BaekRisa

Great story but a bit fantasy like

This show's greatest strength for me are the side characters, from the maids to the concubines to the sisters, everyone is important and it really shows how women are important, what role women had in history, and their difficulties, it's such a well written part of the show that this by itself for me would be a 10, my one critique is the Male Lead, though he sort of redeems himself later on, I feel still that we started off on the wrong foot and they try really hard to fix it but its sort of meh, he's a great character by himself and a great everything else, but I don't really see the chemistry and the love between the two, it feels very forced even though it seems they are trying their best to love each other, it feels like they're settling, he had a fantasy about her and he pursued it against her will, he incurred her anger but most importantly I feel like she never trusted and respected him the same afterwards and us viewers too, even though he did his best later on , it's not really the same, it's sort of just working with the cards you were dealt.
Some commenters said the FL mostly has no expression on her face unless it's another female character on the screen, I agree and that's what I really love about her, this show is actually mostly focused on the women of the period, if they were not united all of our characters would've been dead in most of these conflicts

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Good watch if you skip the 2nd part

Honestly, perfect start to this show, great acting from everyone including the ML's family which made it very interesting for me to see their shenanigans, the chemistry between the leads is awesome and seeing the relationship between the emperor and his grandson as well as court politics was very entertaining to me, I will say it all went to hell when they killed most of the likeable characters and took a gamble on expecting everyone to be invested in their kids for the entire latter half, Tang Wei and her character are very likeable and she acts really well but she cannot carry an entire show on her own, her sister is entertaining to watch but no one wants conflict all the time, they really dropped the ball with making it focus on their sons, both sons are just so bland, and their story is also so uninspiring, I really dont care to watch it, thats all

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It's been 10 yrs

My first chinese drama I think and what really got me into C-dramas, this show was huge at the time, I honestly dont remember most of it but I do remember being very entertained with the love triangle, I will say there was a lot of unecessary or poorly written conflict, like the murdering of his mother seemed like a straight up sci-fi plot, there are also a lot of stereotipical tropes in this, characters are pretty one-dimensional, in fact I would say this is one of the dramas that started the trend of cunning FLs with how popular it was in china if I'm not mistaken

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Props to FL actress

Great acting from FL's actress, she was able to make us root for her and express so many emotions easily, my one critique to this show is the fact that a lot of the characters who are vital to the show feel a bit too one-dimensional, not because of how they were written but rather because of the actors' and the directors' choices, it's been a long time since I watched this but I feel like I'm used to never knowing exactly how a character will respond to situations and what they're like when interacting with others, in this show you could typically tell both things, so even if the characters are somewhat well-written, they're a bit predictable in comparison to Ruyi's Love in the Palace for example.
This show's main attractive factor is definitely the story and the suspense, you want to root for the FL and you see how smart she is so you're curious to know how she'll get out of a particular situation, it's a lot like apocathery diaries, you grow to like some of the antagonists as well but overall you kind of already know what direction the story is going.

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One of the best c-drama out there

I will say, from the cast to the music to the story, this show has pretty much no flaws in my perspective, whilst I feel like the story is a bit bland at times, all the characters in this show are so likeable that you really feel invested and want to root for them, the ML and FL carried this hard, especially the ML, it's very rare for me to praise a Male character and actor but he did an awesome job and props to the writer for writing a likeable and respectable main lead, he shows what the standard is every single time and is a major green flag, our FL is also very likeable and most of the show revolves around her, she shows what its like to be a woman at that period and persevering admist adversity, our side characters are not one-dimensional and make you root for them a lot of the time.

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