Royal Highness Princess

I watched this drama because TikTok edits sold me a dream: two top micro-drama leads, loaded with chemistry, a modern palace setting—what’s not to like? Turns out, the drama banks on the idea that changing your name makes you magically unrecognizable. At least in Xi Yue's mind, she thought everyone will forget her face like royal amnesia is trending.

To make it worse, the marketing team played sleight of hand with the lead actress. She’s nowhere on the poster and not credited properly on MDL. They teased tension with an overly intimate poster of the two male leads, almost like they were courting a queer-coded aesthetic. But it’s bait, plain and simple. There’s no actual payoff in the show. The woman who drives the entire plot got cropped out while the guys got stylized like a forbidden romance that never materialized.

Then there’s the torture. Endless scenes of physical suffering, mostly aesthetic but rarely justified. A handful of knife stabs, limping dramatically through empty courtyards, that one blood-spitting close-up they reused twice. These Chinese shorts have a fascination with pain as a narrative shortcut—but here, it just feels indulgent.

Emotionally, I struggled with the lead’s moral compass. She’s ambitious, but the kind that discards affection like it’s a paper receipt. I get she has goals, but sacrificing those who care for her with little remorse makes her hard to root for. Not ruthless—just plain cold.

Final straw? They did the fake sister villain dirty. Her character was paper-thin, evil in a way that felt mean-spirited, not layered. Meanwhile Ke Yun stumbles through betrayal only to be gifted a last-minute redemption arc. Two evil siblings. One gets humiliated, the other gets closure. Guess which one’s male.

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