AncaPaduraru

First off: magnificent acting and haunting music. Also, I loved that the music did not go over actors' lines, as so often you get in Chinese drama.
The big downside is the quite insulting story line to the viewers intelligence.
I mean, there are stupid scripts. But this script is calling the viewers stupid.
I mean, we all know what "susspenssion of disbelief" is.
We all use it when reading a novel or watching a play or a movie. It means that we know a lifetime does not last for 90 minutes. We know people cannot fight with 1000 degrees rotation in mid air. We know all that. But we accept it as part of the storytelling.
However, when a door knob is turned and the door fails to close, one should get a solid and logic explanation for that: either it was a real world mechanical problem, or it was a magical world magical problem.
Logic has to apply at all times in story telling, either using realistic explanations or magical solutions for a magical world.
Or, "Royal Nirvana" sinns in the utmost for it challenges the sense of logic people hold.
First off, at the very core of the plot is the fact that the ML is smittenend with the FL, and yet he is totally unable to recognize his soul mate when she stands in front of him day in and day out, as a maid in his household.
For the story goes that they had talked behind the screens, never in full view. However, he had glimpses of her figure, even of her face, and most importantly they TALKED extensively.
So, how come, when the FL emerges as a maid in his house he simply cannot recognize her voice?
From that point onward it was a nightmare to watch, for I felt constantly abused by this lack of respect the writers showed us, the viewers, with depriving the story line of its "inner logic".
If that was not enough, the poor ML character had all the traits of a personality disorder type, providing an erratic behavior that offends again, the need for logic and structure a viewer has.
Case in point: he is smittenend by the FL, and yet happily adjust to a married life to a second girl; he binds his and the FL hand together to avoid being forcefully separated from her when he is ordered to stay at a shrine, but once the confinement is over and he returns home, he puts the FL to work in the laundry department. After the two of them spent all that time in close proximity, while binding their minds and souls, he just cast her in the heavy work division in his house. Why? Oh, why?
Only to justify more beatings and torture the FL is subjected to?
In fact the personality disorder ML, who is first smittenend with her, then is not reconizing her when having her under his thumb as a maid (which was actually slave status), resorts to all sorts of phisical punishments against the FL: he grabs and knocks her around personally, orders others to beat her for hours, and lets her be exposed to near death experices.
To then say he was sorry ....
WTF???
The other huge relationship the ML has is with his father. That goes a little bit smoother in terms of logic: the father is a cold and abusive man, the son is a frightened kid earning for recognition and love. The father is also the Emperor weary of his kids overthrowing him, and the ML is the Crown Prince eager to prove himself. That it ends with the weaker link collapsing under the pressure and commiting suicide is only befitting.
The suicide scene in the final frames of "Royal Nirvana Special" I believe to be one of the most beautiful scenes ever.
Masterfully told and performed.
In fact, that story, of father and son, Emperor and Crown Prince, is the satysfying one, one that does not call you stypid.
I could go on with a laundry list of attacks to the comandement of "inner logic" and storyline consistency, but I really do not believe that it is worth my while.
Anyway, once again, stunning acting.
The actors took out of the garbage bin this drama.