Deirdre19

What choice did he have???? Disobey the Emperor’s orders and get himself and his wife killed in addition to the rest of her family?
Her own father willingly accepted the extermination of his entire clan as a means to strengthen the Emperor’s dominance over the noble families. He could have saved them, but he chose not to!

I don’t have any questions 😂

You can blame the scriptwriters for that. In the novel he was suspicious, but she dispelled his suspicions with a trick and after that he was very supportive towards her in a non-obsessive way. He even repeatedly told his brother to give it up because he understood that she had chosen the crown prince.
I guess the scriptwriters just couldn’t resist the “ obsessive SML” trope.

Yes, it is very genuine. He has a very tragic backstory and has been lied to and tricked by everyone including the emperor (who ordered him to oversee the execution of his wife’s family) and his own mother who pushed him to pursue his career (and neglect his wife because of it) so that she could use him for her own purposes.

He has done nothing wrong! He tried everything he could to protect his wife and win her heart. It isn’t his fault that she was a cold and heartless person.

This is the hallmark of any character played by Jeremy Xu. even if they are villains, they are impossible to hate because he gives them depth and humanity.
That being said, Xiao Changqing isn’t the villain in this story, at least he wasn’t in the novel where he later turned out to be a victim played for a fool by everyone including his own mother! I really hope they kept this in the script because it was such a good story.

CP faked his death so that he could leave to another place to cure his poison. As he was officially dead, he had to come back as another person who then became a suitor of the empress dowager (FL).

That’s what happened in the novel.

Of course it is legitimate not to like a drama or simply consider it of low quality. In this case you drop out after a few episodes and give it a low rating. End of story.
If, however, you give a low rating to every single episode of a 40-episode drama, including the ones that haven’t aired yet, which is what can really tank the overall rating, you are clearly not a disappointed viewer but a professional crank.

MDL ratings only reflect how many fans or haters a drama has. It rarely gives a reliable indication of quality.

No beauty filters necessary. It’s all natural.

Well, I think guest has quite a different ring to it than support actor. He and a few others were 8nitially cast as “special guest role” which has quite a different status than supporting actor as it remains outside of the billing order. However, the new rules made a complete mess of it.,

You may think so, but it isn’t correct and in line with what was officially announced. For instance, Lester Lin is officially listed as guest role, not “cast” (= support role).

Yes, there are flaws. The dubbing is a major one for me as I feel that for actors like Jeremy Xu the real voice could have added another level of intensity (we heard it in the teasers and it was incredibly good!)
These details are, however, not something that will ruin the drama in the way that a stupid plot or bad acting would.

Same. Some voices don’t fit the characters and sound very similar. Especially Jeremy Xu’s dubbing is very distracting because the voice is so bland. He sounded so much better in the raw clips they released before the drama started.

Sounds like the description of a wasted youth. They’ll end up like Xiao Changqing, living in regret.

An actor, without his voice is only half an actor at best. Dubbing is sometimes necessary because the pretty people they choose to act have strong accents or cannot say their lines properly or have scheduling conflicts. However, Jeremy is perfectly able to do the dubbing himself and has done so in a number of dramas.
Therefore, there is absolutely NO EXCUSE for the production company to deprive him of the opportunity to deliver a complete performance including the voice acting and to deprive the audience of hearing his wonderful voice.
If they were this unhappy with his voice, why was it in all the teasers? It’s a classic case of bait and switch and I am very unhappy about it.

Haha, yes, you put it very nicely. I didn’t mean that the voice actor is doing a bad job, but his voice is very standard, nothing special and therefore boring to my ears.

In the original casting his role was a “special guest” role which means that he is cast outside of the billing order but the role can be equivalent to a normal main role.
There is no category for this on MDL and with the new rules on billing all the “guest roles” are thrown in the same category. He will not drop out midway.

It is very long (800+ chapters). The political schemes and plot lines of the side characters are quite entertaining but the description of the relationship between the FL and ML gets very boring and repetitive in the second half. I really had to force myself to finish it.