to be honest I count it as a SE.I can't make sense of her 'dreaming all that' or 'come back to their first encounter'…
For some reason like "I slept with your evil brother for 7 years" or "I have a mixup of soul and body" they did the whole Red Sleeve thing of not wanting to be together to drag it out. They were married anyway, I mean her new body.
I wonder if there's some weird cultural bias at work like requiring a drama wife to be pure and virginal.
There isn't much here. It's really harmless on the small drama scale. I mean, some episodes of the leads being a bit violent and trying to kill each other thinking they are enemies.
At first I thought after the empress died, she would disappear and only appears once in a while. But thankfully…
I see zero He Xuanlin resemblance. (I just binged tons of He Xuanlin dramas in a row.) However, ML Yu XuanChen looks like some other actor that I can't put my finger on.
FL's soul = old body is married to the evil emperor for 7 years and has miscarriages etc. FL's new body sleeps with the evil emperor (kisses him in first episode). ML doesn't have anyone else but FL.
ML dies in the middle of EP23 but then miraculously appears for the final shot at the end of EP24 with no explanation. Presumably the Wild Fire group saved him.
Didn't really understand the injury/impotence/... plot, spoiler Q.
Numerous times, 'the ML is impotent' talk comes up, with no particular explanation. At one point (EP14 6-8 minutes), the SFL Feng XiaoXiao says the ML became 'disabled' protecting her.
At the very end (EP23 at 11 minutes), the main villain reveals that "the emperor .. is actually the one who most wants you dead", "you are disabled because..."
Did anyone understand what this is actually supposed to be about, and what the back story here is?
With the way it starts with bad production and all, this felt like a vertical drama that was reworked to be horizontal. Every once in a while, there's all the usual teleporting to the rescue, characters doing weird unexpected things, etc. Thankfully the production is ultimately not that bad and there's a fair few cute moments.
For some reason a really bad English dub of this exists.
**************** MEGASPOILER WARNING. ***************IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED TURN BACK NOW! DO NOT READ!I can't…
I feel I watched a different show. I wonder if that's a matter of subtitles / translation. In the show I watched:
"She approached the ML in the very beginning in a disingenuous way," - the ML knew who she was by the end of episode 1. She approached him to find out information about the events from the past, and for her revenge. Given the situation, I'm not sure what a less disingenuous way could even have been. This is actually where one of the few sane things the ML says in this show come in: He wondered why she didn't just live her life in a far way place instead of returning for revenge. Beyond giving up on her mission, hiding her identity and exact aim is of course mandatory, as she does not know if she can trust anyone and walls have ears.
"she would just go approach his brother, which would shift the balance of power" - The third prince and the chancellor are the people who she wants to kill the most, as their hands directly killed her family. Can't happen. Another thing he knows as of ep 1, before she 'proposes an alliance'.
"Because of the deep guilt he felt towards her and her family." - Didn't see him feel any guilt / remorse. He only ever wanted to atone because he loved her and it's something that clearly hurt her, not because he felt bad about taking lives.
"he tried to stop the massacre from happening" - Bit unclear in the translation, but it seemed he orchestrated all of those events. He might not have specifically wanted the entire Gu family murdered, but he wanted to do maximum harm to the other princes and did not mind anyone innocent getting harmed. Definitely something the show or subtitles could have explained better though.
"She jumped to a conclusion about him." - The show (with the subtitles I had) never even hints that the conclusion could be wrong.
"she was reaching out to the FL for a reason to live" - Didn't seem that way. Either she felt her life was now over as she lost her supposed love and is moderately responsible for her brother dying (by egging him on), or the writer just decided that this character will now die even if that makes no sense and she still has a caring father to live with. In either case the scene didn't seem like fishing for hope the way I watched it. The whole thing is bad writing in my books because the brother=SML only goes to the ML's palace after multiple people credibly convince him that the ML will "execute somebody", implying the FL, and that is pulled entirely out of thin air.
"Think about how she treated her own unborn child, even..." - Once the ML used that line '..our child is innocent..' to manipulate her, she suddenly wanted the child to be born safely. Bad writing in my book, but I'm not from a society where someone is raped and their next thought is 'oh now we have a new human being to protect'. Her initial reaction of wanting to avoid bringing a 'cursed child' into the world made more sense to me. In 2021/2022, China apparently nudged their policies more towards decreasing abortions, so perhaps this is Chinese politics/censorship at work too.
"He brings out her grief and forces her to face it when he takes away her martial arts, so she can no longer FIGHT her way through her feelings, but has to learn to accept and process them." - I just saw this as a violation of her body not much different from the drugging, raping and whatnot else he does.
"He could just walk away from her. .... He feels like her life - because of what he's done - is his responsibility." - In the show I watched, he was horrendously obsessed and left her no freedom or right to define any aspect of her life. He made a point of not letting her have contact with any other human being or any part of the outside world.
"he is technically her savior" - Only in the sense that if I get into a car and run over ten cute kittens, and then bring one to a vet to be saved, I'm now that cat's savior. Of course hinges on who you understand to be responsible for her family's demise, but like I said, with the subtitles I had he was 'the mastermind' behind it.
"they are - because of her actions - spiralling toward the death of AN ENTIRE DYNASTY." - That is neither her fault nor responsibility though. The ML does not mind murdering the country's seemingly sole competent military officer merely to make sure the FL cannot have another living person to care for. The next rebellion or foreign incursion will also just end that entire dynasty. Surely we won't go with "SML is important to FL -> it's her fault that SML died". P.S.: There's still the horrendous third prince; at least from what I understood he wasn't killed, only his mother. So the direct line of the dynasty doesn't end with the ML's death, I think.
They were married anyway, I mean her new body.
I wonder if there's some weird cultural bias at work like requiring a drama wife to be pure and virginal.
I mean, some episodes of the leads being a bit violent and trying to kill each other thinking they are enemies.
Spoilers below:
However, ML Yu XuanChen looks like some other actor that I can't put my finger on.
FL's new body sleeps with the evil emperor (kisses him in first episode).
ML doesn't have anyone else but FL.
Evil emperor has other concubines too.
Each episode has intro 0m 40s, outro 1m 40s. Total length if watching those only once: 4h 30m
Here only the start is really! good, after that it's between ok and terrible.
Each episode has intro 0m 43s, outro 1m 03s. Total length if watching those only once: 4h 24m
Length if only watching 1x intro (1m 08s) & outro (1m 33s): ~5h 31m
Presumably the Wild Fire group saved him.
At one point (EP14 6-8 minutes), the SFL Feng XiaoXiao says the ML became 'disabled' protecting her.
At the very end (EP23 at 11 minutes), the main villain reveals that "the emperor .. is actually the one who most wants you dead", "you are disabled because..."
Did anyone understand what this is actually supposed to be about, and what the back story here is?
Every once in a while, there's all the usual teleporting to the rescue, characters doing weird unexpected things, etc.
Thankfully the production is ultimately not that bad and there's a fair few cute moments.
For some reason a really bad English dub of this exists.
In the show I watched:
"She approached the ML in the very beginning in a disingenuous way," - the ML knew who she was by the end of episode 1. She approached him to find out information about the events from the past, and for her revenge. Given the situation, I'm not sure what a less disingenuous way could even have been.
This is actually where one of the few sane things the ML says in this show come in: He wondered why she didn't just live her life in a far way place instead of returning for revenge. Beyond giving up on her mission, hiding her identity and exact aim is of course mandatory, as she does not know if she can trust anyone and walls have ears.
"she would just go approach his brother, which would shift the balance of power" - The third prince and the chancellor are the people who she wants to kill the most, as their hands directly killed her family. Can't happen. Another thing he knows as of ep 1, before she 'proposes an alliance'.
"Because of the deep guilt he felt towards her and her family." - Didn't see him feel any guilt / remorse. He only ever wanted to atone because he loved her and it's something that clearly hurt her, not because he felt bad about taking lives.
"he tried to stop the massacre from happening" - Bit unclear in the translation, but it seemed he orchestrated all of those events. He might not have specifically wanted the entire Gu family murdered, but he wanted to do maximum harm to the other princes and did not mind anyone innocent getting harmed. Definitely something the show or subtitles could have explained better though.
"She jumped to a conclusion about him." - The show (with the subtitles I had) never even hints that the conclusion could be wrong.
"she was reaching out to the FL for a reason to live" - Didn't seem that way. Either she felt her life was now over as she lost her supposed love and is moderately responsible for her brother dying (by egging him on), or the writer just decided that this character will now die even if that makes no sense and she still has a caring father to live with. In either case the scene didn't seem like fishing for hope the way I watched it. The whole thing is bad writing in my books because the brother=SML only goes to the ML's palace after multiple people credibly convince him that the ML will "execute somebody", implying the FL, and that is pulled entirely out of thin air.
"Think about how she treated her own unborn child, even..." - Once the ML used that line '..our child is innocent..' to manipulate her, she suddenly wanted the child to be born safely. Bad writing in my book, but I'm not from a society where someone is raped and their next thought is 'oh now we have a new human being to protect'. Her initial reaction of wanting to avoid bringing a 'cursed child' into the world made more sense to me. In 2021/2022, China apparently nudged their policies more towards decreasing abortions, so perhaps this is Chinese politics/censorship at work too.
"He brings out her grief and forces her to face it when he takes away her martial arts, so she can no longer FIGHT her way through her feelings, but has to learn to accept and process them." - I just saw this as a violation of her body not much different from the drugging, raping and whatnot else he does.
"He could just walk away from her. .... He feels like her life - because of what he's done - is his responsibility." - In the show I watched, he was horrendously obsessed and left her no freedom or right to define any aspect of her life. He made a point of not letting her have contact with any other human being or any part of the outside world.
"he is technically her savior" - Only in the sense that if I get into a car and run over ten cute kittens, and then bring one to a vet to be saved, I'm now that cat's savior. Of course hinges on who you understand to be responsible for her family's demise, but like I said, with the subtitles I had he was 'the mastermind' behind it.
"they are - because of her actions - spiralling toward the death of AN ENTIRE DYNASTY." - That is neither her fault nor responsibility though. The ML does not mind murdering the country's seemingly sole competent military officer merely to make sure the FL cannot have another living person to care for. The next rebellion or foreign incursion will also just end that entire dynasty. Surely we won't go with "SML is important to FL -> it's her fault that SML died".
P.S.: There's still the horrendous third prince; at least from what I understood he wasn't killed, only his mother. So the direct line of the dynasty doesn't end with the ML's death, I think.