DefyingDestiny

Ep 33

I love how at the barest hint of a romantic type scene between the leads, they start playing their romantic sound track🤣😃.

BIA has a steady mature romance. More like a friends to lovers vibe. They are very supportive and committed to each other with or without romance. No spice or angst or fire but fluffy and soothing sweet romance.
I don't want to over or under sell it but I enjoyed it alot.

P.S. What does kilig mean?

In Summary:
Is The Princess Royal a bad show? No!
Is The Princess Royal a good show? Sort of!
Is The Princess Royal a great show? Absolutely not!

But this is just my opinion!

Novel adaptation: I've only watched The Double and The Princess Royal as shows I read before I watched the adaptation. The novels of both were "not great" and had notable plot problems.
1. The marriage of the di daughter (The Double) had 3 major villain takedown arcs. The last arc had almost nothing to do with the rest of the story. The drama merged all 3 arcs, the stories overlapped and the villians and plots became a single cohesive story.
2. Fang Fei took over Jiang Li's life. Although she fulfilled Jiang Li's life and made her a famous talented virtuous lady and cleared her name and allowed her marry well, Jiang Li is never mourned and the "stolen life" thing stings a little. The drama fixes this- they let Jiang Li be mourned by her father💕💕💕
3. The drama makes Fang Fei less vengful and gave SYR & PW more agency and a memotable arc.
The made alot of changes that improved the storytelling and characters.

The Grand Princess (The Princess Royal)
1. This works with the storytelling device of "unreliable narrators". The story is told with the POV of PWX and LR and they are biased in their views and rarely ever see the whole picture of events. The drama continues this line of storytelling even though we are watching from an observers POV and no longer via character POV. Making varous arcs start and end offscreen, possibly because the main leads aren't there🤷
2. They don't explain the cause and effect of the 1st life. It becomes clear early that PWX and LR loved each other, so you are left wondering so what went wrong. The events of the novel and the drama never answer this. You have to try to understand the character archetypes to understand why it went wrong.
3. Killing Li Cheng. This is the only good decision that I can pick from this adaptation, in terms of changes from the novel. In the novel, Li Rong and gang plot to assassinate Li Chen, so Li Chuan would be the sole heir. It's a good plot and it's fun to see everyone in their most vicious and machiavelli stride. However, the plot goes wrong and leaves a bad taste in your mouth once Li Chuan abdicates and they pass the throne to Li Rong. It makes Li Rong becoming The Regent sort of gross. They pass his murder to the Emperor in the drama and it was a wonderful choice and it completed the Emperor and Empress' arc. I was happy to see it.

Screen time to side characters or side characters stealing the limelight: I don't care. If the side characters are interesting I'd rather watch them.
I spent 68 episodes of The Rebel Princess watching Song Huan En (the villian of the final arc)- because I loved him and enjoyed his descent into evil and eventual death. I skipped almost all the scenes of the 2nd lead couple in The Romance of Little Forest because they were boring, toxic and irrelevant to the plot. I shipped the hell out of the 2nd leads of A Journey To Love even before they met and I was left unfulfilled. I rewatch the Long Ballad for the 2nd leads and I still prefer Niao Niao with Luo Yao in Love Like A Galaxy even though the OTP still hits right. I wouldn't edit out a single frame of Shen Yu Rong being an absolute psycho a**hole because it was worth it in storytelling brilliance.
But we gained NOTHING from all the hours Su Rong Qing was on screen. He was neither lovable, pitiable, cunning, villainous or irrelevant to the story so we could skip. We had to watch every minute and it was all for nought!

Li Rong should be a toxic ffemale lead. They should have leaned directly into that like the fl in It's Okay Not To Be Okay. She’s a GRAND PRINCESS!!! If she literally forced PWX to stay single while she had loverssss, it would have highlighted how messed up their love story was and how much work they needed to fix them. It's a 2nd Chance Romance for heaven's sake! What did they think we came to watch here???
If Li Rong was grand and bossy and everytime she acted her most exalted self you would see PWX simp even more, you would understand what you were watching! He's in love with a "bad" woman.
Once again, In SOKP- Xie Wei forces a kiss on a woman who had been molested nightly by her best friend in a pastlife and then askes her to die with him. In the moment she rebukes him but the very next day, she remembers the incident with a rose haze of love!!! They are not "okay" people! They are damaged and this is how they love! You understand what you are seeing.
You see them try in TPR but then the chicken out and you are left with unresolved feelings in the scenes- like the candle scene in The Double.

It's actually because it's badly done.
I'm rewatching Story of Kunning Palace, and something happened that really highlighted what was wrong with the storytelling and "politicking" in this show.
In SOKP, Xie Wei (the ml) implants Ding Fei in the Xue mansion to cause chaos. Ding Fei says he isn't able to make Duke Xue really angry no matter what he tries. XW, a smart man, explains that Duke Xue is a veteran politician and is not easily "frazzled" and only cares about wealth and power but he promises to make an opportunity for Dong Fei.
XW goes to the palace and starts a seemingly unrelated chain of events manipulating Minister Gu and the Emperor, both smart men, till Minister Gu ask, without XW prompting him, for a reward for the Xue's that will not also reward Duke Xue.
The short and crisp arc shows ideation to execution of a scheme, court manipulation at its finest and gives Xie Wei his flowers as the male lead that is said to be a first class schemer.

Another example: Xue Ning wants to save the princess. There were recently rumours about her, so she gets an idea. She goes to her teacher to refine her thought. Before she starts speaking, Xie Wei tells her: skill is important but so is momentum. She gets it, we the audience- not really but then they SHOW US! She starts a rumour and creates public opinion tension, step by step we can see the tension go higher and higher till it gets to its destination but the villains aren't sleeping, they are alive and react! Xue Shu makes a move and messes the wonderfully laid plans! It's another beautiful arc to watch!

Compare this with a politicking arc in TPR: They create the Inspectorate Office.
Pei Weixuan sets the ball in motion for Li Rong to start and run the Inspectorate office. This arc starts with a conversation between Li Rong and Li Chuan. Li Chuan says that PW said that he should ask Li Rong to head the Inspectorate! Li Rong then talks to PWX about it and then thinks about it and then decides to do it! The Qin's are attacked and she has QZZ fake her death and runs to court and just like she had already agreed with her father, it is handed to her. The only act they have to put on is that she is not that savvy and PWX is controlling her for the emperor. (It's not even an act, their goals align aside from who the CP should be)
1. It's uninteresting to watch
2. It doesn't show how intelligent or cunning these people are supposed to be
3. The villains/opponents are mute or stupid and don't react
4. They never show origin of the Inspectorate office- this is a 2 lifetime plot device drama. SHOW us why this is a game changer. They only ever say what it is or was, never showing its "greatness"!

I don't mind screentime allocation. I mind being bored. I mind setting major plots points in the audience's imagination. I mind wasting your characters, your plot device and

Possibly. Another possibility is that he investigated her: why she was away and why they brought her back. He liked to know everything so even she never said he would try to understand her family dynamics fully.

She never says but he seems to know. It never seemed to be an issue

I didn't read the book. Did I not answer your question?

Rewatching this after my recent watched list of
The Double ✅️,
Blossom in Adversity✅️,
In Blossom ❌️
The Princess Royal ❌️ and
As beautiful as you ✅️❌️.

I'm in a disappointing drama streak, so I'm going to find novels to read and take a break.

Ep 32

It feels like you're being catfished. It looks nice, the synopsis is enticing, the cast is promising, it has some good characters and great comedy but then the storytelling fails, the actors' performances are generally mediocre to poor, the characters lack impetus or motivation, plots start and fizzle out without resolution or logic and the love story doesn't get the attention it deserves (either the love lost story with the sml or the 2nd chance love of the ml) and the titular character lacked the aura to pull the story together.
The end result is frustration. The people who enjoyed almost all claim to have ignored plots not involving the romance of the leads and especially avoiding the sml(he has the 2nd largest screentime). So you might be better served watching an edit of the leads story although you'll miss out Li Chuan and Tong Ye (the only characters worth their screentime).
There are worst dramas bt most of them lacked the potential for greatness that you feel and see while watching The Princess Royal

Ep 29

😲I recognised an extra from one of those short trashy Youtube cdramas. 7:45

Ep 25

This woman was really thinking hard how to murder her fetal grandchild 😑

But it wasn't poor decision making; for the situations she was trying to mitigate against with the information she had, she made perfect decisions. She had wrong information and once she had better information/ understanding of the situation she made amends and better decisions.

The Zhang Zhe rebel trap incident: Xie Wei was prepared for ZZ to die there. He wanted the Xue army to get blown up and ZZ was going to be there unless he managed to escape by himself. Xie Wei wasn't that bothered by it. Xue Ning bringing the Yan army saved ZZ's life. Xie Wei only registered that he had to restrain himself from endangering ZZ because Xue Ning was willing to take an arrow for him.

She had a massive crush on ZZ; in the 1st life it reached star-crossed lovers levels and she literally died to save his life. In this life she had no reason not to ship herself with him because he was still an entire green forest as a man and an official. And that is the exact reason we love Xie Wei: he stole his girl back from her happily ever after with someone else; 👏👏👏👏👏👏exactly what we like to see from our red flag lover.
✨🌟yes sir don't take no for an answer✨🌟

Ep 24

What is it about Wang Xing Yue that makes women named Jiang want to put flowers in his hair?🤭😂

Ep 20
Yan Lin saying Ning had better be happy and married by the time he comes back or he'll take her whether she liks him or not; which is exactly what he did in the 1st life

Zhang Zhe saving the day with bureaucracy, never gets old🤣

Ep 16
Zhou Ti Shun did a really good job of portraying an unlikeable POS. I've never seen someone look so much like his looks would be improved by a punch in the face.