yujeeee

First off, very very beautiful drama. It is very clear that money went into the right places for this and they got the right director for it. All shots were breathtaking. From the very first scene where the ml was saved in the snow to the last, this was a very nice cinematic work. Especially the calm ambiance of Lin’an, that town was the most beautiful place in the entire drama.
Everything good happened in Xigu Lane, it was very a lighthearted, feel good type of vibe during that arc. When they didn’t wrap it up even more than twenty episodes into the drama, I was impatient, but when they finally moved it along to the capital, I found myself wanting to go back to the beginning.

Fan Changyu/ Tian Xiwei:
Changyu is absolutely my baby, that girl deserved for everything good to happen to her. Changyu is introduced as an orphan, her parents had been murdered by bandits (obviously we’ll later learn this is not the case) and to take care of herself and her younger sister she takes up her father’s old job as a pig butcher (you will not believe the number of times the words pig butcher is repeated in this drama). She is a fierce, independent and kind girl, and a very optimistic one too. She is a bit simple minded due to not having an education and sometimes she made dumb decisions, like knocking out the general meant to lead soldiers into war, she didn’t know, but yeah, dumb. I loved Changyu and her resilience even though some of the achievements the plot forced on her were very unrealistic. Because what do you mean this 19–20 year old somehow managed to kill the war generals that had been going to war since before she was a thought in her mother’s womb? Changyu’s war achievements and subsequent promotions to General were so illogical because once again, this was a young girl that had zero education, not to mention military knowledge but it is supposed to be believable how easily she killed Lord Changxin and won the war against him? Okay. Her relationships with the Zhao couple and that ragtag team was very nice to watch though, and Changyu herself as a character was very entertaining on screen. TXW really stole the entire drama for me.

Xie Zheng/ Zhang Linghe:
There’s not much to even say about this one because he literally did almost nothing the whole 40 episodes. He was always either injured or just serving face. For a so-called war genius titled Marquis, we didn’t see him fight a lot of wars. If he wasn’t aura farming somewhere then he was cutting himself, which to that point, I think this drama should have some sort of warning for self-harm triggers or something idk, maybe they did have it and it was in Chinese, I’m not sure. As it is a period drama and given the contexts, we can’t really say Xie Zheng was suicidal, but man he was out there cutting himself almost every scene. You’d think as a general that had to constantly be in some sort of situation that required him to fight he’d take better care of his health and not inflict as much harm on himself as possible but nope, whenever he saw a knife or sword his first instinct was to swipe the sharp end against his arm. Also, back to the teenagers with their entire two decades of life and only some experience taking down the bad guys that have been training decades before the leads even materialized as sperm is a tired trope and should be shelved, please. Despite all the above, ZLH served looks that haven’t been seen in a while, he truly looked so good in this drama really.

The last ten ish episodes were a huge let down, they had spent too much time on the Lin’an arc that the capital arc was just too fast paced and rushed and a lot of things were not properly explained. It was a huge effort for me to finish them and it actually took me two months to finally run out of things to watch and force myself to finish it. The Wei Yan/ Former Crown Prince/ Jingzhou massacre could’ve been slowly unraveled and properly visualized. Instead we have our two idiotic leads stupidly bumbling around–without much evidence mind you—and just convinced that Wei Yan was the sole perpetrator. They were actually so frustrating.

My god I’ve never seen a more useless puppet emperor; nobody fears or even respects him. My gripe about Xie Zheng belittling the emperor is that he also is just like his uncle, he did not want to help the current emperor escape the factions that kept him a puppet and actually better the nation, instead he chose to enthrone a new one whose power he governs with. They’re both the same, the only difference is we see how Wei Yan started with not evil intentions and was eventually corrupted by power but we do not see if the same will happen to Xie Zheng as well.

And my favorite part of the show at some point was Deng Kai and Kong Xue’er aka Qi Min and Yu Qianqian. They were so toxic oh my god, I loved that she saw him to his death and then rose to the highest position in the realm. I’ve seen some theories that Qi Min was nerfed with his obsession for her and that was why he failed, and while I agree that he truly suffered and was the one supposed to ascend to the throne, he was too mad to ever rule successfully, Qianqian or not. As we were shown in the what could have been segment, with his parents alive, he might’ve been a good ruler, but the Qi Min that went through the burning of the east palace and the loveless youth of the Lord Changxin’s house was too fractured to govern or care about people successfully. Even his love/obsession with Qianqian was a burning thing that threatened to consume not just her but him too in the flames, he would’ve left nothing but ashes in the wake of his rule, so yes, I’m very happy he died and that she finally escaped his cage. That said though, they had delicious chemistry together and I would love to see them as a pair in another work.

Honestly, apart from the ending–which seems to be the case with many cdramas these days, they start high and then just don’t know how to stick the landing—I don’t have much problem with this one, it was very enjoyable in the beginning and TXW and ZLH did a good enough job.