K-Drama 
This review may contain spoilers
A capable woman doesn’t require a diminished man.
Strong opening, then disappointing. The Shen family women’s death scene and the identity swap were great. After that, it’s downhill.
It uses a historical lens when it benefits her stakes (treason means wiping out the whole clan) and swaps to a modern lens when it needs her to win (she slaps the hell out of him in front of his family at the wedding, withholds sex, acts as a lawyer, and so on). Without the lens change, the slap, the withholding, and the defense of the abused wife would have earned her, at the very minimum, a beating. He didn’t have to be softened to make her strong. A capable woman doesn’t require a diminished man.
The Lins broke the engagement because standing with a family condemned for treason would have gotten them killed too. What were they supposed to do? The show treats it as Jinqi’s fault and a moral failure of the Lin family, and as her reason, other than the arranged marriage (another jump to a modern lens), for her actions.
It’s also very unevenly paced. Painfully slow at points, then it jumps ahead years. I thought I had skipped an episode when she finally relented on consummation. After 30-something episodes of making a point of her withholding, don’t we deserve to see her decision to change her mind? (I don’t mean the act itself).
Finally, it’s billed as a romance. That’s intellectually dishonest. The couple is mostly there to make a point. I’ll give it credit for showing just how bad things were by modern standards, but that isn’t what I started watching for.
I like the actor and actress. They did a good job. My criticism is of the structure of the drama itself.
It uses a historical lens when it benefits her stakes (treason means wiping out the whole clan) and swaps to a modern lens when it needs her to win (she slaps the hell out of him in front of his family at the wedding, withholds sex, acts as a lawyer, and so on). Without the lens change, the slap, the withholding, and the defense of the abused wife would have earned her, at the very minimum, a beating. He didn’t have to be softened to make her strong. A capable woman doesn’t require a diminished man.
The Lins broke the engagement because standing with a family condemned for treason would have gotten them killed too. What were they supposed to do? The show treats it as Jinqi’s fault and a moral failure of the Lin family, and as her reason, other than the arranged marriage (another jump to a modern lens), for her actions.
It’s also very unevenly paced. Painfully slow at points, then it jumps ahead years. I thought I had skipped an episode when she finally relented on consummation. After 30-something episodes of making a point of her withholding, don’t we deserve to see her decision to change her mind? (I don’t mean the act itself).
Finally, it’s billed as a romance. That’s intellectually dishonest. The couple is mostly there to make a point. I’ll give it credit for showing just how bad things were by modern standards, but that isn’t what I started watching for.
I like the actor and actress. They did a good job. My criticism is of the structure of the drama itself.
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