Considering the excellent reviews I expected an epic plot, perhaps with peculiar characters, but still faithful to the events of the historical period in which it is set. Unfortunately the plot is extremely fictional, the main theme is revenge and the story revolves around this lady Ki and two men who are infatuated with her, basically it's more a makjang than an historical drama.

This revenge is perpetrated using an endless amount of subterfuges, traps, deceptions and secret exploiting the palace policy. Also this whole conspiracies fits perfectly in a way that is all too convincing, sometimes ridiculous, and repeats itself in a continuous loop that led me to exhaustion. The plot is therefore extremely repetitive and many times my intellect has been insulted by the author. Don't get me wrong, I love revenge and I don't dislike makjangs, so the problem here is not my personal tastes but the way this drama was written and performed. The more the plot progressed, the more I realized that it was failing in the three elements that I consider fundamental to the success of a drama: plot, characterization of characters and love story.

As I said before the political scheming is endless and it steals all the screentime, each character is used as a pawn and moved at convenience. There is no space to tell their personal story much less for character development, and this also affects the main leads. Each character stays in the same way it was at the beginning, for this reason not only I had an hard time to ship for any of them but I could easily predict their next move, taking away all the drama suspense.

Wang Yoo is often sent to deal with futile tasks, created ad hoc to keep him away from the main plot but at the same time all his actions always end up creating a favorable situation for his beloved lady ki.

Ta Hwan was the biggest disappointed, heir to the throne of Yuan is actually a puppet that is manipulated by everyone, including his beloved lady ki, too childish and afraid to react, he spends his time drinking, fainting or in bed sick, his character has no evolution whatsoever.

Empress Ki is the only true protagonist, her character is perhaps the only one to have some development, transforming from a tomboy to a conspirator. But the writer's obstinacy to portray her as the absolute "good girl"prevented me to appreciating her. She is always good, super intelligent and very good in any field and discipline, she is the heroine of the story while all the others are all bad people. Sorry but not sorry, this kind of role is not what I associate with revenge.

If all this is not enough for you, the love story is almost non-existent, the distance between this three characters, physics in the case of Wang Yoo and Platonic in the case of Ta Hwan prevented me from feeling strong emotions for this supposed love triangle and on the whole I didn't like nor support any of the two couples.

Overall Empress Ki was unable to take advantage of the excellent cards it had in his hands, a stellar cast wasted to make way for an infinite political plot that steals screentime from various interesting characters, a historical period exploited to a minimum to make room for so much fiction . And finally a revenge that leaves a bitter taste in the mouth as it is fought with ridiculous subterfuges.