featuring these characteristics:
- families that have wealth or nobility, are 'high up' the food chain of royalty BUT the drama is not set within the palace, so the main storyline is not about the direct royal family or harem
- they are authentic to their time and have characters act truthfully to the standards of their period, with no out of time/place characters that act very 'modern' without consequences
- adherence to social structure is brought up and shown throughout (like women not being allowed to be alone with men, no completely unrealistic marriages like a maid with a prince or whatever)
- there are mental chess games played within genders, like women battling each other by outsmarting the others in subtle/intricate ways
- there are zero elements of fantasy or anything extremely far-fetched
- ideally will also have a good romantic arc(s)
basically i'm asking for anything resembling the story of minglan...besides having one of my favorite romantic arcs in any drama one of the parts i appreciate most is the realistic depiction of how 'fighting' would actually be done in ancient dynasties, with women making best of the (deeply unfair) hand they were dealt and still finding ways to be extraordinary while acknowledging the 'rules' or limitations set for them if that makes sense? i don't care which country (preference for cdramas in this genre but will give any a try). i'm not fond of the sword and the brocade and that's the only other drama i can think of that tries to be anything similar so any recs would be so appreciated
