Lashab

I answered to mooc because the reply button wrote only under his answer. Please have a look at it.

This is what I wrote:

I really enjoyed reading your discussion. The problem is that there is no fairness anywhere. Either male lead has some kind of harem and virgin female lead is trying to get his attention, or like in this drama - male lead has never talked to a woman before while female lead is getting engaged, walking around with men and living a normal life. Fairness is of course most important. The love triangles are mostly badly done in most korean dramas, it's always some males chasing female lead and she has luxury to choose at leisure. But of course, I would not even look at a drama where male lead has a harem or anything similar.

I really enjoyed reading your discussion. The problem is that there is no fairness anywhere. Either male lead has some kind of harem and virgin female lead is trying to get his attention, or like in this drama - male lead has never talked to a woman before while female lead is getting engaged, walking around with men and living a normal life. Fairness is of course most important. The love triangles are mostly badly done in most korean dramas, it's always some males chasing female lead and she has luxury to choose at leisure. But of course, I would not even look at a drama where male lead has a harem or anything similar.

What I saw was that FL was ready to marry someone else and ML accepted that. That's really not nice from both of them. :(

Well, the female lead was like "ya, whatever, I will marry whoever my family wants" and she was ready to marry another guy. She was willing to lose the male lead forever at some point. I never felt she actually deserved him.

Thanks for the reply. I gave it a try.

Can someone describe the male lead? Does he have other relationships throughout the show? I am considering to watch this show.

What the hell is "reverse-harem". When I see it I just skip past it... So basically woman has harem of men? I don't watch male-has-harem shows and woman-has-harem shows are same...

I don't mind love at first sight at all, but obviously they have to keep the series going, so the only way to do that is to put obstacles in their way. I hate love triangles though and obstacles are better if they are "linear" and not like "mission impossible" on a social level just like in TLB. At some moment I thought they should just both leave China and emigrate to the West if they wanted to continue their relationship - which would not be bad at all though.

The reason I don't like harems is not actual harems - people are different, some are "moral" and some are "immoral". But I want the main couple to be "moral", that means - monogamous. A chaste(in most cases - virgin) woman trying to win the heart of a man who has a harem is a monstrosity.

For example - I started watching "Queen Dugu"(2019) with high hopes, but I dropped it soon. It was probably because there was no chemistry between the leads, or they were chosen wrongly for the roles.

Well, I watched every scene in which they were together. I also watched lot of scenes in which they were alone. But I also watched the moment when they were choosing husband for Leyan - very well done. It was so well done, that I even regretted skipping earlier scenes of Leyan, underrated character I think.

I generally don't trust the political plot to be interesting, so I often skip it. I finished the whole drama in 5-6 hours, but I watched every scene involving the main couple and apart from some frustrating "clichés", the overall chemistry and scenes were brilliant. I can admit it was one of the best I have ever seen in dramas. I have watched "Queen in Hyun's Man", "Step into the Past", "Gu Family Book", "Faith", "My Love From Star", both "Scarlet Heart"-s, "Nobunaga Concerto", "Falling into your Smile", and some others.

It was frustrating to watch the "intrigues". I like simple and "brute force" action. Here, main heroes had to go against their own people to be together. Being from different backgrounds is nice, but here they were at war.

Can you recommend some historical dramas were the plot is very worth it and for both characters it's first love and stuff. I don't want concubinage and such stuff.

By the way - how on earth did anyone think she was a man? :D So basically if you don't wear a dress, you are automatically considered male?

I was pleasantly impressed and that does not happen often. :) It's a little bit dragged, 49 episodes are a lot, but definitely the main couple is joy to watch. The story of secondary couple was nice too. The bad sides I think is that 1) It's too long. 2) Too much frustration because of bad guys and bad events.

I would give it 9/10. Not bad at all.

Is this some kind of a love triangle? It feels like it from the summary.

The show was very annoying despite excellent main cast and atmosphere. So the best general of the time is chasing a girl who loves another man in a pathetic way. This is like a bad version of "Pride and Prejudice". I don't mind one-sided love for a while, but the show was just very annoying and I was trying to skip to the end just to see them together at last.

Ok I just watched first two episodes. Everything is perfect except the female lead. Why would they put "old" woman in a role for 18 year old girl? I don't know, something is wrong with female lead's character. Could have been better.

I did not say Old Age gives you right to cheat. First of all, for Yang Jian, Dugu was first girl he ever slept with. Yes, he cheated when he was 50+ and I am not saying that's great but it's better than absolute majority of cases. About Ming Lan - I value monogamy more than 1 mistake. If your spouse is your first, 1 mistake is not gonna break anything, but of course it's not good. But when your spouse is not your first, it's not a big deal if you don't cheat on her. Real monogamy is when your spouse is your first and 1 mistake is not gonna taint that.

Well, considering the fact that Hongzhi emperor did not even reach age 40, then Yang Jian wins easily. :) Feel sorry for the girl Yang Jian sleptwith though, brutal times.

Come on. He was the Best. You can't find a better king in this sense in antiquity. She was most likely his first and only until when she was old, like 50 years old. He did his Best. You People watch too many womanizers in recent dramas so can't complain about him. :)

I am close to the West as well. I am from Georgia. We were raised by reading about western "monogamy", although no western King was monogamous, none of them. All of them cheated a lot. So western monogamy is a lie. That's why they created the idea of private life, because they want to cheat without anyone knowing it. In the East, they did not lie about relationships at least. Now it's a different story whether concubine had better life than king's temporary lover. And the thing about remarriage is that when you remarry and marry a virgin, that's exploitation as well. Only similar People should marry each other.

People have interesting views. So, it's ok for a man to have had wife and 2 kids in the past, as long as he has no one else but the main character now, even though she was probably a virgin when she married him. On the other hand, it's complete NO-NO for him to have 1 concubine while being in marriage with the main character. It's interesting what motivates people to accept one type of relationship, but not the other. Would the man accept Ming Lang if she had not been a virgin, or even "worse" - had some children of her own? For man, it's fine to marry a virgin even if he had several girls, or wives. Is it fine for a girl to marry in similar fashion?