messenger goose

I can understand why he's scared to tell her, but I think ultimately it comes from him not seeing her as an equal and also being afraid of her rejection. Too many people have seen him with her and her sister, seen how much he cares about them, so he's already put her in a lot of danger by association. Should've bought her and her family a cozy house with a huge pigsty somewhere hidden and safe and told her it's because she's in danger 🫠🫠

But they would use her as a hostage all the same even if she doesn't know who he is, except then she won't even know why she's being held hostage 🥲

saaame 💀 I'm really tired of his self-righteous hypocrisy going unchallenged. I have a feeling that this will keep going for much longer than it should, unfortunately

In the novel, she finds out after he secretly sends her out of the palace for her safety. At that time, he confesses everything in a letter. There's a letter in the airing schedule for EPs 26-27 so I assume that'll be then. They reunite soon after and when they meet he's giving mixed messages, and then essentially she slaps him once (for sending her away against her wishes, the mixed messages and everything else) and then they immediately proceed to have sex lmao 🥲. She doesn't have a bad reaction to the madness at all. She thinks to herself that she should probably feel scared but doesn't (because she loves him).

He was waiting for the female lead of the transmigration novel he got sucked into ("Transmigrated: The devil's beloved consort"). That's Xie Yong'er. He had no idea who he was waiting for though as he didn't read the book, he only knew from the title that in the story there should be a consort who is a transmigrator.

Yup, being forced to kill her maid was a crucial, formative event for her. She threw up afterwards because it shook her to the core. Not sure how I feel about taking that away from her, but I guess we'll see how the rest of the story goes 🫠

The novel was amazing, no idiotic love drama at all, no noble idiocy. I didn't find it angsty personally, or at least there was zero unnecessary angst. It was just mysteries and modern people trying to survive in a ruthless, ancient world and the moral dilemmas and messy reality that come with that. Also plot twists. The plot twists are really important, so I'd recommend staying far away from all plot synopses and spoilers and trusting the process 🫠 ☺️ So far, the drama hasn't made any big changes, so let's hope for the best 🙏

Needing the tree seed to kill the black fox is made up. Qingtong dying when the seed is removed is also made up. Making Fugui obtain the seed by killing her in the way that he does is also made up. It's a fictional story, everything is completely made up.

Stories don't magically come into existence fully finished, they are created by people who make choices in deciding what the story is going to be. You can like those choices or not, it's all subjective. Personally I'm not a fan, but if you like it that's fine too :)

Yes, I feel like the most important thing is not to blame any individuals, not even someone as abstract as "the writer" because as an example, screenwriters frequently aren't even to blame for bad writing. Even if they write the best script ever, there are many other people involved in the production that will demand changes for all kinds of reasons. Nobody gets to decide and dictate everything, not even the producer.

In productions like this there are many different stakeholders with vastly different interests and opinions, and ideally they all reach a consensus ahead of time and the result is a clean production and a good product. If they don't manage to reach a clear consensus or interests change, in the end usually nobody gets what they actually wanted and the end result is a messy product.

Well said! I thought exactly the same thing. Based on the beginning I thought we were going to see his transformation into a more complex, human character. But then in the end the story was all black-and-white morality and he "gets to fulfill his destiny as the soldier" and that's a good thing or something, and I started wondering if the parts that had any complexity to them were only in my imagination.

No matter what the final outcome was, the execution of that killing scene was absolutely bizarre to me. Their entire relationship and every interaction they had during and after the spidey bro arc was bizarre.

I'm happy if my thoughts were helpful ☺️ I also felt many conflicting emotions when I watched it. In the end I realised it's because the writing of the last episodes wasn't great and they didn't do a good job showing what the characters are thinking/feeling.

Same! I love him so much 🫠 He's doing the perfect "Overbearing CEO falls in love with me" playbook. Psychotic playboy tyrant emperor falls in love. Everything he says and does makes me laugh, I almost died when he was casually riding some sort of playground rocking horse in the middle of his banquet 💀💀💀

She was willing and ready to throw away everything and elope with him in episode 30, but then he betrayed her while still remembering her, and it's possible she had a hard time getting over it. That betrayal probably reinforced the idea of them being enemies, like a horrible glimpse of what things would be like if she held onto their relationship. If at that point he told her who he is instead of keeping it a secret and plotting to kill her dad, they could probably have set aside their differences and figured out a solution that would have been better for them AND the people of their countries. I think she would have been a lot more open/flexible then. But from her POV he chose to leave her and reinstate his status as the enemy prince when they had already agreed to run away together (that's how she phrased it in the end, "Jin'an left me").

She was always the kind of character who would never allow herself to do something as reckless as being with the enemy prince. From the very beginning, her entire personality was self-denial to a fault. It should have been a character flaw to be overcome, since Jin'an spent many episodes trying to convince her to care about herself and enjoy life. She was really getting there. But when Jin'an decided to "leave her," I feel like her character just... gave up entirely. She regressed, stopped wanting things, stopped caring about herself, stopped making choices. From that point onwards, she has no agency in the story anymore and just goes along with whatever other people decide. It's super common for FLs to lose all agency in the end of a drama for some reason and I really hate it.

Both Jin'an and Prince Annan were consistently shown as more reckless, doing what they want, not giving in to "fate" like FL does but instead believing people make their own fate. If anyone was going to insist on their relationship despite the problematic situation, it needed to be him. Maybe he felt too guilty and felt like he didn't have the right anymore? Idk 💀 I thought it was weird that even after renouncing his title, he just sat around moping instead of going after her and apologising for all the shit he did. It felt so out of character when it was so obvious that there were only two possible outcomes from FL going back home: 1. she has to marry the emperor and becomes the empress or 2. she is accused of treason because of him and has to die for it.

It truly was a mess, but at least Prince Annan looked good in the process I guess. The real shame is that he got rid of his amazing outfits and hair jewelry and wore bland commoner robes in the end 😂

Agreed, her emotional state is very unclear. I think maybe we're meant to think that she's torn between letting go and holding on, and that's why she keeps flip-flopping? Or maybe they just wanted to show them having different types of interactions and didn't really care about the characters being consistent or making sense, idk.

I don't know if you've seen episodes 36-38 yet, but I feel like it was even worse there (especially episode 37 💀)

Haha you're welcome! I'm just glad someone else noticed the same problems I noticed 😂 I think a lot of people were really distracted by Prince Annan's great costumes and styling and mostly ignored the writing.

I feel like the question is, who even builds those super secret underground chambers? The stone doors and weirdly conspicuous floor switches are really high tech 😂 If you're a villain empress, do you just send a carrier pigeon to "Super Secret Chambers for Villains Carpentry" and they secretly come to your palace at night to dig a gigantic hole into the ground without anyone noticing?

I agree someone should've told Prince Annan. I feel like the ones who should've told him were his subordinates, but instead they deliberately lied to him and tried to hide it. They even repeatedly suggested killing Li Shuang and let him torture her, which is a little much given that he explicitly told them she must not be harmed. After the deception and assassination debacle where he treated her really poorly even though he still "remembered" her, I can somewhat understand why Li Shuang didn't want to tell him. I think facing him like that is too painful for her. She seems cheerful and flirty on the outside, but I think she's actually numb and just heavily compartmentalizing. She still loves and really misses Jin'an. She can flirt with Prince Annan, ragebait him, try to challenge his behavior and worldview, try to figure out how bad he actually is... But facing Prince Annan as being Jin'an is too much, given what Jin'an did to her as Prince Annan, if that makes sense?

I completely agree with you, his behavior is pretty outrageous no matter how you look at it. The memory loss is really weirdly written in general, for dramatic effect I assume?, to the point where you just have no idea what he remembers at any given time.

Looking at it from the outside, there were many more reasonable ways he could have acted, but the way he chose to act was extremely shitty. I chose to treat it as him having DID and being extremely confused in general, to the point where all he's really doing is reacting to what's right in front of him without any real thought or planning. It's not a perfect explanation, but I can kind of live with it🫠

For example in episode 30, when his overzealous subordinates instigate the killing of her dad, he just goes along with it immediately. In the episodes after that they're just as overzealous, but he's constantly rejecting their suggestions and I can almost feel him rolling his eyes every time that one guy goes "I'll go murder everyone from Taijin immediately!!!"

Basically during episodes 28-31 he's in a weird transitional phase, and his behavior is worse than "proper" Prince Annan who has reset to one year ago. It's a bit hard to explain. Prince Annan, who claims to be aboveboard, surely wouldn't plan a secret assassination like that. If he was going to kill Li Wei, he'd just personally go kill him with his sword. And also note how in episode 35, when facing Li Wei, he does NOT just start attacking him like he does in episode 31, but instead talks to him and even stops crazy empress from killing him.

All in all, the writing of the later episodes is a mess. Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk 😂

I completely agree with you and I'm really glad you wrote this. I thought I was the only one who felt this way 😂

It's one thing that he treats her like shit when he's fully lost his memory. That's extremely painful for her, but at least it makes more "sense" and is more "forgivable" because at that point Prince Annan is essentially an entirely different person from Jin'an.

But using her to try to assassinate her dad while still claiming to remember all their promises, their marriage, their love and her is... kind of wild.

The explanation I settled on is that during those episodes, he essentially has DID on top of the memory loss.

Basically, he's switching between separate personalities who have completely different memories and priorities. And in true DID fashion, he doesn't realize that's happening. The switching can happen spontaneously or be triggered by external factors.

For example in episode 30:
When his guards talk to him, he switches to Prince Annan(ish) who barely remembers Li Shuang and only has this vague notion of "Li Shuang shouldn't be killed"
When Li Shuang talks to him, he switches back to Jin'an(ish) who, even though he's already forgotten about most of what happened to him during his time as Jin'an, remembers that he loves her, got married to her and wants to spend his life with her.

Prince Annan is is increasingly taking over control, Jin'an is losing his memories, and what's left of Jin'an doesn't seem to realize this is happening.

That's what Cheng Lei's acting and the voice acting decisions looked like anyway. His demeanor and microexpressions rapidly switch back and forth (extremely noticeable in the assassination scene) and the voice changes.

Based on how his character is portrayed in the following episodes, Prince Annan who remembers his time as Jin'an wouldn't do that assassination. Hell, even Prince Annan who doesn't remember anything probably wouldn't act like that.