luckz

The show does not clearly explain if she is a villainous man-eater or an innocent wife of a humble scholar.

In EP09, sect leader Su Ying vaguely accuses Yun Xi of going after Mu Sheng for "revenge", while he credits Yun Xi for "saving him", and that they spent "twenty years" together.

EP11, 28 minutes, and EP16, 26 minutes, there are sequence of her & his memories respectively, but neither shine light onto that.

EP38, 11 minutes in, we learn what happened for Mu Sheng to "need" dragon armor / heart-guarding scale, but nothing of what came after.


Does the novel have anything more?: I guess https://kisskh.at/discussions/hu-xin/98829-spoilers-ask-questions-and-find-answers?pid=2570487&page=1#p2570487 answers it.

YunXi x MuSheng question:
I didn't find it explained what happened between Yun Xi and Lu Mu Sheng.

Could be better, could be worse.
More like the well-established school of dead fish kissing.

Some of the production quality (camera work, CGI) is so low it feels like they filmed it in 2014 and found it in a bin ten years later.
We discussed dropping it in ep 1 due to the horribly misaligned audio & super-obvious dubbing that makes the acting look off. Maybe the acting isn't even that bad, but the dubbing prevents immersion.
ML's acting also gets better I suppose (though nowhere near his best).

And the 1970s Star Wars/Star Trek costume aliens, like what is up with those.

Especially in the first episodes the dubbing is so awful and intrusive I have no words for it.
A lot of questionable CGI, but also peculiar creature head costumes.
Otherwise I could imagine people saying it checks those boxes. Not really "steamy" though, and the acting's in the eye of the beholder.

Bonus deleted scene eh? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNvqHHZ5vdT/

He has a more or less ML role in the Road To Empress video game(s).

That's some creative ChatGPT garbage. lol.

The blood pool cave "jail" has a big opening, much like the FL's jail residence (called "courtyard" in the English subs?) has free waterway access without any visible guards.

1) Yes, but it's one sided. It is not painful to watch, but it is not resolved until the end.
2) They only have eyes for each other, but for a lot of the show they are not "together".
3) Yes. Not a breakup in the sense of them not talking or going to other people or "tears in the rain"; they still have a lot of scenes together, but not as a couple and they are kind of 'over' for some time.
4) Yea

For people to decide if they're watching it or not?
There's a camp who will only watch with it, there's another camp who will only watch without it. Both "need to know".

Ah, and of course there's a group that will only touch it if there's a happy end (now we are getting a Venn diagram, since it overlaps with both previous ones).

leads: ~2, not passionate

That happens in Ep31 = special.

Not relevant:
Salt mine and silk empire making FL/Fangyin rich is mixed with selling SML gifts into a one-time money influx.
Political palace education for study mates of the princess does not have consequences.
Zhou guard cmdr being bloodthirsty in slaying prisoners doesn't seem to have a point.
Fangyin disappears from the story after off screen marriage, and only reappears to die.


Unclear in timeline 1:
What is the fate of Fangyin in the original timeline anyway?
Timeline order and overall point of "red brush" - "knife" - "suicide" scenes between ML and FL: There is a weird hint that the knife was sent for her safety and not for her to kill herself. The sucide scene is shown as directly after ML storms the palace and takes control of it. But when FL visits ML for the red brush scene, she already talks to him about how he now rules the country and has won.
ML's cat trauma: Why is he in a field of corpses in the snow, with a feral cat to boot? He wasn't abandoned after the fight for the capital but dragged along by the villain for indoctrination into the rebels' cause.


Unresolved:
Why is there no ML mental disease & snow trauma healing other than for him to stop taking drug pills "because FL tells him to"?
Why is ML described as political leader of the country after the initial emperor's death, but then we only see him in some sort of reclusive retirement?
Prince's marriage to other study mate and FL's sister is not explored at all. (A good portion of the show deals with the schemes to influence this marriage pairing.)
Fate/lives of side characters in general – even for the three friends that visit ML/FL at the end.
It seems unnecessarily mean to their many nice friends and relatives to have a wedding without a single guest.

I expected a dark revenge-heavy story of the leads smartly plotting, first distrustful and then cooperatively. Instead, I got a rom-com with neither rom nor com.
75% of the plot arcs in this show have no lasting relevance.
50% of the flashback content from the first timeline is neither explained in detail nor are puzzling aspects of it resolved. The drip-feeding of these scenes just confuses the viewer more than necessary as to their correct order and context, while there is no interesting onion to slowly peel. It would have been better to have all first-timeline scenes right at the start of the show, or contiguously in one episode.

Agree, I kept being told that The Princess Royal is a cheap knock-off of SOKP but it was better in many ways. (I don't think it's excellent either, just better.)

TPR has a horribly annoying SML, while this just has the FL SML-ing (which one may find annoying).

On the link you need to scroll down to the comments and then the comment thread that I linked is the first shown to you (from 9 months ago). That's how comment linking works here on MDL, there is no way to automatically scroll you to the correct place.

When I go into a show with high expectations – "it'll be good so let's go for 4K quality, more pixels to not miss anything" – I'm always mildly to bitterly disappointed, and this is no exception.
From the chemistry to the OSTs, I don't think I'll remember any of it in a month or two. :(

SML has to die due to drama law, can't do evil stuff and get away with it.
https://kisskh.at/749787-love-in-the-desert#comment-19404438 if you so want.

depth: this is one of the few dramas that are so detail-heavy that it sure seems worth rewatching (think The Untamed)

sets & production: luxurious – many different sets, many props, endless costume variety

acting: average, with several villains or minor characters being quite bad (worst: Zhao Shi Yi as Fu Yu, Roy Wang as Jing Mie, Xiao Shun Yao as Tantai MingLang, Yu Bo as Di Mian, Chen Du Ling as Ye BingChang), but a huge lot of actors overall

OST: decently above-average (Liu Yuning for the intro song, quite a few songs really, some of them grow on you, but far from a Chen Xueran-scored show)

plot/pacing: all over the place, with a lot of screentime going to plotlines that have no lasting relevance, while at least one major event is wrapped up in seconds, and one supporting character gets a lot of build-up through various arcs before being forgotten

lip-sync: off so very, very often (it would only have cost a tiny amount to make this less jarring?)