Eldest Young Miss

Preach! I love seeing him suffer under the weight of his own guilt! I hope the FL keeps twisting the knife that he goes crazy & reveals that he killed his own wife to the court.

She was telling the story of her and her ex-husband.

1)SYR and the man in the story romance a woman before abandoning her
2)SYR and the man head to the capital to gain power
3)Both men discover that a noble's daughter looks exactly the same as the women they abandoned
4)Both men interact with their respective look-a-like, suspicious about their identities
5)But can never truly prove if their the same person...

Duke Su catches onto the parallel of the story, and instead of letting her tell him the ending, he asks "Does the man kill the look-a-like?"

He's obviously playfully warning her that she's playing with fire. She jokes about him loving bloodshed and he says "Did he fall in love with the look-a-like?"

So Duke Su & the audience is left with the question of "how does SYR's story end?"

She replies that he'll just have to wait & see and that she'll perform the play for him.

And consider what happened earlier in the episode. The evil stepmother went from being haunted by guilt to full-on crazy just because the FL played mind games and revealed her identity to her. And we the audience know that SYR is slowly losing it as well...

First "My Journey to You" and now "The Double"

Ai Mi please stop breaking my heart

I totally agree! The fact that the ex and his family are absolutely haunted by the sight of her but can't say anything is so compelling. Just a smile from her and it sends them into a tailspin. The mental anguish she's able to inflict on them just by existing wouldn't have the same effect if she was in real JL's body.

1) Aunt Hu (Maid turned Concubine) - Mother to Yue (first miss)
2) Ye Zhen Zhen (legitimate wife) - Mother to real JL (second miss)
3) Ji Shu Ran (legitimate wife) - Mother to JRY (third miss) and the little Boy

Delulu Triangle: "Are we the cause of our own unhappiness?"

Delulu Triangle: "No, it must be Jiang Li's fault!"

I agree! There's a lot of little moments where her cover story doesn't fully match her actions, or some people's reactions, and I think he picks up on that.

From the book but also openly implied in the show. Everyone recognizes and calls the Jiang girls by order of their birth, with the FL being second. So the first going unmentioned is the major clue.

I personally think he's just keeping quiet about it. He witnesses when the truth slips out like the scene with the lullaby about a "spotted cat" (her real nickname) returning home. Or even questioning why she was more helpful and sympathetic to Hauixiang victims but not Dingzhou victims.

But he realizes that ultimately the FL isn't harming him or his family and has actually repaired their relationship. I think he knows she's on some type of mission to get revenge & make amends on the real JL's behalf.

The FL does lie to him to cover her identity when he questions, but it's one to tell a lie to someone and another for the person to believe it.

Yeah and it was pretty common in those times.

She's already dead at the start of the story

There was really no other instance where the Emperor could've grounded the princess for her unhinged antics? Is this the first time she's been seriously punished/received pushback? Surely he could have grounded her after he found about the arrows at the banquet?

Is it because the mine in Hauixiang has been cutoff from King Cheng that he now has the power to actually stand up to his sister?

1) He saw her before SYR buried her alive
2) He knows her original nickname
3) He purchases her mother's little civet cat (her nickname) necklace that she pawned snd teases her with it
4) He calls her Xue Fang Fei at the end of episode 5!

Trust me, he been knew!

Is anyone else new to the FL actress but became an instant fan? I keep looking up her interviews!

Yeah but it's one thing for her to lie and it's another for him to actually believe it.

There's a lot of things that accidentally hint towards her true identity that he seems to pick up on. Some of those he points out to her like being more helpful & sympathetic to Hauixiang villagers than Dingzhou villagers. Others he keeps to himself like her lullaby about a "spotted cat" (her original nickname) returning home.

I think it's the fl. We know from one of the trailers that at some point he puts her necklace in his mouth. So she might get injured, he grabs her necklace, the scene from the trailer plays, and he hopefully goes berserk on the ones that harmed her.

I have a feeling that the third uncle will approach fl and says he knows she isn't the real JL. He might break down, ask if the real JL saved her & died and not the other way round. There's no way he can see all that went down, watch people recognize her, watch her care for her father, and still remain oblivious.

It depends on each individual's interpretation but basically "not really but kinda".

We have the ml, Duke Su (endgame). - Interestingly has more screentime in the show than the novel. In the show, it seems like he's intrigued by the fl from the get go in QingCheng (since he knows she's lying) and maybe even before that.
The 2nd ml, Shen Yurong (the fl's former husband) - We see that he obviously did care/love his wife but he could not protect both himself and his wife from the greater schemes around them and sacrificed his wife to protect himself.
The cousin, Ye Shijie (her maternal cousin that develops a crush) - Not much to say about him. The fl makes sure to tell him that she isn't interested.

Story of Kunning Palace. Wang Xingyue (Duke Su) played the 2nd ml (Zhang Zhe) in that drama.

They meant "Only very few people know of her true identity, including Duke Su."

XFF = Xue Fang Fei, the real name of FL
Tong Er = the name of the loyal maid of Jiang Li