AleksandraSucur

I share your pov on this issue, too. The best outcome would be if sisters could work together.
But this can't happen before a showdown between grandma and RSB.
Grandma is responsible for too many things (and will probably order Mrs Yang murder I've seen in a trailer), she is too obsessed with her sh*t and too attached to her dominating power role... we can't reasonably expect for such a person to step down easily. And the confrontation will harsh, literally a day of reckoning as RSB truly bottled down too many things

Totally predictable, bc we know well what's more important for her: keeping RSB always down and herself as a better knowing, more experienced etc.
Important issues... oh... "pls don't talk about those troublesome things, I don't want to hear them" she said to Yan when he started to praise RSB and turned to the 5th miss to hear things more pleasing to her ear.
And I like how the 5th miss mastered the ways to manipulate her, even with the purpose to create a conflict between the two. Impatient to see that conflict finally!

we've paid attention but know very little. RSB said to Yang the Bull her father and one uncle (probably the 2nd miss father) are still alive, living and working elsewhere.
We also know that after her mom died, her father's concubine (mother of the third miss) was in charge of the children and mistreated Wanwan (as a "jinx"), talked badly about her mom etc influencing the 4th miss (the bratty one) the most. That woman probably fueled (or added fuel to the one poured by the old hag) the animosity between sisters. We have no idea what happened to the wife of the 2nd house (Yunxi's mom) but know for sure the mother (who was a maid) of the 5th miss (Yunshu, the blind one) is dead, bc she asked He to accompany her to her grave during their brief "engagement". We also don't know what happened to 2 of 3 old lady's husbands while we know her lover (who was Yan the monk's relative) died shortly after moving into the mansion.
If the author decided not to tell us till this point, their stories and whereabouts could be one of the bomb revelations, accompanied with a big boom...

we were writing at the same time... The conclusion of ep 21 is simply fantastic.

I'm so grateful you've appeared, Wen Can's daddy! Not only bc you've taken away that nuisance of your son, but you are the first person who is telling to the audience who's exactly the old lady Rong: "when turns cruel, she is worse than a man devouring demon" and that no parent in sound mind would allow his son to offer her a tea/soup (ie. to pay respect as her in-law)!
You should have come ten episodes earlier, sparing us so many discussions with persons who were slow to figure the characters out or who form their opinions on general knowledge of cliches and template plots in c-dramas and not on what they see in the drama and know from the basics of psychology! Now we can just direct them to ep 21, at 42'15'' to see and hear your words. Thank you!

And I am also glad Shanbao heard those words and that Wen Can managed to tell her he was used by someone in the Rong mansion to reveal Mrs Yang whereabouts to LJL.

1. she will tell him in the moment when he already recovered most of them.
2. it isn't shown in the drama, but FL saved him also because she knew he was an upright official, ready to confront corrupt officials, so indirectly she needed him to return to his previous identity.
3. her keeping him around helps her to deter annoying suitors and solving many problems she is burdened with.

As for the focus of this drama... this is a mix of several genres listed above (with many elements listed in the tags), successfully balancing between the issues typical for all these genres (including the romance), that's why we all inpatiently wait and watch the next episodes and scores high both internally and internationally. The FL personality is complex, intensly layered and - at least to this point (ep 22) - excellently written and performed. Certainly the best performance ever of this actress

I've recaped all the important points in a separate comment above 🙂

Not much to recap today, except that the annoying cousin is finally out of the picture and persons who (eg. the Monk) were using him as a tool will now must act directly, the Sneaky Twin who was out of the game anyways went on run and can still be a danger, the rift between grandma and FL started to widen... Everything else was predictable many eps ago (more or less, the eps still contained certain side twists typical for this drama). In particular, I've correctly guessed:
1. FL didn't save ML out of compassion (or at least non only out of compassion), but because she KNEW EXACTLY who he was: an upright official who saved her when they first met together with other abducted girls. She also knew he was an imperial inspector investigating the truth behind Wei case and that people who tried to kill him were high local officials who were hiding that truth. As a person with excellent managerial skills, she knows how to put people's talent to good use. His memory loss and her other problems complicated the best timing and plan how to use him. The only false thing she said in the court was the accusation directed towards the prefect that her first statement regarding Mrs Yang's identity was forced by the officials. That statement helped LJL to charge and convict the prefect. If you return to ep in which she was returning to the mansion in the coach with her two maids after being liberated by LJL, that was her exact original intention: to find and convict the culprits behind the bandits. They've always had the same goal.
2. Local highest official (the governor and the power behind the crimes in the region) has connections within the court and imperial family (empress dowager). ML is messing with a wasp nest and the corruption is extended to the capital.
3. 5th Miss is the granddaughter who resembles Granma the most: heartless, sinister, scheming, vindictive, hypocrite... she is the Granma's "best product" and the only one who truly learnt how to manipulate sisters in a way to play them one against another. She even learnt the best how to coax and please Grandma's pettiness, definitely deserving to be her heiress and finally bring the doom to the family who looked down on her.

Now, the story will be slowed down with just one ep a day...

He is the governor, the highest ranking official of the province/region.
Mentor warns LJL that the power behind the fatty prefect poisoned in prison must have connections in the court and imperial family. Actually, he was training that bird as a b-day gift for the empress dowager. The fatty prefect was at his orders (and was propably poisoned on his order) from the start, not only in the Wei case, but also in the case of girls' abduction (and it was mentioned in the early eps they were destined for entertainment of high officials in the capital). After LJL revealed himself as not just a magistrate but the imperial inspector (ie., higher ranking than the governor as an official under the direct orders of the emperor), it was him who ordered the prefect to get rid of him.

we know now he has a motivation but we haven't seen he had an opportunity to enter Huanlin courtyard/bedchamber and use the poison. But he is good in inducing other persons, like Wen, to unintentionally act in his stead.

It's evident we can't talk facts. If we talk about facts, that's a bad writing.

I am calm. I highly appreciate your opinion, but the facts we've seen have more weight than opinions and you can't discard them as a bad writing.
With how this story was written, we may like it or dislike it.
I like it, actually, I must have to suspend my disbelief only once, when discovered Yunxi didn't expect He would be a psycho who planned to kill Wanwan. It dumbed her down so much, but all the rest is pretty convincing.

All the similarities with historical empress dowagers are limited to the fact this drama has elements of a palace intrigue genre (mixed with other genres).
As for the historical dowager or granddowagers - who differ greatly depending of which particular era and emperor/dowager you're comparing, I must say: NO, none even one of them, including Cixi you've mentioned and who ruled behind puppet emperors, held any power similar to the old hag Rong, in its fundamentals (=the backpower), the rules governing their power (which granny disobeys), executive powers (most of them never meddled in the executive powers, while Cixi exercised them, but together with other persons, while granny prefers the slave granddaughter to run the business) and so on.

The RSB is more of a general manager of the business that keeps them going on and maintain a certain local power while the granny usurped the role of a single shareholder playing other stakeholders (other granddaughters) one against other and also emotionally manipulating the FL.

You may believe me on this, I am a political scientist and a history freak

As she put it, I've understood she had no issues with her first husband. But I don't believe her (the grandma). She is a bluffer. Her first son (FL's dad) may be the son of that man. Although disfigured, he's still alive and is constantly around the ancestral hall, he was there even during the dialogue between the FL and Yang the Bull and to me he didn't seemed disinterested, so I think, he is FL's granpa.

I did, thank you

They are not flawed, they just have issues they must settle on their own.
FL also promised him she'll pick him and instead she picked Yang the bull. He understood she must have had a valid reason, so... if she can't figure out what were his priorities, it's better not to marry such a girl.
Beside, he didn't arrested Mrs Yang as a criminal, but put her in his custody as a witness who must be protected. From her own family. Translated: he saved the life of Mrs Yang.

He was initially invited as a representative of a rival/hostile family as a possibility to form a union through marriage. They was about to kick him out after he tried to poison the well, but he formally proposed to the 5th Miss (the blind one) at the tea tree cerimony claiming that enmities between the families will be burried with that wedding. It was hard to kick him out, also bc it was clear for the old lady, RSB would never pick him and that was her priority at the moment: that her slave granddaughter pick the husband of her choice.

I think LJL prioritized what really mattered. RSB abandoned him before and he understood she must have had a valid reason to choose the Yang guy in the moment he expected her to choose him.
If FL cannot think in the same way... than it's better they don't marry at all. Besides, he have chosen not only to save Lang but above all to save Mrs Yang (the main witness in the Wei case), would RSB be more happy to marry him having Mrs Yang killed by the Yangs?
Besides, that marriage would be doomed after the oath grandma made her take. She must start to clean her own sh*t first, as well as he must do with his and then plan their normal wedding together.

Allow me to dissent. Grandma doesn't know AT ALL how the world can be brutal to the women, otherwise she wouldn't urge RSB to get rid of Mrs Yang sheltered by RSB's mom. She also didn't bother with women abducted from the plantation and didn't punish her granddaughters who made abducted even the FL. Bc. these granddaughters are her tools to trample over the FL over and over again.
What she knows "about the world" consists in HER own personal story of being betrayed and the story of her own daughter who eloped, probably to escape such a psycotic and control freak mother, blindly obsessed everybody else are brutes, unless she choose them. She seems to have married 3 times + an affair with Yan's uncle. We've seen the disfigured first husband (the traitor) but what happened to all the others?
Another proof she knows nothing about the world is Mr Wang from the first scene in ep 1 who was chosen by the granny to assist FL as a manager (and a potential partner). That man sexually assualted a tea expert (Mrs Yi) FL brought from Yunnan and then tried to frame her as a seducer. If a debauched manager was not of FL's taste, the granny now found a monk with the hair for FL to marry, not respecting her right (and family rule) to marry a person of her choice. With such a bad taste in men, ofc. the choices she made in her life were all wrong. I wonder how she even managed the business.
She wants the FL heartless, resented, unhappy and ruthless, bc she is obsessed to the point she wants her to be her own clone, deprived of her own experiences, of living her own life. Bc if FL lived her own life, she would either stop to be her slave and rebel or will go away leaving her with a handful of air. She is not exactly the incarnation of a matriarch in a matrilocal family, she just love to play that role to hinder the fact her life was a complete disaster, but she and not the traitor is the main culprit for it

I am pretty sure the old lady happened. That's why all her sons and a daughter escaped the mansion. And, as she was probably not a single female descendant of that ancient family... who knows what happened to her eventual sisters or cousins... That woman doesn't live "in harmony with the nature" at all.