MiyamotoMusashi

In this drama it is left ambiguous, meaning Erqing and the Emperor might have had sex and the son is his, or she just played and the son is actually by Fuheng´s bastard brother who loved Erqing since it was implied they had an affair.
In the short sequel Princess Adventures, it is stated that he is the bastard brother´s son.

I am saying it´s not a love story because it was never the central conflict. And in the end, it is still left somewhat ambiguous how deeply Yinglong actually feels about the Emperor, how much of it was her manipulating him and so forth, that´s one of the brilliant points of the drama, it really plays out on several levels.

The vast majority of the drama is about people (mostly women, hence feministic), who had to suffer due to their environment and other people making the decisions for them based on the system they live in, and how everyone is caged by their duty of the role they were born into, and as consequence become more ruthless just to survive.
And under this premise, you can basically summarize every character and their actions, from Gao, to both empresses, Shun and so forth.
The only one who does not fall under it really is Consort Chun, who chose to enter the harem by herself if i remember correctly.
And thus all supposed villains have got a lot of backstory that makes it understandable why they did what they did.
Hence it is understandable that the drama was apparently banned in China (don´t know if it´s true, read it somewhere) because it advocates for personal freedom.

For anyone who is thinking of watching this, beware it´s not really a romance/love story, at its core it´s a deeply feministic story that shows how women had to fend for themselves in that environment to survive, and you see different personalities dealing differently with that environment.

Might be, i am not versed enough in both drama and Chinese society culture to judge that, just seemed very inappropriate, to add a last minute danger (literally half of the last episode) and then let him die off-screen, seemed not fitting.

Problem is that was never really shown, him yearning for his past life, or regretting never to wield martial arts again.
Instead it was all about the revenge and clearing their name, plus the relationship between him, his love and his best friend was always in the foreground.
So it´s not really appropriate.

When it was good, it was really good, made me tear up a few times. The main character and the way he deals with his fate and his enemies is the most outstanding thing in this drama, but it´s too long or you can say slow, a lot of issues get stretched out, some are really rushed.

Would have given it a 9 due to the highly emotional scenes due to his fate, it was not cheesy or overdramatic but subtle and on point, but the ending really sucked, so it´s only 8.

Beware spoiler:







It did not suck because he died, i fully expected that, but they had to shoehorn a last minute threat and of course in such a country not even one general exists who can take the job for some reason, i guess the northern border was never protected all these years...
It should have ended with him peacefully drifting away

Yeah i see it the same way. I do not buy that he is putting the country above everything else. The scene in which Fan Jian asks Ping what he would choose shows that, since he knew someone was listening, hence he said the country and make Qing a long dynasty. But we will see.
Yep, FX is a bit pissed about that, i get it though since he manipulates people who are supposed to be his enemies or antagonists, and not people he is supposed to trust, i think that´s the distinction. Plus he does not cross certain ines.
I hope so, Yan would be a good ally to have.

Well it just shows how good the show is, the fact that you can actually discuss things.

I actually feel like him and Duoduo have much better chemistry, and they seem to prefer the same kind of lifestyle, have the same kind of morals and so forth.
Between him and Wan´er, he basically was attracted to her appearance, and he they hardly spent any time together, and when they did, it felt more like a brother talking to his sister.

Ping Ping is one of the ones he is targeting right now. Whether that will stay the same remains to be seen, i feel like he might play a different game than the Emperor, but Fan Xian sees him as the biggest enemy right now since he basically manipulates everybody, hence he can´t play dead and at the same time target Ping Ping.
Bingyun does not believe in personal choices that might benefit a country, that´s what i mean. It was pretty obvious in Qi, FX wanted to do a lot of things Bingyun immediately disagreed because it does not follow the hierarchy of Qing´s Empire.
He does not understand that someone like Fan Xian, whose role is below guys like Ping Ping and the Emperor, might be even more beneficial for the country than them, that´s what i mean. Simply because he is not following their orders strictly.

Yep, some people might like it, it´s not to my taste.
Regarding the novel, i have heard that as well regarding harem stuff.
That´s not necessarily what i mean though. Even his interactions with Wan´er seem pretty childish and too innocent for someone with his origin and his other actions, dude literally is playing around with Emperors and highly intelligent people.

He needs a certain amount of power and followers who are loyal to him, which is not the case now. He has Wu Zhu, which already is huge of course, and Wang, and by extension Gao, that´s it.
He needs the Royal Treasury and Overwatch to deal with everyone.

Unless it´s really just a counter against the 2nd Prince somehow, and after that he comes back, that i can see.

Nah, it´s not that easy to make people understand the difference between not being loyal to those who hold power and not being loyal to your country, two completely different things, and Yan did not seem to get that, i might be wrong though.

I simply do not see any sense behind it, except maybe pretending that Yan hates Fan Xian, which you could have executed differently, meaning as a plan. That´s really the only positive effect.
Otherwise, pretending to be dead makes no sense since he needs all the power he can get from both the ministries and Overwatch Council, otherwise he stands no chance anyway, and cliffhanger-wise like you said, everybody knows he will be alive. He is literally the only link tying every story path and locations together.

I am not sure with Bingyun, i think seeing 2nd´s schemes had an effect, but the indoctrination he received really runs deep. And i doubt he would ever believe he is the grandson of Xiao En.

I liked the scenes with Wu Zhu since his robotic behavior is a nice contrast to Fan Xian. But all Gao and Wang conversations about Fan Xian seducing Duo Duo and other people, the overplayed innocent stuff and so forth, is not to my liking. Or scenes with his brother Sizhe fell completely flat. I think i generally have a problem with the execution, since the quirky music in every comedic scene really takes me out and has an opposite effect. Plus the timing sometimes was off as well, in one scene you literally see dozens of corpses lying around and it is depicted as sad or at least emotional, then they take you out by showing Wang being greedy, just to give an example.
Regarding the innocence, i get it´s supposed to be a traditional setting, but the MC for example is still of noble birth, he would have swarms of women before marrying someone, especially with his personality, so it feels unfitting.

I learned Chinese for a while in college, but forgot most of it again and definitely not to the degree of understanding puns, so that might play into it as well.

Just finished it and it´s really addicting. Feels like these traditional epic stories in which the protagonist actually goes through a journey, meets a lot of different people and grows more and more.
Since it´s such a protagonist heavy show, the main character and obviously the actors who portrays him make or break it, and in this case he more than makes it.
He is smart, but not necessarily godly genius like many other stories like to portray, he is kindhearted but can be cruel, and you can really sympathize with his main motivation in life, especially coming from a modern perspective. That´s really also the main theme, how the traditional way of life clashes with actual morals of the modern world.

It´s still "just" a 9.0 for me, which is already great, since the comedy really fell flat for me, did not really laugh more than a few times, which is really low considering 46 episodes and a lot of supposedly comedic scenes. Plus can´t really condone them teasing so many different relationships while we know Wan´er is the only one.
But everything else, from acting, the characters, the political maneuvering and so forth, definitely recommended.

Do you think Yan only pretended to literally backstab him and it was planned or will he simply survive through luck?

Anyway, it was an unnecessary cliffhanger since we know he will survive and raise hell in Qing, i would have preferred him seeing each of his enemies, which is literally everyone with power except his Fan father.

Great movie.

If they covered the two couples more, i would be all for it.
But another few episodes of annoying people doing annoying things over and over to get a point across? No thanks.

Like i said, the two couples were great, and one could enjoy every scene with them, but it almost equally shared screen time with the annoying stuff.

It´s good but, as many K-Dramas, unfortunately, it is held back by its overgrown length and the necessity to repeat scenes over and over that do not add anything new and quickly become annoying.

As much as the story is about the love story between the main actors, it´s about the restrictions forced on people, especially women of course, in a patriarchal society that is influenced by men who never really grew up unfortunately, yet constantly try to determine other people´s lives based on their personal wishes.
And to punch that point across, the story features several such characters that unfortunately get a lot of screen-time to showcase their behavior, whether it´s the second male lead, who never actually cared for the female lead Jeung-In, but could not deal with "losing" to someone he saw as clearly inferior to himself, hence the constant meddling and trying to force something on the female lead,
or the father of the female lead, who is constrained by traditional thinking and what the society might think of his family, coupled with personal interest of course,
and of course the husband of the sister, whose actions i think do not think need any commenting.
And instead focusing more on the main leads, or actually interesting dynamics of other characters (the parents of Ji-Ho, or the youngest sister Jae-In and her love interest, who had the funniest dynamic really), you get annoying characters over and over, whose main reason for existence is exactly that, to be annoying and unlikeable.
That gets very tiring quickly though, which is the main flaw of the drama in my eyes, and i found myself skipping those parts after the tenth episode, which is easily done with Netflix fortunately.

Cut it to ten or twelve episodes (or 20/24) and it works just as well, if not a lot better.

There were a few other minor things i did not like along the way, but they are just that, too small to necessarily mention them, but add them to the main flaw explained above, it additionally decreased the enjoyment.

Topic very good, acting really good (both Han Ji-Min and Jung Hae-In are great, the support cast does not lack compared to them though) but like i said above, it gets old pretty quickly, 7.5/10.

PS: Oh yeah, the OST i agree became repetitive really quickly, and more importantly, it simply did not fit in some scenes at all since they created a different atmosphere than the scene actually required.
Probably no budget left anymore.

It´s better than people make it out to be. I actually think the rating on the site is accurate, only in relation to other far more overrated shows it´s too low, so yeah, it´s 7/10.

It tried a lot of new things, a few attempts were admittedly awkward and did not work completely, some worked rather well in my opinion, and the leads actually had chemistry.

Was this drama cut short? It had a really nice pacing, with everything developing credibly, and then episode 10-12 suddenly rushed things exponentially. It was really good until then, but the rushing seemed really weird.