Love and Crown

It would be much better if the drama ended on 24th episode

The first half was really good and interesting. The fall of the Grand Tutor could end the story and thus the whole drama would have been a lot better. Or, if the producers wanted more conflict and more tension, they could have gone as far as the episode 27 with a final coup by the Tutor helped by this horrible women, Grand Preceptor. And then just destroy their plot, by feigning the emperor's death in cooperation with his younger brother. But no... they just had to have a tragic end. The problem was not with the tragedy itself, but that it seemed really unnecessary and far fetched. The younger prince was completely unconvincing in his collaboration with the Preceptor. He was clearly aware of her scheming, but unreasonably choose to turn against his brother. As if he became completely dumb all of a sudden despite being really intelligent before. And the last straw: the apparition of emperor's mother out of nowhere... And if she could reveal the truth to the Preceptor at the end, why couldn't she do it before the emperors' death? It was just nonsensical: lots of possible exits to have a happy ending, but just going for a sad one.
And the last criticism: the level of primness in this drama is abnormally high. Even in the context of chinese censorship, how this drama is avoiding any warmer scenes... it is unbelievable. They really exagerate here.

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I m loving this drama

I think this drama deserves 8.2 - 8.7 rating , it's going so underated . I really like Ren jialun as a male lead, his acting is exceptionally good, and he looks so handsome as bai chifeng also the FL is also really great
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I am genuinely obsessed with Love and Crown (2025) — like, this drama completely pulled me in before I even realized what was happening. From the very first episode, the chemistry between Ren Jialun and Peng Xiaoran had me glued to the screen. Their dynamic is that perfect mix of playful, intense, and emotionally loaded, and it makes every scene between them feel addictive.

What I love the most is the balance between romance, palace intrigue, and the whole Jianghu martial-arts world. Nothing drags, nothing feels forced — the story keeps moving with a smooth rhythm, and every episode leaves you wanting “just one more,” which of course turns into five. The dual identity of the emperor adds that extra thrill, and watching Ling Cangcang grow as a powerful, independent woman is honestly so satisfying.

Visually, the drama is stunning. The costumes feel luxurious, the sets look cinematic, and even the fight scenes have this graceful, artistic vibe. And don’t even get me started on the OST — it fits the emotional beats perfectly.

Overall, this drama checks every box for me. It’s beautiful, emotional, exciting, and totally binge-worthy. I’m fully hooked, and I love it way more than I expected.


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Book Vs. Live Action Adaption - Flawless Mindgames yet Unfortunately trash

This drama started so strong — the kind of dark, intense romance that had me hooked from the first episode. There was this delicious tension between the characters: controlling vibes, sharp mental games, walls up on every side, and political scheming that felt strategic and compelling. The dynamic between the ML and the antagonist was honestly flawless. Those interactions were the absolute highlight and felt like years of careful plotting came together in every glance and side‑eye. It has palace politics with a small dose of martial-world intrigue that could have been amazing. I binge‑watched the drama because it felt like a story with real stakes and depth.

But then the show lost its footing. Somewhere around the late mid‑section, think episodes twenty-something, the pacing got weird. The romance, which always felt forced, began to drag the drama down. And the characters started making baffling choices that felt like “plot needs” more than real development. The love-story flashbacks that were supposed to explain motivations ended up making me hate the FL less and made the ML’s actions feel confusing and inconsistent. Ultimately, I was starting to get super annoyed with almost every female character.

The romance never quite landed for me. It felt like the writers were told late in the process, “add a love story, to sell this better,” and the result was a lot of miscommunication, inconsistency, and illogical logic. Some moments could have been good, but too many decisions by the FL felt plain stupid and unthought-out, and by the back half, I was upset with the whole idea of this being a romance drama. Honestly, it would have been better with no romance line, which directly contradicts its source material.

It’s worth noting that some of the backlash around Love and Crown comes from changes made to the original novel. From what I understand, the novel leaned much harder into romance and emotional devotion, especially from the FL, with more apparent romantic motivations and less emphasis on psychological warfare. While that may have made the love story more coherent, it also means the drama’s best element for me—the sharp, layered mind games, particularly between the ML and the antagonist—would not have existed because it was an adaptation choice.

Ironically, following the novel more closely would have made this worse for my personal taste. I loved the ruthless tension, the intellectual sparring, and the sense that every interaction was calculated. Shifting the focus further toward an unrealistic level of romantic devotion from the fml would have dulled the drama for me.

At the same time, the drama’s expansion of characters like the imperial preceptor (Du Tingxin), combined with uneven adaptation choices, destabilized the narrative. The original author’s public dissatisfaction with the changes only reinforces that this story lost its balance somewhere between honoring the source and chasing dramatic escalation. Unfortunately, the romance and side characters paid the price.

The performances are solid, but the storytelling feels chaotic and doesn’t always honor its own internal logic. Even scenes that come out of nowhere contribute to the feeling that the drama’s heart wasn’t always where its plot was going. For instance, the jump in ep 31, like what even was this besides a worthless need to extend the story and add DRAMATIC elements the audience didn´t need or want.

Verdict:
I want the fuzzy/fur black cloak that the ML takes everywhere with him. This drama needs so much work; it is not worth watching unless you want dramatic mood music.

Also, check out the news that helped me understand how this drama failed.
https://www.tonboriday.com/2025/11/love-and-crown-sparks-creative-clash-as.html
https://en.layarhijau.com/?s=Love+and+Crown
https://www.newhanfu.com/75353.html

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Personal complaint: What is the story with Ren Jia Lun's hair and makeup? Everyone else's is lush and beautiful, but Jia Lun's hair piece is fakey-fake and his makeup causes him to look sickly and washed
out all the way through. He is such a handsome man, this movie did not do him justice.

OK, now that I've got that off my chest.... the production is a little clunky all the way through but worst at the beginning and does improve.

The acting is reasonably good with a wide array of interesting characters.

The plot is a little tortured.

Spoiler alert: I personally hate when everyone dies at the end. 😕

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should've seen the writings on the wall ...

so this is the same screenwriter for sword and beloved , that being said ; here's what went wrong

from the start everything was confusing and tended to be rushed and made non sense , the scene where she stabs him in the beginning , her running away and getting caught , the wedding by the way you get all of this in first episode , then we get a flashback without even giving us a hint that was a flashback , you find out from the context that they don't know each other yet

the ML with his cold illness like he is dying and getting poisoned every episode and FL is crying for him it was really tiring .

FL indecisiveness like make up your mind do you love ML or wanna kill him for kill your master , one minute she is plotting to hurt him and the other she is in love with him .

a lot of dragging in the middle she gets kidnapped , he tries to save her by using a stronger poison to suppress his cold poison and we drag for a little bit

prince of yuzhang the most clueless person i've ever seen or he is playing dumb don't know , nevertheless he the one who gets to live in the end ,

Du tingxin can't remember her name , however , for 19 episodes no sure of the number , she is all about i want to save xiao huan he is my savior , suddenly she discovers she is his half sister and a princess and get that hunger for power and goes into i am gonna kill everyone phase .

for ep 20 onward everything becomes a whole lot messier .

ML role here was all about suffering and dying the end , don't know what was I expecting from allen ren drama usually they all have sad endings or he dies .

everyone dies empress dowager , FL , ML , du tingxin "not sure " , zhong lin "don't know why she died " , xiao ying .

on the bright side acting was superb and music also and that's it can't think of something else .

if you watch this drama don't expect much .

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Avoid this screenwriter at all cost !

I love Ren Jia Lun so much as an actor that I actually sat through all 35 chaotic episodes of Love and Crown… only to end up with yet another sad ending added to his drama list. And honestly, for about 30 of those episodes I had zero clue where the story was even trying to go. The characters kept doing things that made no sense, random events kept popping up out of nowhere—at some point I started wondering if I missed something, or if the plot just had so many holes that following it became impossible. The frustrating part is, with the right scriptwriter and director, Ren Jia Lun can bring a character to life so expressively. I can’t help thinking that if Love and Crown had been handled by a stronger team, his chemistry with the female lead would’ve hit way harder.

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Everything about this drama is infuriating

I believe the writer or screenwriter was in some kind of a crack while writing this story. Everything looks ridiculous. Every character was infuriating, the only decent character was Zhong Lin and Xiao Huan, but they had to make them both face a cruel end. There's no such thing as character development, even when there is some, they still had to dumbing down every character and make the villains somehow a delusional freak.
Plot was a mess
Acting is good
Cinematography is mid
OST is okay

In conclusion, except if the actors are your favorite, don't waste your time watching this. Sorry.

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From bad, to interesting, to horrible

This show started off lame, but I kept going because I quite liked the male lead. the misunderstandings from the get-go were extremely annoying. The ML could have communicated better to the female lead, but he chose to be hated for no reason instead, finally about halfway through the series, the misunderstandings got cleared up. Yet they still showed us no love scenes between the leads and suddenly the female lead was pregnant, I didn't even know they had gotten back together. I read that he doesn't do any intimate scenes because he's married in real life. And while I do respect that he should be playing in other Category dramas if that is the case. it got interesting toward the middle of the show but then it slowly went downhill. It was extremely rushed towards the end and nothing made sense. I thought they were going to bring the sister back to life But apparently they did not, and not only did the guy die at the end, but the girl died too. And that is acceptable on a show that was extremely well written, for instance, "a journey to love" But on this show, JUST NO. They had so many chances to kill the bad lady but they did not ...nothing made sense towards the end of the show. It was just a dumpster fire, and the fact that they killed off her friend as well at the end for no reason was just ridiculous. The only good thing was that they made the female lead prego so at least she had a child with a man that she loved and they left him in the world but other than that, it was just a ridiculous ending, and all of the magical aspects of the show were just ridiculous, and made no sense. DO NOT RECOMMEND!

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Romance Without Warmth: A Study in Misunderstandings and Emotional Abuse

It has been a month since I finished this drama, and honestly, I thought I had already moved on. But after accidentally coming across a short clip today, all the frustration came rushing back, and I felt the urge to write this out finally. 😮‍💨

When I first started watching, I had genuinely high expectations. I personally like Allen Ren, and I was also interested in Xiao Ran as a character. I really wanted this drama to be good. Unfortunately, what I got instead was pure chaos. I still cannot understand how a professional scriptwriter could create a story that is this illogical and exhausting. The entire plot survives on endless misunderstandings, forced conflicts, and emotional torture. This is not love. There is no warmth, no growth, no sense of destiny or emotional depth. Everything that makes a romance meaningful is completely missing. 💔

What made it worse is that the drama is non-stop and stressful. There are no calm moments, no sweet pauses, no breathing space for the audience. From beginning to end, it feels like emotional punishment. The main couple spends more than half of the story fighting. The female lead constantly hates and misunderstands the male lead, and when you think things might improve, the suffering only intensifies. By the second half, watching it felt more like endurance than enjoyment. 😵‍💫

Visually, the drama strangely reminded me of early-2000s productions. The videography, background design, and overall texture felt outdated, almost like a shelved drama finally pushed out without care. The only reason this drama remains watchable at all is because of the actors. They carried the entire show on their shoulders. Without them, there would be absolutely nothing left to defend.

From the female lead’s perspective, the story is especially disturbing. She is surrounded by betrayal from every direction — a corrupted father who uses her as a tool, a trusted master who turns out to be a villain, and a so-called political marriage that traps her like a bird in a gilded cage. Her world is carefully constructed to deceive and control her. In such circumstances, how is she supposed to feel trust or safety toward a man who threatens her entire clan to force marriage? Expecting her to immediately submit emotionally is not romance — it is cruelty. 🕊️

What angers me most is how some viewers attack the female lead while standing in a god-like perspective, blaming her for not being “obedient enough” or “grateful enough.” Just because she refuses to place romantic love above her family’s survival, she is labelled unlikable. Meanwhile, the same people romanticise the male lead’s actions and even use female side characters to step on the heroine. That double standard is exhausting and unfair. 😤

The irony is painful. Even male-oriented writers have managed to write complex, conflicted female characters with dignity and humanity. Yet here, a female-oriented writer openly suggests that “loving a woman means giving her a good husband.” That mindset is outdated, insulting, and deeply regressive. Loving a woman means giving her autonomy, safety, power, financial independence, emotional respect, and a full sense of self — not handing her a man and calling it a reward. 🚫👑

Now, credit where it is due: Allen Ren’s acting is the one true highlight. His eye acting is exceptional. In moments of confrontation, his restrained expressions — the pain, the hesitation, the unspoken truth — add layers that the script completely fails to provide. He portrays a man who uses coldness as armor and hides tenderness beneath control and silence. Even his jealousy remains restrained and dignified. Through subtle micro-expressions alone, he brings depth to a character that would otherwise be painfully flat. 🎭✨

Despite some performance controversies, Allen Ren undeniably carries his role with skill and professionalism. He once again proves his strength in historical dramas and succeeds in making a deeply flawed character emotionally compelling — something the writing itself never manages to achieve.

So let me be clear: this drama is bad. Very bad.
The “tyrannical emperor falls in love with me” trope feels ancient and lazy. The styling is inconsistent and often unattractive. The dialogue is childish and embarrassing. The sets look fake, the CGI is poor, and the overall production quality is shockingly low. Even the opening song is unbearable. 🚫🎬

I do not recommend this drama to anyone. Not for romance, not for plot, not for emotional satisfaction. Watching it feels like stress disguised as entertainment. Save your time, save your emotions, and do yourself a favour.

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