Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos (2020)

A Palace Drama that Feels Like a Rom-Com

This is a story romanticizing some historical figures, giving us two pairs of very lovable main characters – two sisters matching up with two brothers. The sister/sister and brother/brother relationships are enviable. It is the lightest non-comedic historical drama that involves palace politics. Initially, it feels like a rom-com without the rom-com tag as it's serious but at the same time, also so funny. The mishaps are hilarious!

Accordingly, this drama is based on the actual historical story of Guo Rong of the Later Zhou Dynasty (951-960 AD) during the tumultuous Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era. The founding Emperor Guo Wei had adopted Chai Rong, who later became Guo Rong, from his wife’s brother and groomed Guo Rong to be the heir. According to recorded history, Guo Rong first married the younger Fu sister. After her death, he remarried the older Fu sister who was also widowed.

The Story
For this drama, it fictionalizes the actual historical events and characters. Still as a prince and a general, Xue Rong (Li Zhiting aka Aarif Rahman) first meets the older Fu sister, Fu Yuzhan (Meng Ziyi aka Zoey Meng) and falls in love with her and wants to marry her. However, due to unforeseen mishaps, instead, the younger Fu sister, Fu Jinzhan (Li Yitong) is married to Xue Rong, both later become the Emperor and the Empress. The unintended marriage put them on a hot spot and into a predicament as Fu Jinzhan is also in love with another man, Jiang Shao (Wang Zhuocheng aka Marius Wang). Eventually Fu Jinzhan fakes her death and escapes the palace and elopes with Jiang Shao. Xue Rong remarries his love, Fu Yuzhan.

There are a lot of interesting and unexpected twists and turns here. As with most palace dramas, both Xue Rong and Fu Yuzhan live on thin ice; there are constant palace politics and threats with the Emperor’s throne being challenged for his legitimacy; there are constant dangers within the harem with the Empress being poisoned. However each time, the protagonists always come up on top winning, getting away from all the dangers.

The Characters and Acting
I really like the four main characters because they are strong with good fighting skills, and don’t hesitate to kick asses. Although the older Fu sister doesn’t know how to fight, she is very intelligent and strategic. Their alliance is heart-warming - they care, trust and love each other deeply.

As Xue Rong, Li Zhiting looks very good here (a lot better than in Princess Silver). He is charismatic, strong, powerful and yet compassionate. His character can be arrogant but at the same time adorable. Li Zhiting’s acting is very good, bringing out his regality in the royal court and then becoming a loving husband in pain at the brink of losing his most loved wife.

The Fu Yuzhan character is a very lady-like character, soft on the outside but strong like steel inside. Meng Ziyi’s acting brings out this character convincingly with her bright eyes and intelligent demeanor, and yet not losing her gentle and compassionate personalities.

I also enjoy watching the second couple, the younger Fu sister with her lover, both are impulsive, childish, careless and gullible but very adorable. Their chemistry is very good too. Li Yitong’s and Wang Zhuocheng’s acting here is believable and applaudable.

My Verdict
This is a light palace drama that feels like a rom-com. The twists and turns make it an exciting watch with the protagonists always come out winning, giving the viewers a sigh of relief. Though the ending for the first couple may not be savored positively by some viewers, and despite some flaws here and there, this is still a very enjoyable drama. Don’t miss it!

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two sisters, fall in love with different men and their court story

This drama was better than i anticipated, normally 40 episode ancient drama can be a drag. This one was not too bad!

Characters-
Female lead - is the older sister of the Fu family. She has the the wits and the beauty. She is calm and collected.
Male lead- is the prince, who eventually becomes the King. He is smart, handsome and persistent in loving.

Second female lead - is the younger sister in the Fu family. She is the opposite of her older sister. She is feisty, impulsive, hot head and knows martial arts.
Second male- is a good friend of the prince. He's noble, smart, observative, and loyal.

Storyline-
The storyline flowed pretty well for the most part. It starts off with a prophecy from the local people that one of the Fu's daughter will be a queen . Thus making the emperor, cautious. He tells him adopted son, which is the male lead to take one of the Fu's daughter to another state to get married. This was just a fake mission, so they could assassinate the other state's king, and at the same time get rid of the elder Fu daughter. With her wits, she convinces the prince to not kill her. She is saved and slowly began to develop feelings for each other. The younger Fu sister starts liking the general ( aka second lead) .During all this time there is a conniving aunt of the king who doesnt like the fact, that the king likes the adopted prince so much. She believes her son , should be king and plan against the prince. Stuff happens and the prince ends up marrying the second sister. The story then focuses on how the prince eventually becomes prince. How the second sister faked her death to get out of the marriage with the prince who turned king. I wasnt as fond of the last part because it got more political >_<


Points I liked
1) Although the second sister at times can be annoying and naive, but she still cared about her sister and her family. I liked the sister relationship. I hate dramas when its sister turn against sister.
2) I liked the overall friendship and trusted of the two male leads despite still having some problems.
3) I liked the Fu's father. He was a noble and righteous official
4) of course I loved the elder sisters wits
5) love how the king devoted his love for the older sister, he never changed.

Things I didnt like
- the sister of the prince turned king who turned evil, and tried to kill the queen
- the concubine/empress who tried to help poison the queen. I dont even get her storyline, or like where she came from?
- I HATED THE EVIL OFFICIAL aka the king's cousin. He was just as evil like his mother.

Romance- Between the second lead pairing, i would say there is more development/screen time of them shown developing their relationship more than the elder sister and king. Both pairs are cute :) The drama has a good amount of romance. The king's and the older sister was more sad and slower/slightly tragic.

That reminds me.... wth is the ending? I thought she got healed from the poison ? so did she die , or did she leave? too open ended lol

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Wasted Potentials Galore

Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos (Chinese title: 浮世双娇传) had a promising premise: In a fictionalized Later Zhou Dynasty, two daughters of the Fu family become intertwined with the political turmoils of their country after a folk song prophesied that a woman with the surname Fu is destined to become empress. The sisters, Fu Yuzhan and Fu Jinzhan, subsequently fall for two different men who both have claims to the throne. Together, they navigate their family through a time of strife, and protect their country from certain ill-intent forces from within.

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Between the general idea of the story and the fact that this drama stars not one but three actors I like, Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos had been on my must-watch drama list since Meng Ziyi, Wang Zhuocheng, and Aarif Rahman’s character posters first came out. Sadly, for all my anticipation, I was rewarded with a half baked letdown.

Good Story, Bad Plotting
The first few episodes start out well enough. There’s a slowness to the initial pace, yes, and certain scenes linger on showy fight choreographies longer than necessary. But the drama establishes the setting, the characters, the context, and various seedlings of conflicts with enough care that I brushed the flaws off as the typical problems first episodes of most drama series have. As the episodes go on, though, it becomes harder to excuse the dragging pace and repetitive dialogue. The characters, who all have really interesting backstories and agendas, barely grow beyond the template personalities the first few episodes set up for them.

Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos has a lot of great stuff to work with, but the drama does not meet its potential. Instead, what should’ve been thrilling story arcs are rendered obvious and predictable because of the way the drama handles mysteries and reveals—upfront, with no sense of suspense or nuance. This makes certain points in the drama (like the Emperor not decreeing a crown prince as soon as he falls sick, which could’ve saved everyone so much headache; to the Elder Princess’ inexplicable trust in the Emperor’s head eunuch) come off rather stupid. Basically, the writers behind this series seemed like they had no idea what to do with what they were given, and simply gave up half way through.

Likable But Infuriating Main Characters
Each of the four main leads straddles the fence between endearing and annoying in their unique ways. I could be biased because I like the actors from their previous works, but the positives of their characters generally outweigh their shortcomings. Generally. Fu Yuzhan is by far my favorite out of them all. Her soft-spoken intelligence and steadfast personality were some of the few things Legend of Two Sisters successfully show instead of tell. The drama did do a disservice by making her wishy-washy about her love for Xue Rong, but her reasoning makes sense within the world of the drama, even if it’s a drag narratively.

Given Xue Rong is played by Aarif Rahman, Legend of Two Sisters would’ve had to screw the character up big time for me to hate him. Luckily, he’s alright as well. Xue Rong’s childishness and paranoia are frustrating at times, but the drama never went overboard with them. As far as emperor characters go, he is surprisingly and pleasantly a trusting and kind one. Jiang Shao is the one with the most straightforward agenda, and therefore the easiest to track and follow. There’s not much to nitpick with his character, partly because he has such a muted and mellow personality. My main point of frustration came from his and Jinzhan’s decision (but really, it’s his idea) to swap the brides in episode 7. Sure, it’s perfectly possible for anyone to have done that in his shoes, but it’s narratively annoying to have a main character make a completely avoidable mistake like that.

Lastly, and certainly least, Fu Jinzhan. What can I say about Fu Jinzhan. This girl has guts, a heart of gold, a free spirit… and zero consideration and respect for the wishes of her loved ones. She seems unable to understand that there are consequences to her actions—consequences that other people who are not her may have to suffer.

This is a glaring fault of hers early on, so you’d at least expect that she’d learn from her mistakes, right? Well, no. Her inability to grow up and respect her family and friends’ boundaries causes so much unnecessary miscommunication and trouble for the other characters that I was left wondering whether we were even supposed to like her at multiple points in the drama.

What’s even more infuriating is that the plot itself coddles her as much as her sister does. There are several instances of her going against someone’s request for her to not do something, only to have things work out in her favor. Almost every attempt by other characters to teach her the negative repercussions of her thoughtlessness are rendered useless either by her just not accepting that what she did was wrong, or by her turning the punishment into another way she pushes back. Luckily, she’s a likable character when she’s not making stupid and inconsiderate decisions, especially whenever her clever side kicks in.

An Ehhhhnding
The drama becomes increasingly reliant on cliches to drive the story forward with each episodes, such as the Elder Princess, a compelling villain with understandable and even justifiable reasons for her villainy, getting replaced by her less than impressive son, whose whole reason for turning evil boils down to him not getting the girl. Not to mention the Noble Consort and Princess Shou An’s team up to kill Fu Yuzhan… I don’t even want to get into how unimaginative and vaguely misogynistic that whole mess is.

This all culminates in an ending that you can see coming a mile away: Jiang Shao and Xue Rong’s trap for Li Huaijin is as subtle as a thirty-ton boulder, and such as it is, void of emotional impact. When the attempted coup was over, I thought “okay” and moved on with my life. It was that dull to watch. Fu Yuzhan’s death is sad. But more importantly, it’s unnecessary, which renders the “sad” part ineffective. I kept wondering why the hell the writers decided to do that when they didn’t have to.

Final Rating and Recommendations
Do I recommend Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos? Hard no, unless you really, really want to see more of Meng Ziyi, Wang Zhuocheng, or Aarif Rahman and have watched everything else they acted in. (And I guess Li Yitong as well, but I only knew her from her minor role in season 2 of Cinderella Chef. She was all right in that.)

Legend of Two Sisters is a good story that’s executed poorly, and a cast of incredible talents that somehow have very little chemistry with each other. The plot is riddled with pacing issues and cliches. The characters are unable to either communicate with each other, or respect each other’s choices and wishes, or both. A lot of the scenes and dialogues are redundant more often than not, and you can see certain “twists” coming a mile away.

On the other hand, if you really want more content from any of the four main actors, or if you just want something playing in the background or enjoy nice looking ancient Chinese costumes and set designs, Legend of Two Sisters may be worth a watch. If not, you’re not missing anything by giving this one a pass.

My Rating: 4.5/10

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Dropped the Ball Halfway Through

There was a promising start with the two sisters with very different but interesting personalities and abilities trying to survive in a world that was built to oppress them. Either in their home life with their family and filial piety or in their hearts about who they can and can not love. The Aunt of the Crown Prince and eventually King was a well-constructed villain and opposition to the main characters but not only did they kill her off-screen - they replaced her with her next-to-useless son that was a sad and sorry excuse for an antagonist in the story.

Also, I have never watched a Chinese historical drama that featured a Spanish guitar in the OST. (Plus, it only came on around the two guys and that confused me because is this what they call bromance because I felt something else and it was not platonic! Hilarious, but I loved those moments because why not?)

The ending was lackluster and disappointing and the little sister was a nuisance towards the end and quite the liability. Kudos to the actress for the older sister though! I was actually rooting for her and loved how sensible, calm, and collected she was! I can support her as an Empresss and it's too bad we couldn't even enjoy that since the plot needed her to be weak and a damsel in distress for the main couple to have some more, unnecessary heartbreak before the show was over.

Pretty drama but it suffers the same syndrome as most other Chinese romance, historical dramas that were too long for how little plot and development existed in the end.

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Decent story, not bad

I immediately liked the storyline from episode 1. But I didn't feel rollercoaster enough, because the story is tend to be a love story than a kingdom's tale.

I like the casts. Especially for the main roles, they are very excellent. But in this drama, there is no real villain, only some bad guys made some conspiracies.. But their tricks still can be anticipated by the main roles.

Another positive thing from this drama is I love the OST both opening and ending. No need additional score in movie. Just play these 2 songs, you will be touched.

Not bad for the story, but not perfect either. I would give 8,5 rating overall.

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Sad ending

I love this! However the ending was just too abusing and tragic. Although the plot is guess-able, it is overall a great drama, great chemistry between actors and cute/funny storyline as well. I feel so empty now that it ended..

Why does most drama with Zhiting as the lead always ends up tragic?! ??

So here’s my opinion on the drama:
Pros:
It is not too dragged out.
Love the settings and costumes
Love how the villain did their job, although I dislike Huaijin and Yueying and most villains, I can say that they did pretty well. Huaijin probably did the best since the hatred I feel for his role, OMG I can’t.

Cons:
You sometimes question why are the main so shallow, and cause so much misunderstandings between themselves.

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What on earth?

The plot of this drama is extremely poor. To compensate for the lack of script depth or simply for failing to present a decent drama; the cast, visuals, music and costumes are absolutely stunning. However, it's very disappointed to see the huge potential of the main lead actors go to waste in such a disparaging storyline and I'm not referring to the ending (which sucks) but to the superficial development of the characters which results in a substandard mess.

I watched it till the end purely because I love the actors and it was an isolated pleasure to see them in action, but the story left me bitterly let down.

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Some Episodes are Good, Some Episodes areBad

I like the characters in this drama and the plot of the story but it was to long. As the younger sister gets in trouble and is suppose to have martial art skill that we see very little of it. The older sister is more reserved and refine and tries to keep in control the younger sister. The writer tried to throw some curves that to me only upset does who where watching the story. The evil aunt that could get better assassins and even her maid was a great assassin but the emperor could do nothing. The aunt that can get away with all the bad things and then leave it to her son who was a good person but turn bad because of jealousy. No! to far fetch for me. The obsess maid that was in love with her son, did all the dirty work and did not care that she was treated badly, To far fetch. The romance is cute but sad with all the couples. The ending left me very upset. After you made us watch 40 episodes and we were enjoying the Emperor and the women (Older Sister) he love finally be together you ended with them separating. What, hoping for a second season? The actors did a good performance and most of the story is enjoyable, but be ready for disappointment.

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Boring

Storyline got boring as each episode go on. Main couple got frustrating and you loose interest. It was definitely a waste of time. The writers dragged on the I love you but I can’t too long and you loose interest. I tried watching it through but end up fas forwarding most of it. Definitely a sad ending so if you don’t like sad ending, don’t watch.

The actors and actresses were good, however, the storyline didn’t do just for them. ML and FL acting was good and the had good chemistry but at times it seemed a little forced. The little sister got annoying after a while even though I liked her at first but then the childish stuff got old and not cute anymore. Like I said, writers didn’t do their job with screen play.

Overall, I definitely can’t recommend this drama.

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Should have had less episodes.

The only reason I watched this drama was because of the two actors from TU; Zhoucheng Wang aka Marius Wang and ZiYi Meng aka Zoey Meng. It would been better if it had 30 episodes. Once the main antagonist was killed off, the plots just ran amok. The ending was depressing and haphazardly done; FFL supposedly kills herself by drowning but you never see the body, she just disappears into thin air and then the end, roll credits. The entire thing unraveled in the very last episode and the SML who was chasing after his mother's real killer never found out the truth, at least not on screen. He just stopped looking and that plot ended there for him though it was the main point of his anguish from episode one. This drama is supposedly popular by its votes on Tencent but no one in China has even heard of it. I really wish they made quality scripts for these actors. The only saving grace was the actual acting and the BGM. Everyone in the lead cast and some supporting members were very believable. I would only recommend this if you want to be semi depressed at the end. Onto the next and hopefully better.

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beautiful faces, designs, props, potential plots but boggled and ruined by terribly storytelling

I tried so hard to finish this--for wang zhuo cheng and meng ziyi--but I just couldn't. There are two kinds of bad dramas: 1) ones that are so ridiculous that it becomes endearingly funny and enjoyable, and then 2) the ones that are so ridiculous that it's just frustrating and angering. Legend of Two Sisters in the Chaos is the 2nd one, sadly.

There are several things that I couldn't deal with this show.

1) The characters had ONE defining trait and that was pretty much it: it was like the story writers just needed to fill a trope or character type and then just did that instead of fleshing them into real and logical characters. This was most obviously frustrating when it came to someone like Fu Jinzhan who is possibly one of the worst FLs I've ever come across. The writers wrote her SO bad. She is ~good at fighting~ and short temper and literally nothing else. Almost everything about her decisions are SO bad. The writers tried to make her come across as "someone with a code--helping whoever in need; not killing needlessly" but even THAT doesn't come across organically. In the end, Jinzhan becomes one of the most confusing and frustrating characters as she, at one point, SET FIRE TO THE PALACE AND PRETENDED TO BE DEAD FROM THE FIRE so that she can escape her current union to the King. What the fuck? It was so thoughtless, so stupid, so emotionally damaging to everyone else just because she couldn't wait. Sure, you can argue that it's in line with her personality, but at what cost? Her character makes such illogical decisions that it's so hard to care about her. (Many other characters are like this too, so. I just chose Jinzhan because it's what I remember.)

2) Inorganic sudden love and feelings: I'm truly not a fan of main couples falling in love with each other right away because it's usually done badly. When it doesn't feel organic, it feels very forced, and that's how I feel about the two main lead couples. (Maybe it's also due to a chemistry thing too; they are pretty faces, but they don't feel in love...)
There are shows that makes 'suddenly in love' interesting:
"Love in Lost Times" - The main couple falls in love fairly fast in the beginning, but due to a plot point, it is only the FL who remembers their love and not the ML, allowing them in a way to re-learn to love each other.
Or, for example, I started (and didn't finish yet) the drama "Legend of the Phoenix" where the FL falls for the ML first and the ML seems resistant at first but actually likes the FL too, and they decide to be together early in the series to go through trials together--no back-and-forth, pointless angst. (They also had really good chemistry.)
In this drama, I disliked so much how Fu Yuzhan apparently liked Xue Rong already by like ep2?? (And some of their scenes were very illogical. I believe in ep2, when assassins were coming after Fu Yuzhan, Xue Rong told her to run away while he fought them, but then she just STOOD THERE WATCHING IN FULL VIEW OF THE ASSASSINS--putting herself at risk STILL and so he had to do some super move to save her (and got injured). I couldn't believe it because she's supposed to be intelligent! And yet??? She couldn't, I don't know, hide??)
Or how Jinzhan and Jiang Shao already had feelings for each other by like ep10??? When they barely knew each other for like 2 weeks?
The romance just feels so forced.

3) So many characters that you grow to not care about: this goes back to how the characters are written badly, and so, when supporting characters are introduced and given a tragic motive to turn into villains and whatnot--like Huaijin--I didn't care.

4) The Princess lady--Huaijin's mother--the big villain is killed and shown through a flashback: I couldn't believe they did her dirty like that. She was literally the main, conniving villain of the first half of the show and then they just killed her off like that. What was the point of having a Big Bad Villain like that when you don't even give her the storyline and screen time she deserves?????

Ultimately, this drama had some high potential, but the execution and story in general was just to wonky and frustrating.

Maybe one day when I'm bored, I'll return back to finish this drama for wang zhuo cheng and meng ziyi, but, at this point I have no desire to finish it.

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