Skibbies

It's the cast + focus. zhao liying have a lot of fans from her previous work, and minglan is more slice of life with romance (the subgenre the source novel is from is more comparative to palace scheming dramas like war & beauty/yanxi/ruyi/empress in the palace), while the other you listed are fantasy or politics with barely any romance in sight.

it's a romance novel and the novel is 1v1 so no polygamy. FL have several suitors though, but she only cared about one (second male lead) and that ended fairly quickly.

Eastern Jin, about 150 years after end of three kingdoms. male lead is apparently partially based on Liu Yu 刘裕 who formed Liu Song kingdom/dynasty. Royal family's surname ma is probably reference to sima.

In general, novels that's set in the period where noble clans/elite family are big is from 魏晋南北朝 (220 till 589, so latter half of three kingdoms till just before Sui dynasty), height of their power was Eastern Jin (317 to 420). The period is also well known for pretty boys, indulgence in frivolous things, frequent use of drugs and so many weird and bizzare stories? (I'm super not familiar with the period though lol, since it's so chaotic) Nirvana in Fire's Langya + Xie family also reference the Wang (who's from Langya) and Xie famly here, and their emperor's last name is Xiao, which references Southern Liang (502 to 557). Someone looked up all the empress from the Wang family, looks like they are mostly from the Southern dynasties.

while i don't care about her age as much as others. it's because she didn't have to pick this novel. she could have gotten someone to write an original script that fit her more, or pick a novel that would be more suitable for adapting, but she didn't.

i was grossed out too and looked it up. Wang family was prominent at the time and did have many emperesses but they were of different kingdoms! (it was a real messy time, emperors and kingdoms comes and goes but elite families stayed, a lot of novels use the time period as background due to that) although I guess that's not the case here, especially with them cross marrying (the emperor is a wu's mum's brother, the empress is dad's sister).

IF this was really cut due to airing on tv, its' because this is cctv (national tv) and that one is a webdrama. I kind of hate the frequent use of sexual assault in that drama tbh, it's really unnecessary and some are drama original.

mon to wed, 2, 2, 3, and there's a vvip system. there's an update calender in the photos i think?

that's speculation on douban's end, people always speculate but that might not necessarily be true. cctv is technically stricter than other provincial channels but i really don't think slapping cut as violence, but I also wouldn't put it pass companies over self-censoring. I think it's more likely that the drama was 45 ep at some point and they cut it to make it under 40 and that's what they decide to cut. i think the editing for this drama is messy tbh. As for dvd version, very unlikely unless they got 45 ep pass first and cctv did the editing to make it 38?

lol that's just the style of the novel but yeah I did find the constant mentions of her looks in first person really awkward ahhahaha.

I ship aunt with him!!!! but i think it's a missed chance thing for them. (if you watch joy of life, my emperor and ye qing mei!!!!!!) they feel like soulmate that went separate ways too. so many ways to bad ends lol.

as for the novel, if you can read chinese, it's on wechat read under the drama's chinese title. I'm not sure if it's translated into english? It should be? the author 亦舒 is fairly well known. (not sure how they romanise her name in english)

i saw talks that Chang Chen went with Love & destiny instead of this? I thought the filming times didn't clash, but they did apparently. L&D July till Dec 2018, this one Feb till Dec 2018 (wow that's a long time, no wonder it was 80 ep before). L&D's script was written with CC in mind though, and I think they spent a year+ getting him to agree. ZZY was wowed by ZYW's acting in late 2017? if they haven't met before.

re: novel, that's cos the second prince isn't really relevant at the moment lol.

the first 8 ep have fair amount of original stuff in it, probably because they have to lay out the relationship and flesh out the supporting cast. the bit about CP didn't happen yeah, i think Wan Ru was just picked as his wife but I'm not super sure.

the novel is from like 15 years ago and the tropes used are fairly standard these days (i don't think they were that original back then but it's not as common as now for sure). the novel is largely well known for its relative realism in romance web novels + protag isn't some naive nice girl.

they are long time rivals and all of that (idk about if accident was actually ye's doing, could go either way, again, dumb plot). that doesn't really mean that any of ye, fan or suosuo knew he was going to be there. fan jingang was surprised and realised too late who he was and tried to get suosuo to run.

suo suo got mad because she truly think it's love and it stings that someone she consider a friend is assuming she likes ye for the money. it's not about money to her. she says she likes old men because a) her taste in men does lean that way b) it's to hurt him. she literally called him a kid.

someone summarised that conversation, it was really funny because they were purposely stinging each other when this was meant to be a proposal.

she hates her in the novel too lol.

??????? where the bloody hell are they getting it from lmaooooooooooo. even the episode synopsis till the ending (i didn't read it cos i don't want that detailed spoilers but I do know the general gist) we got goes with the novel trajectory.

they didn't change it, that's how it was always going to be.

because ye jin yan is acutely aware of their age difference and how the world will treat them if they do get together, she doesn't care but he cares. so while he treats her fairly normal, he take care of her TOO MUCH, even if you take into account that he promised a friend.

she doesn't end up with him, I don't really like the relationship, but it is part of the novel and they adapted it somewhat because it make sense for her character. some people think they didn't keep enough of it, some think they kept too much, I thought he would be a mentor, but i think it's mix of mentor/love not meant to be. but if it's too iffy, i think you can interpret it as mentor/fatherly relationship. (I think the bs he puts up with make more sense if she's secretly his daughter, cos i think even if you were romantically interested in someone, the things he let her get away with is just way too dumb)

i do rather she stays single and just be independent, but suo suo, despite what she claims in the drama, isn't the independent one. it's nan sun.

if she married ye jin yan, i'd want her to find a different job.

also ????? he didn't put her in danger? he didn't know some guy would go after them, and fan jin gang specifically told her to go back to the hotel, she didn't listen. the entire plot point is goddamn awful and i hate it.