Story of Kunning Palace

AAAAAGHHHH!!! IT'S A MUST WATCH DRAMA

This drama is an exceptional piece of work, highlighted by its outstanding cast. Each actor brings their character to life with remarkable depth and authenticity, making the story all the more compelling. The performances are so nuanced and emotionally charged that they elevate the drama to new heights, drawing viewers in and keeping them engaged from start to finish. The synergy between the actors enhances the narrative, making it a memorable and impactful experience. This drama excels on multiple fronts.
The storyline is gripping and well-crafted, keeping viewers hooked with its twists and emotional depth. The actors deliver solid performances, bringing their characters to life convincingly. The music complements the narrative perfectly, enhancing the overall atmosphere and adding emotional resonance. Together, these elements create a compelling and immersive experience.

PS: I love Bai lu and her phenomenal acting, I've come to love ML tooo, he's so good with acting as a villain asdfghjkl.....

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I want to fan-girl this dramaaaaa

HOW SHOULD I START!!!

firstly I want to talk about the story!!, the story is well written even if there are some changes, the writers didn’t spoil it !!, the character development of some characters is insane!! like I could relate to their growth of personality, and I didn’t know I will be so intrigued with political conflict? they make it interesting really !!, the story overall is amazing and even if there is some matters didn’t match or explained the plot will make you finish this masterpiece in few days!

Now let’s talk about the CHARACTERS:

Ning’er: to be honest she’s fall first or at least had crush on Xie Wei from their first life 😂, like girl you want to be chocked like hell girl!! “ choke me like you hate me but you love me”, she admired Zhang Zhe , but didn’t really loved him that much bcz she always chooses herself and her comfort, even after she back in time, she still chose her comfort over what her heart or others thinks. Anyway this is not a bad thing really, bcz her second life she balanced this desire and become wiser of what her needs and others needs!!, and what make Xie Wei different is bcz he let her cross her comfort zone and cross her principles sometimes and it is not necessary a bad thing tho, he is the only one who helped her to overcome her past life and live normally.

Xie Wei: to be honest the story is around him not the FL 😂, we only see his story from Ning’er perspective, anyway his personality is confusing as hell ? like he is a villain but not really an ordinary villain? he has a good reasons and good method? like he is a hero using villains tools and that why everyone who knows him well adores and protects him and specially respects him, he didn’y ask help of anyone he is simply attracted the people around him and if they helped him he will return the favor multiple times and if they hurt him of will they best results is dying really 😂, yeah he is using the people around him but also taking care of them 😂, he is a hero using villains tools as I said.

Yan line : best boy I will take him 🥹, for me he is better and greenest flag than Zhang Zhe !! like come on guys … he will die and fight for her and he respects that she’s not in love with him and didn’t bother… and his relationship with his father and his respect to the ML is so admirable really !! he is the Best man on the series!!

Zhang Zhe: our boring grean flag guy .. I love you man but what are you doing becoming depressed after lying ? and do a whole drama about it then accept it 😂??? and yeah u r rightous and all but u know that people have different personalities and you should act according to their personality man … like literally the first encounter with you was beautiful and u did a well scheme to capture the maid … why will you be stupid sometimes 😂yeah he changed and learned that honestly is not always the best choice.. I love you man really , but I don’t know why u irritated me sometimes…

those are the main characters, the other characters were also charming, but I’m getting tired from typing !!

my comfort character is : lu Xian ( the businessman) the best friend of Xie Wei !! he is truly the definition of friendship!!

and 👋🏻 bye bye

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Super slow burn romance...

Romance: 20%
Royal Intrigue/Political Intrigue: 70%
Slice of Life: 10%

This is my 3rd Zhang Linghe drama and I am always amazed of his acting. He gave amazing justice to Xie Wei/Xie Juan's complicated character. This is my 1st Bai Lu drama. Not her fan but I like her acting skills.

Story wise, it was interesting. Xie Wei's character is the most complex character I have encountered in a cdrama. A kid discarded for power, who survived through his intelligence and strategic mind. That was interesting.

Jiang Xuening has a lot of regrets in her past life. She does not need a righteous guy like Zhang Zhe. She really needs a crazy guy like Xie Wei. Their romance is slow burn and frustrating but explosive and worth it, and it's a happy ending which is better than other cdramas with open-ended ending, cliff hanger ending, or sad ending. Not a fan of those endings.

I love her friendship with Yan Lin. Although Yan Lin has feelings for her. Also her friendship with the princess. I love the reconciliation and silent support with her sister Jiang Xuehui.

Highly recommended.

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Addictive Die & Retry about redemption instead of revenge with a thrilling, dangerous romance

My second favorite 2023 drama after Till the End of the Moon and would you know it, it's another dark, sexy and twisted angst-fest with Bai Lu as its lead. The hype was sky-high, and it did not diasppoint. It is by no means a perfect drama, the story can feel rushed, the palace politics are hard to follow, and the production is of average quality with some weird lighting and framing choices (hate them or love them, here come the Chu Yui Bun lens flares and close-ups), but the plot is gripping. Bai Lu has chemistry with every character, and her (incredibly hot) slow-burn romance with Zhang Ling He's scheming and secretly unhinged teacher is rich, intense, and pays off wonderfully. It's sort of a harem, Jiang Xuening has three suitors who are based on classic tropes (childhood friend, incorruptible lawman and mysterious teacher) and after trying to convince herself that she wants the most righteous one that she missed in her previous life, she ends up falling for the most dangerous instead. Xei Wei is fascinating, and I kept rooting for him despite his ruthlessness and controlling tendencies. This is how you write a flawed character ! Yan Lin was also great, only Zhang Zhe was a letdown, and I don't know if I should fault the script or the actor (maybe both). I also really liked how the politics were cleverly intertwined with the romances and destinies of all characters, it made it all the more gripping, and the rythm was flawless. This is the kind of show that hooks you right away and never let go. I was sad to see it end, 38 episodes went by like nothing.

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Fixing the mistakes you made in the past

Best drama ever!!!
At first I was lost how will Ning'er and Xie Wei fall in love with each other since in the FL past life they were most likely enemies and still in her second chance life she was too scared of Xie Wei, I was getting curious to watch it and it was worth watching.

For me it seemed a bit obvious that Xie Wei had already fallen for Ning'er because he was so curious about Ning'er and Yan Li and also Zhang Zhe relationship with her and he was also caring, protecting and following her orders and treating her differently from others when he was her teacher. Even though Zhang Zhe seemed to be the perfect guy for Ning'er but Xie Wei's love for her was too strong to be defeated.

Best couple I wish to see them in another drama still being FL and ML loving each other.
This drama made me forget that they were acting because their love connection on-screen was too great to believe they are real lovers in reality, it also made me wish I had a boyfriend like Xie Wei even though he seemed scary because his jealousy was making me laugh 🤣🤣

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One of the Best drama from Bai Lu! Queen of Wuxia drama

*Positive things* : the chemistry's off all actor/actress is very good , their acting very impresif, especially Xue Shu and princess. I really dont like Xue Shu, but this thing proof her acting really good.

I like how jealously XW with Zhang Zhe until the end, its so funny.. Even his child respect Zhang Zhe. 🤣

Finally, we got happy ending for Bai Lu wuxia drama compare to Till The End of The Moon. As expected, Bai Lu acting very good!

The negative :
- The soundtrack drama is so so, i mean not too good but not bad.
- Ep 37-38, i expect more conflict, but turn is out, the result predictable.

Anyway i glad to know and watch this drama, it will be one of the best drama in 2023!!

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Yuckkkk

I have wanted to watch the drama for a long time but I never got around to it…

I should have just stayed away.

SOKP is time travel drama that uses the trope of rewriting a past life. It's similar to The Princess Royal, but somehow it's worse in every single way.

This show is BAD.

It's ugly, nonsensical, juvenile, and dumb.

The technical aspects are borderline horrendous. The sets look generic and cheap, the costumes are boring and also look cheap. And the cinematography?

This show looked so bad that I HAD to look up the director. ( found that I've been unknowingly hating on his work for the past decade.)

I'm not a film student, but even I can tell that whoever was behind the camera had a fundamental misunderstanding of what should be communicated in the cinematography.

Everything is so bright and pale, it makes everything feel bleak. The exterior shots in some scenes were startlingly bad. The lighting was so artificial in some places that it made me laugh at how bad it looked. Be prepared to look at multiple shots of clenching hands over and over and over and over and over again. There's hardly any variation in how anyone is filmed. Everyone emotes the same ALL THE TIME.

I'm not sure how this team achieved it but they also managed to make objectively attractive people look awful. Both Bai Lu and Zhang Linghe suffer from this… but Zhang Linghe is the biggest victim.

I can't comprehend how a director would look at his performance and expressions and think it was appropriate to shoot, edit and air those scenes. Bro was working overtime to seem menacing 24/7 but I'm not sure if that was the best approach for both the character and HIS FACE.

People will be talking and the camera and cuts will give you expectations that never come to fruition, OR it'll have the most terrible shots with egregious usage of flood lights and fans. It's dumb.

I can't remember a single song that made an impression on me. In fact I hated some of them.

So just to speak on the plot itself, it makes no sense at all. We have a weak emperor who lets a known treasonous subject just chill after committing heinous acts??? The main villain massacred hundreds of people (including children) and his rebellion was quelled…. but instead of being executed, they just let him go back to his fief with basically no consequences. Mind YOU later in the show another party basically does the same thing which resulted in multiple executions and the exile of all related people. One of these parties seems way worse than the other and yet the punishments are so unbalanced. It's dumb.

The court politics is nonsensical as well, our ML is soooo smart and he anticipates everything and everyone without flaw. Bro never stumbles a single time, all his opponents are dumb. FL lead deals with the most juvenile conflicts, and if she is involved in something more serious she becomes a wooden post that just gets led around by the ML.

Side characters are just as underdeveloped and shallow as the plot. None of them feel like real people. Not a single one seemed like they existed outside of the scene they were currently in, even when they DIED. I felt nothing. They feel like the toys in Toy Story. Once the camera is not on them they drop to the ground and stop moving.

The female villain from the Xue clan is probably the most frustrating supporting character. She gets caught basically committing treason because she sends her maid with no mask or change of identity to do her dirty work. After this incident she does the same sh*t AGAIN, clearly not learning her lesson from the first time she got caught. She gets frustrated with being used by her family and cuts ties with them and proclaims that she will get back at them, only to immediately fold to her father's wishes and jeopardizing her new elevated position. She basically commits the same mistake THREE TIMES. It's dumb.

And the romance offended me the most. This is the biggest lack of chemistry I've seen in YEARS. That includes ANYONE in the main triangle. It's even worse off than Blossoms in Adversity and that show had a wooden nutcracker for a ML.

The FL spends 70% of the runtime chasing after a man with no personality who ISN'T our ML, while a man with no control over his face chases after her. 30-sum episodes in and the creators have these two actors scream at each other and forcibly kissing… they expect me to be invested in a relationship that does not exist? The FL has no romantic interest in the ML until 30-sum episodes in and the plot decides its time.

This was a growing experience for me because I really forgot how bad things can get, this show doesn't have a single redeeming quality, it doesn't do anything right. I hope I never see a clip from it again.

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(a rant)
Firstly - the story is ridiculous. I enjoyed it sure, and it wasn't bad. Still it went so over the board.
I still appreciate the range: there were both a green and a red flag next to each other in one frame (Lyu Xian and Xie Wei).

Xie Wei is so ridiculous I only agree to have him for Xue Ning and Yan Lin. He is lowkey suicidal, keeps hurting himself, is irritable and agressive, but also has pretty eyes, so I guess we like him.
I've seen said that both ML and FL in this drama are grey characters, so suitble for each other, but I don't agree. (What, a woman makes one mistake and suddenly she's as bad as a man who made 100). Whatever people say, Xie Wei is obssesive, childish and imposing. As I think about it, I didn't like him through the entirety of the drama, and still don't (the last scene made me like him less if anything).

Second - I love Xue Ning. I really enjoy the strong female leads that apeared in dramas over the recent years. The princess was awesome (she was a perfect princess), I still not quite over it that she fell for Xue Ning. Their friendship was one of the highlights of the show for me.
I liked how both the Jing and Yan fathers were good parents. Also the bromance of Xie Wei's guards (the wink!).

I love Xue Ning, she keeps her composure, helps women, and invested in stocks as soon as she traveled in time. She is the center of the story and the best part of it.
Stil I had a hard time, going over the last episodes of the the drama, it dragged some places, were other times it omitted characters until they had to die, or just never appeared again.

Overall it wasn't horrible, but I wouldn't watch it again. I always have a hard time ranking low dramas I invested my time in and sometimes had fun watching , so it's a 7

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I was so excited to watch this drama, worth my time

Loved it, Loved it & Loved it. From story to acting, everything is perfect.

The story is well written. It is about power-play & revenge. I like the leads being grayish character.

Jiang Xue Ning is short-tempered, stubborn, ignorant, smart, cunning, but despite all of that, she is afraid of Xie Wei.

Xie Wei is cold-hearted, cruel, smart, cunning, calculative but scared of cats.

I loved Jiang Xue Ning & Xie Wei interaction. He is always there helping & protecting her, sacrificing for her. It was funny to see Xie Wei saving the qin but not Jiang Xue Ning. Even when Jiang Xue Ning isn't in a good mood or upset to cheer her up, he takes her to his office to practice qin.

As always, Bai Lu did her best. I liked Zhang Ling He acting as well. Also, Zhou Jun Wei & Liu Xie Ning did a good job.

I like Yan Lin but also hate him for what he did to Jiang Xue Ning in the past in his anger. He is immature but gradually understands everything.

I liked Shen Zhi Yi, she is cute & immature. Always there to protect & help Jiang Xue Ning.

Zhang Zhe is a righteous person with strong principles.

Lu Xian is a greedy businessman who always thinks about profit. But he is always there to help Xie Wei & make fun of him. A good friend of his.

You Fang Yin is a trusting and loyal friend of Jiang Xue Ning. She is good at doing business. The ending scene broke my heart. The way Jiang Xue Ning protected her & did everything to keep her save.

It was cute & sweet to see how the princess protected Jiang Xue Ning & did everything to make Jiang Xue Ning her study partner, but poor Jiang Xue Ning didn't want to go to the palace. Their friendship, the thing Jiang Xue Ning did for her so that she doesn't have to go.

Jiang Xue Hui is kind-hearted, considerate. Even after knowing that she is a concubine daughter, she didn't hold it against or make trouble for Jiang Xue Ning as we see in other dramas.

The conversation between Xie Wei & Yan Mu was so heart touching, I feel Yan Mu may have guessed it at that moment.

Jiang Xue Ning mother is so annoying. She doesn't let Jiang Xue Ning explain or talk. Always blaming everything on her not knowing the truth.

I loved Lu Xian & Jiu Shu bickering.

The way Jiang Xue Ning tried so hard to fail the exam so that she didn't have to enter into the palace.

It was funny how Zhou Bao Ying took away walnut cake from Jiang Xue Ning & the same thing Xie Wei did to her.

Everyone's reaction to You Fang Yin & Lu Xian getting married.

It's The Starry Cast reunion. The famous TTEOM stairs.

I liked the kisses given that the director is famous, using lights, birds & flowers in kissing scenes.

I loved OST.

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This story is time travel and not reincarnation

The Story

In the first 15 minutes (Therefore, this is not a spoiler), the Heroine dies, then gets a second chance to live her life again. Her is transported back in time via an unknown reason, hopefully to correct her past mistakes in life. The Story of Kunning Palace is a Time Slip (Time Travel) Drama, or this suggests that the means for time travel is not established. Nonetheless, this is a story within a story and is inventively designed. Both stories run concurrently, as the first life of the Heroine is threaded into the second life as flashbacks.

The heroine is the daughter of nobility, but she was switched at birth. The Noblewoman is raised as a plebeian and the switched plebeian is raised as a noblewoman. When all is discovered decades later, due to sentimentality and other reasons, the legitimate Heroine is accepted into the family only as a second daughter and not with the status of the plebeian daughter. This makes for an interesting start to The Story of Kunning Palace.

Quote: “He who has a mind to beat his dog will easily find a stick”. Young Warrior from The Story of Kunning Palace.

I love complicated dramas. The Story of Kunning Palace checks all my Asian drama criteria boxes. There is even a lot of ancient law incorporated into this intelligently written script. However, until enough of the backstory is revealed, the drama may be hard for some to follow. The heroine makes lots of mistakes as she first lives her life, which ends in her death. She is snatched out of her first timeline and reinserted back into the beginning of her failed first chance. What will she do? Will she learn from her past mistakes and correct them or is history doomed to repeat itself? It seems like that many of her efforts to change her new timeline produces failures, as history continues to make corrections back to its past timeline to thwart her new insertions. When under Time Travel restrictions, if one cannot makes changes or corrections in the new timeline then one is in a time alternative universe where changes to the future are impossible.

The heroine, who actually turned out to be a wicked person in the first timeline, gets a new chance to live a proper life. You see her make conscious efforts to correct past mistakes as these mistakes are revealed through her constant flashbacks to her original timeline. However, overall, her life course seems destined to be repeated. Will she succeed in correcting her past and saving all the lives she destroyed. You must watch The Story of Kunning Palace to find out.

Note: Some have flagged ‘The Story of Kunning Palace’ as drama about reincarnation.
It is not. Reincarnation is rebirth into a new body. The drama is a reinsertion into a first life and thus is Time Travel and not Reincarnation.

Quote: “What the world needs is heartless men. Those who abide by the rules can’t move forward fast enough. So screw the rules”. Anti-hero from The Story of Kunning Palace.

Quote: “I would not dare to ask your Majesty to move. But I also have a message for your Majesty. You must know that a man who is greedy for his own profit and who seeks the skin of a tiger, does not know that the tiger is a tiger”. Lowly Court Official loved by Her Majesty from The Story of Kunning Palace.


Actors Corner

Bai Lu—Strong female role with a woman who knows how to pull the surprise, by playing dumb.
Zhang Ling He—The anti-hero (Villain) you will love and hate to be confused by.

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