Yidenia

I still feel like the emperor was at least partially responsible for what happened to her family, but his affection for Peiyi might have been real. Confining her to the manor ensures she has fewer resources and is unable to personally investigate what happened, plus this keeps her away from him in case she had any ideas on avenging her family by attacking him. However he truly didn't want to execute her and knew she had every reason to feel the way she's been feeling, and because she had been a child, whatever beef he had with her family didn't extend to her, plus she was a woman and had no claim to the throne, so she was an innocent bystander he had hoped to spare. That said, confining her to the manor with only two maidservants and a small squad of guards feels more like planting her in a targeted location for someone else to do the killing so he doesn't have to, rather than protecting her. It was pretty obvious that this Emperor plays fast and loose with love and affection, and he's certainly not going to allow his fondness for someone else override his fondness for his own self.

I agree past episode 3 it's generally been more logical. Super weird. The intro is so important for any kind of story, it's really NOT the place to cut corners.

I wasn't talking about the ghost bride scene, I was talking about the fireworks scene with the humanoid kite, when Bailu runs into the fire, has a burning pole fall in her face, and a millisecond later she is sniffing gasoline from a bucket. That's not censorship, that's classic "a cat walked across my laptop and deleted scenes randomly and I didn't bother to review it"

It looked like it was missing connecting shots. People materialized without the proper scenes to plant them, and were portrayed performing actions with no preamble. That's why I said it resembled AI, with the folks appearing and disappearing. Highly doubt it was on purpose; they were just careless, and the director has done this before in other shows.

Watching the first episode. Wow, at one point the editing looks like it was done by a cat walking on the keyboard. Are they using AI in postproduction now? For crying out loud

Also who just says “Sorry” to something like that? Again it’s like these writers have never had real conversations. Maybe AI wrote this, it makes no sense

Wow that’s even worse. There’s even less reason for there to be any prolonged awkward silences then. So FL is angry at SML bc she couldn’t take no for an answer and for whatever reason SML also gives her mixed signals by doing things for her. Pretty sure this is immature even for 22yo’s smh

I feel like this drama seems to draw a lot from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with the silly mother and the five beautiful daughters and the (pride, and prejudice) of the main couple. It doesn't have the same kind of wit, also the third daughter's the protagonist instead of the second, she's a lot less given to be amused, and there doesn't seem to be a Lydia equivalent, but it's giving me that kind of vibe, mom's also really obsessed with marrying off her daughters and Mr. Darcy's utterly smitten with Lizzie pretty much from the outset.

It’s a romance. You know how it is, they have to add some mush. I viewed this as a romance with a slightly independent female lead; you can’t say she did absolutely nothing to help herself, but realistically, truly independent women wouldn’t fall in love with anyone during that time. Why would they chain themselves through marriage to some dude? 😂

Tang dynasty was actually much more liberal compared to other dynasties even after Wu Ze Tian’s reign. In fact it can be argued that her ascension to power was only possible because of the feminist views of the time (in comparison, anyway) and this persisted afterwards. A woman achieving a divorce was much more possible in this dynasty and it’s not as far of a stretch for the events of this novel. I’d say this drama did a respectable job. It is a romance, so of course the hero gets the girl. If we were really being realistic, our leading lady would have worked her way out using different nameless forgettable men, since the real world has more of them, and no one would be upset because people wouldn’t even remember them

Yeah I don't get it either. The two of them started off suspicious and distrustful of each other and………never moved past that? Like there was never a moment where the two of them had any scene that suggested an understanding and more importantly acceptance of where the other was coming from. ML actually seemed really entitled all along, like he thought his flirtations should be a sign of courtship when they clearly just came across as creepy and manipulative. I kept waiting for a moment where he'd actually acknowledge how capable and competent FL was, but he was always so patronizing. He never demonstrated any respect for her because he never bothered to confirm what she actually wanted, he just assumed and presumed and presumed and assumed; why would she find this attractive? And then he's like "why don't you love me after I did all this for you" and she's like "when did I ask you to do any of this???" It would have been one thing if he actually worked WITH her, but he's always just done things OVER her head and then showed up with a smarmy grin going "look what I just did aren't you impressed?" Um, no?

I think Wendy is my favorite character in this show. He's not perfect and the dynamics between him and his Empress and Consort are really weird, but they don't seem to stem from malice or even selfishness, and every time he's on the screen I'm both reassured and also eager to see what hilarity will ensue.

You're welcome? Anyway are you saying that your reaction was "Wow, what a great guy, he slapped his pregnant daughter for speaking up in defense of the grandmother, that was a winning move"?

Almost. Gu Tingye stopped him. And the dad had wanted to erect Lin Qinshuang's tablet in the ancestral hall despite her having proven to be a bad egg, so again, this seems to run with the theme these cdramas have going where only bad men hit women. Or, in this case, men would only hit women if they're erring, etc.

To be fair he's a man and she's a woman. It's somewhat frowned upon for a man to hit a woman, even if she was pretty much asking for it. I also don't think the Chinese ever want to encourage this sort of behavior; the only times I've seen women get slapped in dramas were done by villainous men. Women slapping each other is more of an even footing, but a man slapping a woman is a bit like an elephant stepping on a cat, and I don't think it would look as good as we imagine in our heads. This whole drama has largely consisted of men being fairly gentle while the women were the ones carrying the sticks and that's been part of its charm.

I thought in the original novel she transmigrated though and was initially a college student or something? I didn't read the whole thing, I only read the first couple of chapters quite a while ago. Either way I'm pretty sure she was actually older than she appeared in the novel so being young wouldn't excuse her foolishness, nor would the childhood neglect have affected her personality because she had actually lived a different life, unless we're supposed to believe that modern college students are that immature, to which…I got nothing.

It's also disappointing if Wendy's not a good leader in the novel because historically he was a very good emperor; his reign marked the start of stability for the first time since the Han Dynasty was established and his son, Emperor Jing, had continued that trend. He was known to be very filial and kind interpersonally which was what I thought the drama was going for here, but if they're actually trying to showcase him as weak and foolish, I'm actually even less inclined to keep watching. There were so few truly good Emperors as it was, they could have picked a real one who was weak, I mean there were so many to choose from come on :/

You don't think she experienced a lot already though? I mean, I've never seen someone get killed before, nor had anyone try to kill me, and I'm definitely older than CSS lol. I definitely know better than to do what she did with the tiger seal, despite having experienced even less than CSS. Fifteen years is young, but she's not, like, 10 years old, and she's already demonstrated that she should be wise enough to consider the long-term aftermath because she's made mature decisions already, such as with A'Yao's engagement, so really, her portrayal's inconsistent. If she were the type of character who really didn't consider the long-term consequences, then she wouldn't have been able to approach the situation with A'Yao the way she did. So CSS is capable, she just didn't bother. Still, as I've said in other posts, the issue is more about how the drama portrayed this and less about her; everyone starts off somewhere and I certainly wouldn't expect a teenager who was neglected and abused all her life to approach every situation with finesse, but it is annoying that it feels like she's already gone through a lot, the story's past its midpoint, and it doesn't seem like she's made the appropriate amount of progress given where the story's gone. We're more than halfway through the story so if she's still at the beginning of her character development, then pacing is a real issue. If it took 30+ episodes to go through a few months, we have less than 30 episodes left to get through these 5 years of growing that she's supposed to do. So, um, I wonder how well that's gonna go.

Lol I'm not very upset with her, though if anything I am more bothered by how the drama's narrative is paced rather than the character herself. If we're still at the beginning of her character development when we're more than halfway through the story, the problem's with the show's execution. That being said I might really drop the series. A person who was mistreated as a child tends to mature faster; spoiled children are the ones who grow slow, so really CSS should have the maturity of at least a 21 year old already if she really had to fend for herself all this time. Trauma is hard to heal from, but the way NOT to do it is to indulge in impulses that can cause the downfall of an entire nation, as court politics can lead to. Being a supportive spouse does not mean going along with every decision regardless of whether you agree with them or not, no matter how regally quiet you are about it. This drama doesn't actually portray a healthy relationship, and while part 1 was a fun ride, it's getting harder and harder to believe in the reality of the story's world and people :/ I was able to tolerate CSS's shenanigans when they were limited to personal vendettas, but to me it kind of flops when she's consorting with players playing a game where a lot of other lives can be killed. The Emperor makes it look all cute and everything, but if CSS is too immature for the court, then she literally shouldn't be there. No one has time to wait for her to grow up. Just imagine your country's leader providing the excuse for why your taxes are up this year, or why your country is at war, etc, as some fifteen year old girl who didn't have enough life experience yet and still needed 5 years to grow up had been meddling in big decisions that decide the fate of the country. It's too absurd.

She's been in court for a few months already and before this she's lived through a bandit/rebel attack where she witnessed men being executed, and an engagement that ended with her giving up someone to a woman who beheaded her ex husband personally in front of CSS. The main thing that makes someone grow is experience; it's not just time. Everyone does grow at their own pace regardless, but smart people are supposed to grow faster, particularly when they've already lived through adult situations, and she's been through more than most 20 year olds at this point. If it still takes her another 5 years after all of this before she becomes as mature as an adult, I'm sorry but the impression she gives off is that of a dumb person, not an intelligent one. However, the issue I personally have with her is more the director's portrayal and not how her character actually is. I think we can all agree that what she did was stupid; whether or not it was justified from her point of view is what's being argued in the comments, but objectively, what she did was unwise and I don't think anyone questions that. The drama's handling of it and its lack of insight is what sets a discordant tone for me. It would have been one thing if the drama intentionally had her play the fool, knowing that this is foolish, and depict this as a result of her lack of life experience (because nearly dying in battle and personally witnessing other people be executed for losing the political game isn't enough experience I guess) but the drama itself seems totally unaware of how absurd she is, and others just went along with her whims even though the consequences concern the welfare of an entire empire; she also gets away scot-free and without the appropriate amount of self-reflection. That's utterly ridiculous and we can't be expected to swallow that without some explanation from the drama.

I know you want to defend her but we watched over 30 episodes already. Like sure, to a Tolkien ent that's immediate but even in a cdrama, enough time has passed that I'd expect at least some growth. I mean, we're already more than halfway through the whole series already and she's still impulsive and uneducated; how slowly do you want this girl to mature? Must we wait another 30 episodes before we can reasonably complain that she's being an ignorant brat?