Lizzy

Unlike many others, I never hated the princess. She was naive and sheltered, made an impulsive decision based on romanticized ideals of love… and then got trapped in an enemy state with a psychotic royal family. She did what she had to do to survive in that situation, mainly kiss up to the crazy emperor. Her actions made sense to me, and I felt sorry for her.

Yes exactly. I like how you phrased this. A lot of people have criticized this show for the “shallow” villains, but given these principles, it makes sense why the villains acted the way they did.

I’ve been talking to my partner about this, and just reflecting on how different some of these Asian cultures seem to be than our Western values. A person doesn’t exist on an island; children pay for the sins of their parents, adults hold grudges from events that happened when they were children. Your behavior affects your family, etc. It’s very much a culture of shame.

No kidding. I was disappointed that they didn’t go that route. Such a wasted opportunity 🤦🏼‍♀️ HOWEVER… XJS owned the death camps, so I don’t think going that route was feesible anyway.

👏🏻 One of the best!

The respect and companionship is there a LOT earlier, though 😊

Absolutely 😊 Such a great show!

Pretty crazy, huh? 😱

This one looks gorgeous! Doesn’t look like there is romance in it though?

So I realized that I’m almost done with this one and don’t have another show lined up to watch 🙇🏼‍♀️What should I watch? I dropped LITC cause I hated the deceit and not communicating. Maybe I’ll rewatch Shadow Love or LotFG. I’m looking for a show with a similar vibe as this one - with a mature romance, good intrigue, some fight scenes, and a happy ending. Sadly I think I have probably watched all of the comparable ones to Fated Hearts that are good 🤦🏼‍♀️

What episode are you on?

Cool - I would say yes, but give it a try and see if you like it :)

The whole show is about misunderstandings, lying and keeping secrets. Like the whole show. So if that’s not your thing, I would pass on this one.

Yeah it didn’t bother me when he captured her and beat her - that made sense to me because she cost him a war and almost killed him. I wrestled a bit more with her retaliation until looked at how it would have looked if she did NOT beat him back in the woods. When I recognized that it was because of the power differential, it all changed for me.

Sure! It’s rough the first three episodes or so, but there is a mutual respect between the leads that develops fairly quickly. I would even say that the respect is there even in the midst of the violence. They did become one of my favorite TV couples.

Depends on what your personal tastes are. A lot of people loved it, some didn’t. If you like romance with good communication and mutual respect, and pretty graphics and OST, you would probably like this one.

Agreed! The intimate scenes were wonderful, but they were wonderful because of the chemistry and bond between the leads.

Isn’t Manman amazing 😍 ❤️ I may be about due for a rewatch

So I’m about to wrap up the show and have been glancing through the discussion. I wanted to share some thoughts about the first few episodes as some people struggled a bit with the lead’s mutual violence towards each other. I was one of them and had the hardest time viewing the beatings just as “petty revenge” or “tit for tat”. After talking with my partner about it, I realized that it was a lot more than just “tit for tat”. It was about the FL voiding out the imbalance of power in episode 3. If she had not “settled the score” with him, then there would have been a very large differential of power. He would have captured her, beat / water boarded her, taken her captive in his city and then made demands that she join forces with him to discover who wanted her dead. And she hadn’t recovered her memories. Talk about a big power imbalance. I saw her retaliation in the woods not as “petty revenge”, but as away to put herself back on equal footing with the ML by getting rid of that unequal balance of power and putting them on the same level. Just my two cents.

Interesting. I’ll think about this. I plan on doing a rewatch when it’s all over, I think the sudden change in pacing and this supposed raid plot caught me off guard. Obviously I remembered the Storm Alliance being referred to early on, but I didn’t remember there being much else said about it prior to when they got there.