Comedy and satire around a feudal chauvinistic society
In this drama, you would meet eight princes of different characters. This drama was apparently based on a novel with a theme of time travel back to the Qing dynasty. If you had followed Chinese dramas closely, you might know that one of the most famous events in the Qing dynasty was the fight for the throne of the eight princes during the reign of Emperor KangXi.
This drama was however based on a fictitious kingdom call XinChuan with four other feudal states and the eventual winner was not the fourth prince. The story started with a selection of brides brought in from these states. The bridal candidates came from different backgrounds and with different objectives. These states had different attitudes towards the status of women in society - from the most backwardly chauvinistic like that of the Qing Dynasty to the most liberal where a female monarch reigns and women could be warriors.
Hao Jia, daughter of a concubine of a noble family, wanted to become the concubine of the Crown Prince as he was going to be the next king. She wanted prestige and power, and scheme to avoid the fate of becoming selected for the fifth prince, Yin Qi known to be a useless bum.
Li Wei on the other hand worked very hard not to be selected so she could returned home. She came from a humble family and tried to sell herself short. She introduced herself as a connoisseur of foods. She was not favoured of course and it looked like her feudal state was going to be short of someone in matrimonial alliance to XinChuan.
Unfortunately for Li Wei, one of the princes stepped up and volunteered to marry her. This prince was talented but unfavoured and lay low most of the time. He decided it was time to emerge from obscurity. She became the pawn for him get the attention of the King.
Each of the different marriages would have different dynamics. Each of the different brides struggled to adapt to their new environment and met different fate. Also, inevitably, fight for the throne ensued.
Comedies come with clowns. This drama presented two: the third prince who had an elevated opinion of himself and thought that the world revolved around him, and a chauvinistic clueless fifth prince who married a female warrior. Then there was the Crown Prince who harboured an inferior complex and took it out on people around him to show who was in-charge.
Overall, I think this is a very entertaining drama.
This drama was however based on a fictitious kingdom call XinChuan with four other feudal states and the eventual winner was not the fourth prince. The story started with a selection of brides brought in from these states. The bridal candidates came from different backgrounds and with different objectives. These states had different attitudes towards the status of women in society - from the most backwardly chauvinistic like that of the Qing Dynasty to the most liberal where a female monarch reigns and women could be warriors.
Hao Jia, daughter of a concubine of a noble family, wanted to become the concubine of the Crown Prince as he was going to be the next king. She wanted prestige and power, and scheme to avoid the fate of becoming selected for the fifth prince, Yin Qi known to be a useless bum.
Li Wei on the other hand worked very hard not to be selected so she could returned home. She came from a humble family and tried to sell herself short. She introduced herself as a connoisseur of foods. She was not favoured of course and it looked like her feudal state was going to be short of someone in matrimonial alliance to XinChuan.
Unfortunately for Li Wei, one of the princes stepped up and volunteered to marry her. This prince was talented but unfavoured and lay low most of the time. He decided it was time to emerge from obscurity. She became the pawn for him get the attention of the King.
Each of the different marriages would have different dynamics. Each of the different brides struggled to adapt to their new environment and met different fate. Also, inevitably, fight for the throne ensued.
Comedies come with clowns. This drama presented two: the third prince who had an elevated opinion of himself and thought that the world revolved around him, and a chauvinistic clueless fifth prince who married a female warrior. Then there was the Crown Prince who harboured an inferior complex and took it out on people around him to show who was in-charge.
Overall, I think this is a very entertaining drama.
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