conspiracy and the last survivor of the family, joins the neighboring kingdom to take revenge. She claims to be one of the Prime Minister's daughters. She meets (again) the ML, imperial grandson, who cannot help but come to her aid when she is in danger. They will gradually fall in love, but have to face multiple obstacles and struggles for power, to survive and be together.
PROS:
+ An epic saga with 54 episodes.
+ very good actors and lots of endearing characters
+ the OSTs accompany the emotions well.
+ an almost realistic and credible story
BUT
### cheap costumes & very abusive use of cables
### slow narration. OK, the journey to power is long, but the series lacks rhythm => so, I followed certain narrative arcs in dotted lines.
### I can understand the excessive ambition of some characters, but I'm frankly fed up with stubborn "one-side" lovers despite repeated rejections...
### some characters are not credible: the angry emperor, the evil "super warrior" Chi Yun Nan, etc.
### I don't know if it's the subtitles' fault, but a lot of dialogue seems flat, even offbeat.
=> I will not rewatch this series, which for my part, I found rather disappointing despite the casting.
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J'ai fait l'erreur de regardé cette série juste après "The rebel princess" (d'une qualité cinématographique) ... Du coup, tout parait cheap : les costumes, l'utilisation du fonds vert pour les tournages en extérieur, les chorégraphies avec câbles, etc.
PLOT: La FL, princesse d'un royaume décimé à la suite d'une conspiration et dernière survivante de la famille, rejoint le royaume voisin pour se venger. Elle prétend être une des filles du 1e ministre. Elle rencontre (à nouveau) le ML, petit-fils impérial, qui ne peut pas s'empêcher de venir à son secours quand elle est en danger. Ils vont peu à peu tomber amoureux, mais devront affronter de multiples obstacles et les luttes pour le pouvoir, pour survivre et être ensemble.
PROS:
+ grande saga de 54 épisodes, épique.
+ de très bons acteurs et beaucoup de personnages attachants
+ les OST accompagnent bien les émotions.
+ une story à peu prés réaliste et crédible
### costumes cheap & usage très abusif des câbles
### narration lente. OK, le parcours est long vers le pouvoir, mais la série manque de rythme => du coup, j'ai suivi certains arcs narratifs en pointillés.
### Je peux comprendre l'ambition démesurée de certains personnages, mais j'en ai franchement marre des amoureux "one-side" obstinés malgré les rejets à répétition ...
### certains personnages ne sont pas crédibles : l'empereur colérique, le "super guerrier" evil Chi Yun Nan, etc.
### je ne sais pas si c'est la faute des subtitles, mais beaucoup de dialogues paraissent plats, voire décalés.
=> je ne revisionnerai pas à nouveau cette série, que pour ma part j'ai trouvé plutôt décevante malgré le casting.
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Underdeveloped story filled with clichés and steretypical troupes
I wasn't attracted to this drama when Netflix kept putting it up on my recommendation because, despite having a female protagonist, I had a feeling it would just be another stereotypically C-PeriodDrama offering that plays out in a male dominated storyline where the female protag still needs men to rescue her at every turn. In the first few minutes, it seemed that this might not be the case as the princess protag was actually cherished even though she wasn't a prince (where usually having a prince is the utmost achievement in Asian monarchies). Plus she seemed to be able to take care of herself as she displayed some martial arts abilities. Unfortunately, an episode later my suspicions were proven to be correct and I realised that the first few minutes had been lies to bait me in. I did end up watching the rest of this series because I have a certain weakness for men in period drama WITH LONG HAIR!!! And Princess Weiyoung, unfortunately, really really delivered on this!Firstly, don't watch it if you're expecting a series with a good female protag. She's not. Otherwise, read on for spoilers...
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To say that I was disappointed with the storyline, or the lack thereof, is an understatement. Maybe it was too much for me to expect that the trigger for the princess's journey would also be the task that was on her mind. Because of the machinations of an ambitious general, her family gets wiped out in a fake coup allegation and her people are enslaved. Her father and grandmother are killed before her very eyes and the people involved are seared in her memory. True, her grandmother had advised her to not pursue revenge and instead pursue a simple life of stability and happiness but when she meets someone whose identity is, by a quirk of fate, quite intimately tied with the perpetrators of the dastardly deeds she had decided on exacting justice (because what is revenge but justice obtained through other means?) for her father and her people already... so why didn't she commit?
For the rest of the fifty-four series long blah we get a repetitive cycle of Weiyoung being framed then saved, framed then saved, framed then saved... framed then saved, repeat, rinse and repeat cycle again. She is a passive recipient of events and plots happening to her and is able to escape from them from many, many deus ex machinas interventions. When she elicits the attention of a prince, of course the stereotypically favoured heir of the emperor, she gets support and a savior all in one. There seems to be nothing done in her part to source out whom her enemies and allies really are, what their weaknesses and strengths are, and what resources are available to herself to really use. When one plots after another is resolved in her favour, she doesn't seek to tidy up the loose ends to ensure she is not a victim to the same tactics again ie using the same disguise techniques to imitate Weiyoung and implicate her in a royal murder. And like a bad Mary Sue plot (which is SO synonymous of Asian writing, unfortunately) we get every powerful male in the region lusting after her and fighting each other to have her and, of course, women who are mad at her because they lust after those men, with the exception of the princess Tuo Ba Di who does not resent her but is instead her ally.
I expected a series about a resourceful and clever princess who somehow fights her way to clearing her father's name and that of her kingdom's. What I got instead was a series of a trophy woman who is at the mercy of other women's jealousies and is saved by the men whom those women lust after. None of this is new. What is worst is the methods are always the same. Each. And. Every. Time. Something happens. Weiyoung is blamed. An evidence is planted. She begs for time to investigate and exonerate herself. She is helped/rescued or she has planned a counter from the beginning because of some BS reasoning and lack of logic but in the end she is cleared. The martial arts skill we saw in her at the beginning is nowhere to be found again later on and an episode where the schemes pivots on a maid copying her disaster relief plan was just WTF. Maids aren't educated to read or write well, if at all. The Li family themselves noted how Weiyoung could've come up with such an elegant plan given her country education so how the eff would a simple maid have been able to read her writing and copy it out speedily and legibly in the first place?!?!
She ends up being a personal servant to an emperor who was ignorant of his general's, and his son's, ambitions and agrees to free her people from slavery but will not clear her father's name of the fake rebellion and, as a princess of Northern Liang, she sees absolutely nothing wrong with that. JC. Has she no pride? The emperor basically claimed the iron ore mine, that this plot was borne from, allowed his subordinates to be the ones who dirtied their hands and still kept the credit. She saw nothing wrong with that! Even when she does reveal who she is to her beau, she still does not mention her original name. By the end of the series, we get her giving her conditions to prince Nan An that her people and father be cleared of this fake treasonous coup but we never get to hear any edict on that front. Like everything in Asian cinemas, the male POV takes over to the point where the struggle becomes Tuo Ba Jun's struggle for the good of the Wei empire (the very ones who took over her Northern Liang empire) and he becomes the main character and we never really remember her ID as the Northern Liang princess anymore. Goddamn, I was cursing and laughing at the ridiculous plots every single episode, especially the latter episodes that insinuate she has terrible calligraphy. It was just a way to show how the man is superior to her, even having to teach her how to write calligraphy when she would've had the same royal education that he had and she also had no problems writing out her disaster relief plan.
Having said that, I did watch it till the end as there were a few promising arcs that I was hoping the show would develop: Minde and princess Tuo Ba Di, general Chi Yun Nan and Hong Luo and Cheng De and Jun Tao. Two out of three ain't bad. The writers should've really went into the potential arc for Chi Yun Nan and Hong Luo though as I found her background and their relationship interesting and there was a lot of baiting in their interactions to suggest that he has feelings for her but, alas, the ineffectual princess and her Marty Stu beau dominated the screen. Pity... because HIS HAIR!!! And he has earrings!!!
What I was pleasantly surprised about was the prince Nan An character though. He was very nuanced and incredibly unpredictable. I was about to dump this series until we got to the episode where we discovered his childhood trauma. Then this char became interesting. Plus... HIS HAIR IS GORGEOUS :D And I was also glad to see Li Chang Le drop the stereotype of an eternally-longing-woman-with-an-unrequited-love and just drop that obsession already. Nevermind that she swung to hate instead, at least she broke out of that eternal limerence state, unlike her cousin Chang Ru.
Watch value is probably a 2 or 3/10
Rewatch is a 1/10
Presence of male chars with long hair 10/10
These don't add up to the 1/10 that I gave this series but that's coz the only thing that made sense were the hair anyway :P
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INTRIGUING
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well doneThis chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
This chinese drama is so good! I love everything about it! Well done
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Luo Jin ate this role UP
Started to lose the plot about 40 eps in. By the last three, it had gone so rogue that I doubt even a gps could’ve gotten it back on track. You can tell the actors noticed the incremental loss of direction by their performances. They gave it their best effort, but it was all borderline comical by the end.Big sad.
At least we got ~40 episodes of quality content and a passably impactful finale.
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So enjoyable
Even my husband has watched this show, twice, and I can barely get him to watch any shows. The story is based on history and I think that adds to its charm because it’s nice to see a woman depicted as beautiful and clever. This was the first c-drama we ever watched and that was a nice, refreshing change to how women are usually depicted in Western shows. However, everything about this show is great. The costumes. The sets! And, yes, the acting. Everyone, is excellent in their roles. And the twists are as good as anything in Dynasty but without the cheesiness. The chemistry between the FL and ML is the best. It’s only surpassed by the chemistry of the leads in Falling Into Your Smile. The music is beautiful. It’s a few years old at this point, but it’s still wonderful.Was this review helpful to you?
