Beatrice

I love this pairing, Chu Yu loves fearlessly and Wei Yun loves fiercely, both embodying the English title of the show Fight for Love. All Chu Yu wanted in a romantic partner is someone who will fight through life's obstacles beside her and she them, and she got it in spades finally after her first try didn't work out. Both characters both can get serious and have their playful sides. They are a delight every time they are on screen together. They are on equal footing with her also being a comrade in arms and an extremely capable General having fought and learned alongside her general father since she was a child. She's also smart and fun. He's also all those things, it's fantastic. It's always great to see romantic partners that are not only take care of each other equally, but equal in power dynamics for either hetero or queer romances. One of the things I appreciate is that Chu Yu is older than Wei Yun and looks every bit the gorgeous grown woman warrior that she is, while Wei Yun is younger and has a baby face though Ryan the actor is 30 and Wei Yun is just 3 years younger than Chu Yu. Both the characters are able to be cute and funny without being annoyingly cutesy and also have gravitas when the situation requires it. I love that once she decides to date him, they aren't stingy with the displays of affection. The kisses are actually romantic, particularly when she kisses him and he kisses back even more passionately, opening his eyes mid way just to look at her, and they continue kissing. The show is however stingy without giving them one last kiss scene as they overlook the peaceful scenery of their homeland that they fought and won together.

All the women characters get to get their agency in various ways and it's wonderful. Chu Yu's ex boyfriend Chu Sheng really fumbled again and again. She's truly the coolest girlfriend in the world, not caring about conventions, protected and helped him achieve his goals, only for him to ditch her for his own plans, but still wants her to be with him. His ex-wife also genuinely loved him and he couldn't even be nice to her, though her dad did threaten his life in order to marry her, but Chu Sheng also got a political boost that he wanted out of it. Good for her to divorce him. At least Chu Sheng becomes a helpful political ally for Chu Yu later. It's poetic justice for Chu Yu that her signature romantic gestures in order to secretly scheme with the Wei family's eldest brother happened on the same day as Chu Sheng's marriage that led to her catching the attention of Wei family's youngest son. Technically Wei Jun also fell for her, because who wouldn't swoon at a gorgeous lady declaring their love for them in such an artistically spectacular way even if he later found out it was to plan with him about solving a problem that affected both their families. That probably made him fall harder. He died on the battlefield, but at least he got to be grieved and his family taken care of by Chu Yu as his widow in the time that his family needed the most.

Chu Yu saved Wei Yun from being scapegoated to death and even empowered his military standing as the head of Wei family. It was great seeing him fall deeper for her as she takes action to save him and take care of his family even while he's so suspicious of her before finally finding his brother's letter. It's even better when he completely loves her and his eyes are always so soft and vulnerable around her. While he serves his 3 years of border patrol duty, she becomes an official general of Beifang when the crown prince takes over as King and doesn't have the same constrictive views of his father before him keeping Chu Yu down in order to boost Wei Yun, and also opens up the opportunities for women to become Officials as well. It's beautiful that she does a proposal dance at the city gates as Wei Yun returns, the same dance that captured his heart and she full on proposes to him, "I'm here to marry you, will you marry me?" And he accepts saying "I will." with teary eyes. His dream has come true for her to proposal dance to him. I also love how it's recounted verbally to Chu Sheng by his helper, that the General of Beifang is dancing upon the gate tower for Duke Wei, so the road to the palace is blocked. The guys got to hang out a lot and there were two instances where one of the guys went into full drag. ShiLan pretending to be his sister makes sense, but Liu Qiba going full drag for the fake wedding didn't make any sense other than he just wanted to for fun, which good for him. It would have been nice if there were more scenes when all of Chu and Song women were together. That one scene of them commiserating on the roof showed that they had great friendship chemistry together as well.

The other standout woman and her twisted romantic pairing is of course the Eldest Princess who should have been King, ChangMing. She loves her country deeply and survived an abusive political marriage in order to secure the throne for her brother. She has a harem and even keeps some porn in her library that was hilariously found by Chu Yu's sister Chu JIn who tagged along to investigate what happened to ChangMing who gets kidnapped by her favorite harem guy HanMei who turns out to be both a mole, but also the royal lineage of the enemy country who becomes king Zhao Yue and wants her to be his queen. She tries to kill both him and herself, but failing that, she decides to do what she does best and destroy the enemy from within. Despite him being her favorite, she never slept with him, but she seduces him as a step to sow discord in his alliance marriage with a lord's daughter. She becomes pregnant to her own surprise. Symbolically, it might have been because the pregnancy was a product of true love, as she really did love HanMei and he loved her. Sadly, the pregnancy did come at the worst time for her and she can only tell the little soul to find her in the next life as she takes abortion medicine in order to frame the other consort and HanMei makes an enemy of that consort's family. She implies the same thing when she gives poisoned kiss to HanMei who asked her if she ever loved him at the edge of a cliff, telling him that they shouldn't be born as royals in the next life. She also dies of the same poison, but willingly hurls herself off a cliff after pushing him off despite Chu Yu offering her an antidote, declaring she will clear the other half of the blame for HanMei. I hope the family of three finds happiness in another story. Truly a fantastic role for Joe Chen, it would be great to see her in a modern drama romance with Liang Xue Feng.