The King's Woman

Watch It for the Aesthetics

The King’s Woman (Chinese title: 秦时丽人明月心) was one of my favorite dramas to rewatch back when it first aired in 2017, if only for the actors and the costumes.

Set in the Warring States period of China, the drama follows Gongsun Li, a fictional concubine of the King of Qin State, and her contributions to eventual historical events. After identifying her as the girl who saved him from certain death when they were children, Ying Zheng falls in love with Gongsun Li and poisons her childhood sweetheart, Jing Ke, in order to entrap and secure her for his harem. Gongsun Li slowly develops feelings for Ying Zheng even as she defies and tries to stave off the worst of his tyrannical nature. The King’s Woman is a story about Stockholm syndrome, manipulation, abuse, and, eventually, heartbreak. I think it’s one worth watching, but it’s not without some major flaws…

A+ Cinnamon Tography and Aesthetics
Let’s start with some positives. This drama looks amazing. The production designer, art director, the costume department, etc. went all out. I’d not seen a Chinese period drama with better costumes and set designs since The Empress of China. I love everything every character in this series wore. The clothes are mind-blowing and well worth watching forty-eight episodes for.

What’s more, this is one of the best directed Chinese dramas I’ve seen so far. There are no weird camera angles, no amateur special effects, and very little awkward choreography to take you out of the story. Every action and effect was framed perfectly. The remarkable cinematography was a breath of fresh air back in 2017.

Stockholm Syndrome Passing as Romance
Dilraba Dilmurat and Vin Zhang’s insane chemistry aside…You really have to go into The King’s Woman ready to buy into the romanticism of the whole situation between Gongsun Li and Ying Zheng because the moment you pull back and look at it from a more sobering perspective, the magic ceases to work.

This drama goes out of its way to depict pre-Qin Shi Huang Ying Zheng as a tragic figure who’s simultaneously the cause of his own misfortunes and a victim of his personal faults. You can see at the beginning that even in his cruelty, he has good intentions. But on some level, he doesn’t understand what that means or why people are so resistant to his good will. He was a child of abuse who, consciously and not, revisits his own pain on others a thousandfold.

What’s interesting is the way the narrative sides with him. As he thinks of himself as a victim, so does the drama cast him as such. It feels like we’re supposed to be in Gongsun Li’s shoes, seeing him through her eyes. This, of course, makes their relationship easier to swallow, even though we all know better. (The fact that Vin Zhang is handsome AF helps a lot too.)
Nevertheless, I felt very uneasy about the moments of tenderness, playfulness, and affection between Gongsun Li and Ying Zheng, especially given how resistant she is to him from the start. I mean, did she really forget how he threatened to abort her child, separated her baby from her right after childbirth, and tried to kill her martial brothers?

One moment later in the drama got to me particularly. In episodes 40/41, Ying Zheng goes on a killing spree of all his childhood tormentors, and instead of being horrified by this senseless mass murdering, Gongsun Li coddles and comforts him because he is… sad? After he killed a whole neighborhood of people? Like, boohoo, honey, he’s sad? The people he killed are dead! How the hell is that remotely acceptable to her?

She clearly knows what kind of a person he was, but the mental gymnastics she does to make excuses for him is frustrating.
Lastly, I think this whole trope of a male love interest falling in love with the female lead because she was nice to him for like five minutes when they were children is so trite. However, given that Ying Zheng’s a mega-creep whose relationship with Gongsun Li predicates on her developing Stockholm syndrome, it kind of works here.

One-Note Characters
Honestly, I wasn’t as resistant to Gongsun Li and Ying Zheng’s relationship as I could’ve been. The drama did a lot of work brushing aside all the troubling bits. Compounded with this following flaw, rooting for the main couple was a no-brainer: Jing Ke sucks. No, not as a person. As a character. For all that he has to work with—the martial arts talent, a handsome actor, a tragic love lost, a destiny unfulfilled—he comes off incredibly one-noted. He’s straight up uninteresting, which is just about the worst thing a main character can be.

This isn’t unique to him, unfortunately. Most of the characters in The King’s Woman have very little personalities to speak of. Instead, they’re relegated to playing cookie cutter roles that each serves one or two functions in the plot. I feel like the only developed character, aside from Ying Zheng and Gongsun Li, is Lu Buwei, who’s the only one with a personal agenda complicated and interesting enough. Sadly, he’s criminally unexplored and underutilized as a villain.

Plot and Pacing Issues
This drama is very slow. I found myself wishing I could watch it on 2x speed without ruining everything else about the experience. Instead I resorted to “skimming” i.e. skipping seconds at a time and only watching in full what felt like crucial scenes in an effort to make the story move along faster. To tell the truth, I did not missed much. This is definitely a drama you can stream in the background as you do other things.

There are also a number of minor Dumb Plot moments I picked up. For instance, there’s a scene in episode 5 where Gongsun Li stabs a soldier through the hand for five full seconds before his subordinates even react. Like, they did not move or flinch until she begins to flee. It’s stupidly convenient. Another example: In episode 27, the Crown Prince of Yan sends Gongsun Li a secret message asking her to smuggle him out of Qin State. But while he does the smart thing and communicates it via a code, he also “helpfully” circled his entire hidden message for her in red ink. What do I even say?

Other Nitpicks and Questions
- Why does Chengjiao wear his hair in the Chu style? Was he a political hostage of Chu State?
- That Godfather reference in episode 1 is hilarious and so out of place
- Ying Zheng’s eyebrows are impeccable (Not nitpicking, I just appreciate his eyebrows)
- Couldn’t Gongsun Li have avoided the whole ordeal had she just done her hair a different way after her wanted poster came out?
- Why does she keep getting stabbed in the armpits?

Final Rating and Recommendations
The King’s Woman as a story isn’t executed to its fullest potentials. While I wouldn’t be as harsh as to describe the dialogue, plot, and characters as bland, they felt muted and secondary to the non-story elements of the production: the costumes, the set designs, the general aesthetic. There are Wuxia, harem, politics, and war plot threads in this drama, none of which are done well. The “romance” is riddled with problems.

On the other hand, the cinematography and camera work are incredible. The crew went all out for the set designs and costumes, which are easily some of the best work I’ve seen for Asian period dramas, and kept me coming back to this series over and over again. Not to mention, I can stare at Dilraba Dilmurat and Vin Zhang all day, and I’m sure I’m not alone; there are worse ways to pass time than watching two of the most beautiful people in the world together on screen, mediocre storytelling or not.

My Rating: 6/10

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Well....intensity. Wowcha, someone get me a bucket. The male lead (emperor) was just so on point, the actor who played him was fantastic. Brooding, dangerous, possessive and utterly smitten with the female lead. The female lead was strong, smart, beautiful - she was the perfect heroine in my eyes. The plot was very thick to me, and sometimes it was easy to become lost in it. However, there were plenty of romantic scenes and I kept going back just to rewatch certain bits as they were just so beautifully done I loved this drama so much. One of my top favs. I'm already thinking about watching it again. Great show, great actors... I highly recommend it if you're into possessive, powerful and dark heroes!

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Mission Impossible

I picked this one up because I quite like Vin Zhang as an actor - he has a certain intensity that in the right role could be quite powerful. I was quite excited to see he him cast as the male lead and as the first emperor of China Qin Shi Huang no less! I also (rightly) suspected that Dilraba Dilmurat would pair up quite nicely with him as the female lead Gong Sun Li.

After getting about halfway through this, I realized that the good chemistry between the leads just really wasn't good enough to hold up the challenging story-line that doomed this drama from the start. The lovely Dilraba/Sun Li had the misfortune to catch the eye of the tyrannical Qin emperor. Being all powerful, he tears her from the arms of her childhood love Jing Ke and makes her his concubine. He keeps her by his side by adopting their child and holding him hostage. Despite all of this, we are supposed to be moved by his persistent and not always tender efforts to win her heart. As the Qin emperor, Zhang was mercurial, suspicious, petty and jealous - often coming across like a petulant rejected teenage suitor. Despite his personal intensity, Zhang was not able to round out these lesser qualities with the requisite gravitas of such a powerful emperor. Don't get me wrong, I still think Zhang is a promising actor but the character that he plays is not an innately likable one.

Switching to Dilraba, she also had her work cut out for her - how to betray her love and eventually succumb to such a petty tyrant and not alienate the audience? To make it more palatable, they cast some completely vapid, limp noodle of an actor to play Jing Ke, supposedly the love of Sun Li's life and the father of her child. Needless to say, there was even less chemistry between Jing Ke and Sun Li so we didn't even get a good and convincing triangle. A jealous misunderstanding set him down the path of falling for someone else with the heartbroken encouragement of Sun Li. All I could think was wow, this girl has bad taste in men and they (Sun Li and Jing Ke) were really not that into each other. The rest of the cast was rather insipid and didn't really resonate. There was some silly assassination sub plot that Jing Ke is likely in on (yes kill the tyrant that stole your wife and child) but I didn't get far enough to see it play out. Don't think I am missing anything.

And finally of course there was the requisite palace harem cliche of beautiful women doing their absolute worst to each other - oh yes of course they picked on Sun Li. I can usually tolerate some of it but in this case it was just the last straw. In hindsight, I should have known better than to spend time on this and I have much sympathy for the leads. To begin with, the plot is a super challenging one in which none of the lead characters can possibly come off in a good way. It didn't help that the script writing and character development was shallow and completely not up to the formidable task of making wife snatching romantic. In this regard however, my irritation is squarely aimed at the scriptwriters and not the actors. Their job was literally mission impossible. Instead of self destructing, hopefully they both (and I) make better script choices going forward.

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Story:
It's a good watch, but the pacing was a bit weird for me. The amount of time skips made it a bit rushed feeling even though the romance had good pacing. There were some characters I found did not add much to the plot and were added in only for more romantic plots (ex: Gai Lan) and they did not interest me at all. I wanted to skip their scenes most of the time, what kept me watching the drama was the chemistry between Diliraba and Zhang Bin Bin. Although in our modern time, the romance would not be well received due to the mistreatment of Gong Sun Li, it should be kept in mind that in their time, the king does whatever he wants LOL. When adding his past, you can kind of empathize with him. Personally, I liked the progression of the romance between the two. The characters are all very flawed, and sometimes although human, makes you want to strangle the person for their stupidity. Some poorly written characters aside, the story itself was pretty good, although the ending left me feeling a bit empty. Characters are very one dimensional for a 48 episode drama.

Cast/Acting:
Love the cast, but felt like the acting could have been better. I have high expectations of Diliraba and Zhang Bin Bin. They did well, especially ZBB, but there were moments where the emotions were not as well received on my end. There were scenes however, that damn, ZBB delivered so well I had to rewatch some parts due to feeling the intense emotions and not on what was being said. Major props to the actors of Han Shen and Li Zhong. They did great in their character portrayal and you can really feel their love/loyalty towards Sun Li and the King. As for Jing Ke, I've watched the actor in other dramas and he was pretty great in them, so I will chalk it up to poor writing of his character. He did well for what he was given, but all he was able to show was self pity most of the time, not much to show his acting abilities. I think the rest of the supporting casts did great, from the kings mother to the evil eunuch! The only one that bugged me was the actress for Gai Lan. Something about her acting made it seem forced and unnatural, but she wasn't horrible.

Music:
Standard sad OSTs that sound nice. Will be on my chinese OST playlist but isn't anything groundbreaking.

Rewatch Value:
I will most likely just watch the romance between Ying Zheng and Sun Li due to Jing Ke and Gai Lan being very boring.

Overall:
Keep in mind that the characters are based off of real people, but it is not very accurate in portrayal. Jing Ke 90% of the time was in a mode of self pity and Ying Zheng was not as ruthless compared to in real life. Not recommended to watch this if you want to learn about the history of the characters. They were changed to put more emphasis on the romance. However, if you put that aside, the romance was great between Sun Li and King Ying Zheng. The ending left me feeling a bit empty as it did not show much, wished we could have seen more of little Tian Ming.

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Let me just say I created an account on this website to leave a review for this drama that I just finished.
Rich with culture, the struggles of the times, and most of all their inner turmoils while the continent is going through massive change. I come from a family that has suffered under the Japanese Invasion, then subsequently the Communist Red Army Cultural Revolution, and this was a very philosophical drama, for me, that is somewhat based on history and it's players.
For someone that is looking for a tv series that does a good job of depicting history, but with decent drama/love story added into it, this is a good one.
I appreciated this drama for depicting:
- The rich costumes and cultures throughout the series, along with depictions of battles, watching along as each kingdom fell one by one...
- Brief overview of the Six Kingdoms and their states during that era, for example the kingdom of Qin was indeed well managed with strict laws that applied to all, versus other kingdoms.
- The perspectives of the common people of those kingdoms whose only wish is to live in peace
- The perspectives of those representing their kingdoms (royalty and aristocracy) and their unwavering loyalty to preserve their motherland.
- The perspective of the Qin Emperor whose desire is to unite all of China, even despite a massive bloodbath. How difficult it must have been for him to have his underlings (many from those other kingdoms) who serve him on the surface, but deep down is seeking to preserve their motherlands.
- The eternal perspective of strong women who wished they could've been more, if only they were born a man...

Though there were parts where the acting could have been better (I agree the flashbacks are a bit much after a while), and some of the actors you never really feel for, but other strong actors did such an excellent job to carry the drama forward, and finally I was extremely impressed with how they weaved a pretty complex love story into this historically based drama. For those that appreciate culture and history, but would like to see it in Story Mode (you can then go read up the actual history in books or Wikipedia), this is a drama that is worth your time.

Last words... the final episode was epic.

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I started watching this drama with people's bad comments and bad reviews in my mind. I watch this because the story is interesting and I like Zhang Bin Bin and Dilraba. However, because of the bad comments and review, I had low expectation of this drama. But this drama did not disappoint! I don't find it draggy. I felt that the pace is quite alright and many of the episodes seem to end on a cliffhanger, giving me panda eyes in the mornings because I keep watching past my bedtime :)

I thought that Zhang Bin Bin as Qin Shi Huang did a good job. Dilraba also did okay in my opinion. I like the actor that played Han Shen, but not the one that played Jing Ke. I like the scenes between Bin Bin and Dilraba, I thought they have chemistry together and the scenes where Dilraba's character started to fall in love with the king is so cute, one that I can definitely rewatch. I also like the fighting scenes in this drama. Production quality is also great, doesn't feel like an older drama in my opinion. Cinematography is great too.

This is a serious drama and although the title refers to Dilraba's character, the story is much more than that. There's palace politics and war strategies and loyalty. So much more than just love story between Gongsun Li as the King's woman with The King.

*Spoiler alert*
The ending, however is super brutal. I never liked Jing Ke, so I was rooting for the King to win, but never expected that he actually lost in a sense since the king's woman gets to be with her first love, Jing Ke in the afterlife. The last several episodes were also brutal as there is war and murder and revenge.

Overall, I thought this is a good drama and really worth watching. If you like historical angle drama and palace politics, this drama is recommended for you.

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One of my top ten dramas of all the time including k drama and cdrama,it was my first c drama and it introduced me to the c drama world ,and it have my favorite story ,married couple,forced marriage,tragedy,martial arts I really can't get enough of this drama and have watched it and rewatched again and again ,if you are not yet watched it your in a loss ,stop searching for dramas to watch or read reviews to see whether you can watch it or not, just start watcj it ,and am sure you will like! Hwo can I end this review without talking about vin zhang!? One of best thing that this drama have is him his smile is a killer and he is talented that you can watch any drama just becz of him!!!!!

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It's a very nice drama about love, revenge and mistrust. The whole story is nice. The female characters aren't annoying and the main female lead is a calculative person and is strong so the others can't push her around. She also sticks to her principles even after everything that happens. The male lead is regarded as ruthless which can be true on some point but is still very misunderstood by others. In the drama there is a lot of mind battles and you've got a descent amount of action. The actors did a fantastic job in my opinion and the music is nice but it could be better. Overall it's a very nice story if you like historical drama with romance and misunderstandings.

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I rated this at a 9 for the reason of the ending. The ending is different from other dramas that I have viewed. Don't get me wrong but this drama was very good so I have to give the screenwriters respect, I just didn't like the ending. Dilraba Dilmurat (Lady Li) was awesome playing this role. Vin Zhang (Ying Zheng) was amazing at playing the King/Emperor. I love watching historical dramas, I learn some things about my heritage. Both Delraba Dilmurat and Vin Zhang are great actors and very respected. Triangle love affairs I can do without. Forced marriages to save a country not only happened in China but that seemed to be the story in Rome and everywhere else. Glad wasn't born back when but my DNA has followed that path. I loved the costumes and the music. The visuals were good. Thanking all that made this drama or a story wouldn't have been told.

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I love this drama especially the Angst abd sorrow of it

I love how angsty is it a d sorrowful but I hate harem and I feel so sorry for Ying Zhang that he ended up a fate of a emperor but more than anything I hate that poor Ying Zhang is forced to have harem because of these women being all forced on him but he only love Gong sun Li because she is a wise abd strong woman a d not just any woman and I hate that I love this pair quite alot and especially love Zhang Bin Bin as he is the sole reason that I watch it and he finally got his own biological kid with Gong sun Li and than another concubine kills it in the act of Gongsun Li misscariage and that nas de me cry more than anything else in this drama and than a second most dreadful scene was when Ying Zhang avenged his son and murdered all the people 9f the family of this concubine who killed his own child and after that his mom died but I did felt so happy as it was warming my heart when Gongsun Li saved Ying Zhang from the fight where he got severely wounded and than they webrmt and lived as ordinary people for that little time and than she told him when he figured out that she's pregnant that she bear his own biological child

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Despite some issues I had with this drama, it has so thoroughly captivated me that I can't give it any less than 10. The biggest issue I had is with packaging manipulation, obsession and the desire to completely possess someone as love. I did see pure love in this drama, especially during the initial episodes of the drama, but not from the character that we are supposed to see it. At times, it was very difficult to me to root for the "main couple" and sometimes it was even difficult for me to say who the main couple should be.

The King's Woman has a beautiful cinematography. I enjoyed looking at every scene in this show. The costumes, fight scenes and the shots in between are magnificent and often very powerful. The atmosphere is sometimes conveyed by the amount of light and the color of clothes that the people are wearing. The more carefree the characters can be, the less make up and bright colors we see. I really liked it. I also liked the music that went with it.

I thought that the story was swift and quite engrossing. I typically lose interest in shows that are longer than 20 episodes, but this one is different. Not a single episode dragged for me. In a nutshell, it is a historical drama with a love triangle (square?) type of situation, except that all of the characters involved seemed well developed and multidimensional. People change their feelings in this show because their situation changes and their motivation is governed by internal logic. Both men and women can be righteous or manipulating. This show has a high level of betrayal, revenge, possession, love, devotion, assassinations and intrigue, but people are not vile without a reason. Their motivations might be convoluted, but not impossible to understand. The show did a good job showing that in politics and in the palace you really can't trust anyone. One thing that I really liked at the beginning of the show was the balance of sad and lighter moments. Unfortunately, the show got progressively darker in the course of time. After episode 30, it becomes really dark and the viewers get the ominous feeling that things can't go right for everyone.

I can't say whether I am a fan of the ending or not. All in all, I was not surprised by it given everything we knew about the world of the King's Woman and the people involved.

I gave it a very high re-watch value because of the beauty of the shots. I already re-watched some of the episodes because I simply enjoyed seeing them again.

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