Shreya

The poison absolutely did hinder his physical activities and along with constant headaches and periodic flare-ups, the level of rationality he maintained was honestly commendable on his part.

Prince Duan was also tortured by the empress but in a different manner. He was probably thrown into the battlefield to die at some point unlike Dan who was pretty much locked within the palace. Being outside the empress's sight and out of palace, allowed Duan to gain military recognition, resources and people and grow politically. Another reason being that the Empress purposely allowed Prince Duan to grow in power (at least in the beginning) to keep Dan in check so that XHD wouldn't even dare to go against her because even he did, Prince Duan would still kill him.

I mean in his defense, he spent the entirety of the ten years under the constant scrutinization of the empress dowager who made sure he didn't know much of any skills to prevent him from rebelling. Not to mention, he was poisoned the whole time and effectively too weak to do much physical activities.

ML transmigrated in 2016, and while the drama didn't clarify, it is most likely that he went back to 2016 when he returned and lived 9 years in the modern world before FL went back and they met.

Can't explain all the plot holes but would like to point out that Yong'er is a 2D character, Dan transmigrated when he was middle-schooler and had never even read the story so the only person with actually knowledge is Wanyin and even she speed read the novel in one night so she only knows the gist of the major events and not the details. As such we have to excuse if they had to wing their way through the story at times. Not to mention after some point, they had changed so many things that the main story didn't even matter,

As for why they didn't kill off Prince Duan. You are right, they absolutely had infinite opportunities to kill him and the empress dowager. One like you said they didn't know what effect killing a main character would bring so they didn't risk it. Two, we have to remember Dan had been stuck in that world for almost 17 years. To him that world is as real as it gets and he probably has no hopes of ever getting out. So, if he plans on staying there, he cannot just unceremoniously kill the two people who hold most of the power as it'll make the court and armies very unstable and mostly result in mass revolts and war.

As for Bei, his one and only concern is Dan's safety. As long as he is safe, the country and everyone else can go to hell for all he cares so I assume he isn't always trying his best to maximise the benefits in any given scenario.

One thing I wholeheartedly agree with you is the absolutely uselessness of the secret guards. They look like they don't even know what they're doing half the time, the most useful thing they did was probably dig the secret tunnels lol.

I never read the novel but from my understanding of this drama, my theory is that even in the novel that our FL read, Xiaoho Bo was always a schemer and probably a bit manipulative, that's literally how he was able to survive in the palace. But in that novel, all his actions were absolutely justified in the bigger picture. He fought against the Empress Dowager who was evil, went against the emperor who was a tyrant and didn't care about the country, saved the scholars, saved people from the drought, fought to protect the country against Yan, all great things. Yong'er helped him do all this, they actually fell in love, and this probably helped him heal from his trauma and be a better person. Minor evil/bad things that he may have done all the way would have dimmed under his bright protagonist light.

But in our main story, all his great achievements were hijacked by our main leads. There were no scholars to save, no drought, no war, not to mention he was constantly thrown off by our leads at every step, so the only thing he could do was direct all his energy against the emperor for personal revenge, and became more and more obsessed to the point of evil, especially since he never fell in love with Yong'er and missed his redemption arc. Again, the protagonist light literally justifies almost anything like what happened with Dan in the main story, Wanyin came and changed his story from a tyrant who actually did evil things to emperor who fell in love and started caring about his country and people.

I just know I'm going to have serious withdrawal when this drama ends cuz what do you mean it's this perfect!?

Xiaohou Dan declared Yu Wanyin empress in court (out of scene) but is mentioned when Eunuch An went to inform her father. The official crowning ceremony is still not shown yet and will probably happen in the future eps as we can see her walking down the court in that gorgeous red dress in the outro.

Officially at ep 20. Had an almost kiss at 18.

From my understanding, the old Yu Wanyin fell in love with Prince Duan in that meeting, of course he didn't give a damn about her but given his manipulative nature, he definitely knew about her feelings and tried to use it to his advantage.

They knew Yong'er's character was originally supposed to be transmigrated but weren't sure if she had transmigrated yet or if their arrival had changed anything like replacing her, so that's why they were testing her with those writing and drawing and playing the pipa.

They knew she was a 2D character from the beginning as she was the main character of the novel Wanyin read. The How are you question later was mainly to let Yong'er know about them as well as make her admit she was a transmigrator too.

I actually like this better! After everything she has done, she deserves to suffer for a long time.

Ikr!

Can we appreciate how this drama is 20 episodes in and it's still getting better? My nonexistent attention span has me watching most dramas with 1.5x speed recently, while I'm eating up every second of this drama.

Samee. The actress playing the empress really did a terrific job.

They figured this ep was already depressing enough even without Zhang San's diary.

Oh please tell me that nail ended up in the Empress's neck and they'll leave her buried in her mausoleum. It's really about time she died.

ATP I'm scared to even watch Zhang San's Dairy 😭

I don't recall them giving us the crown prince's name but most likely not. At the end of ep 15, it's Dan himself. The previous emperor was still alive when he transmigrated, and it's said the previous emperor didn't care much for him but wasn't actually ever showed till date.

Yes